August 15, 2010
The Anointing of Jesus’ Feet - Mark 14:1-11
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadFormer Illinois Governor Rod Blagojavich is currently on trial on corruption charges. I’m not going to pronounce him guilty before his trial. In fact, I think he even has a hung jury in the case. Anyway, from what I understand, he is charged essentially with selling the US Senate seat from Illinois to the highest bidder. It all sort of went down like this. The Junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, got elected President in 2008, thus leaving a vacant Senate seat. Under the Illinois Constitution, the governor would appoint someone to fill that vacancy until the next voting cycle. This made Governor Blagojavich a very powerful man, arguably one of the most powerful men in the county. The democrats, especially the Governor’s colleague and now President Obama, desperately needed a filibuster-proof senate. The only thing that stood in their way was this senate seat that Blagojavich alone could fill. Blagojavich had this One Thing, you see, that was very valuable. In fact, it was invaluable really. So, the allegation goes, he sold it and kept the proceeds, thus violating the public’s trust and breaking a number of laws. We’ll have to see what the jury decides.
What would you decide? What are you deciding, not about Blagojavich (we’re finished talking about him)? We’re talking about you now. What are you deciding about yourself? This nameless woman in Mark 13 also had the One Thing. She had this bottle of perfume worth a year’s wage. I don’t know she had gotten it from, or from whom she had gotten it, or how long she had had it. But it was hers. She had come to know Jesus, who broke all the religious rules but who obviously was, to her at least, from God. At this very time, Jesus was at the home of a leper, which was a big no-no according to the rules. And this woman, too, was also a no-no. Who knows why, but she probably was. And yet Jesus was there, giving everything he had. Jesus was everything, to a large degree, that he was not supposed to be. The clerics, the pastors, the priests, and all the rest of the religious establishment, hated him. In fact, they were plotting, at this very time, to kill him, and they were using one his very followers to do it. And yet, in all that Jesus was, in all that he gave, Jesus was clearly The One. So this woman had this One Thing that only she had. It was probably all she had. She decided that then was the right time, and that Jesus was the right person. And so she spent it, all of it, on Jesus. Little did she know that he would die the next day, that she was literally anointing his body for burial, or that he would be resurrected three days later, or that he not only was from God but that he WAS God, and that whenever such a story was told, it would be in remembrance of her.
Jesus’ disciples raised a valid point that she could have spent that money on the poor, which I suppose is true. But, they also missed a valid point. She could have used that One Thing on herself. That’s the mystery behind this whole thing, isn’t it? I have a bottle of perfume myself. I really do. Of course, for me, being a man, it’s called cologne. Leah gave it to me right around the time we got married. I save it for special occasions, very special occasions, so special that I still have over half the bottle left. The point, though, is that it’s mine, and I use it on me whenever I deem it appropriate.
To be honest with you, I’m not much of a cologne type guy, so that is not my most valuable possession. But I do have something. I’ve got the One Thing, too, that nobody else in the world has. I’m not much of an athlete. I’m not much of a musician. I’m a decent student, although I could not be called a “Scholar.” I’m not powerful. I certainly don’t own a senate seat. I very likely will never make the front page of the Charlotte Observer, much less the New York Times. There’s a country music song, that says, “Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble, because I’m perfect in every way.” I can sing it for you sometime if you’d like.
That’s not me at all. But I do have that One Thing that nobody in the world has. And you do, too. I’m not making any of this up. I have not digressed. This is biblical. Before you were even born, the Psalmist ways, the Lord nit you together, piece by piece, bone by bone, and sinew by sinew. There is no other person in the world like you. Before you were born, the Lord had an idea as to what he wanted to create. And you are what he created. You are God’s masterpiece. God gave you something that only you have. That One thing is invaluable. Now you can go out and find that thing, and you can market it, and if you play it right, you’ll hit the jack-pot. Or, like my bottle of perfume, you could consider it so valuable that you never use it at all, and then you’ll die, and it will be valueless. Or, you can use it for the Kingdom, which takes a lifetime of faith and discernment and wisdom and guts.
John Calvin is considered the founder of the Presbyterian Church and what we call Reformed Theology. Calvin was born in France in 1509. Calvin was actually a legal scholar, and was for a while a very good lawyer. But he heard about this Reformation in Germany, and he added a little bit to it. At the risk of his own life, he preached it. The French kicked him out and he ended up moving to Switzlerland, where he established, based off what he had come to believe about God, representative democracy. And then, of course, he met John Knox who took those ideas to Scotland, and then they ended up, literally, in Steele Creek. Not only, then, did Calvin help establish the Presbyterian Church, but he brought to the Church Universal something that did not exist before. He brought a voice to it that desperately needed to be heard, and still needs to be heard.
I have mentioned my English teacher to you before, Ann Dobbs, who found her One Thing. There has never been, nor will there ever be, a teacher in the world like her. She had an enormous influence on my life. I thank God often that she found the One invaluable Thing that God had given her, and that she used it selflessly. I cannot begin to say how she affected my life. Her husband was a biology professor at Wofford. He taught there for forty years. He started teaching there when he was twenty-two years old. I think he had his PhD when he was twenty-five. With his brains, he could have done anything. He told a friend of mine, though, that he never had good instruction growing up, so he was determined to provide that. Goodness knows, as hundreds of physicians across the country can attest, he did.
Judas had that One Thing, too. The religious leaders wanted to kill Jesus and they needed one of his followers to lead them to Jesus in private, so they could eliminate him with as little disturbance as possible. Judas was just the man, and he knew it, so he cashed in on it and made a killing. And then, Judas went and got a rope and hanged himself from a tree. Judas and this other woman are opposites, you see. Mark contrasts them, and poses the question to us of how we are using the One Thing we have. Are we like this woman, or are we like Judas?
John is adamant that the woman is Mary of Bethany, Lazarus’ sister. Luke may be referring to Mary Magdalene. Both Matthew and Mark, though, refuse to name her. If anybody knew her name it would be Mark. Why he did not name her is a mystery. Maybe Mark is simply asking us, his readers, whether we could put our own names in there. You’ve got something, you see. I don’t know what it is. But you have something unique that the Kingdom of God desperately needs. You need to spend a lot of time in discernment and prayer, and find out what that is, and you need to spend it for the Kingdom’s sake.
While we’re talking about spending things, the last hymn that we sang and the one that we’re about to sing are both normally sung during Lent. The one we sang, Alas and Did my Savior Bleed, is somewhat of a downer, is it not? It’s so much of a downer, that it’s tempting to not sing it at all. But, it just so happens to be true. I strongly encourage you to read those words, and even to memorize them, because it speaks so beautifully to the One Thing that Jesus had, and the One Thing that he gave, for us, for me, for “crimes that I had done.” We’re not talking about crimes that somebody else had done, that they had done, that our enemies had done, but that we had done. “Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree.” That hymn actually ends in a statement that alludes to the One Thing, the One Thing that only you have, and that you need to discern, and that you need to spend, that you need to cash in for the Kingdom. “Drops of grief can never repay the debt of love I owe. Here, Lord, I give myself away. It is all that I can do.”
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
