finding the doorway to our homeplace

 Mary Anoints Jesus

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (John 12:1-6)

Why was this ointment not turned into cash?

Don't the poor deserve it?

One of the anecdotes I heard from my mother, probably passed on from her father, was of the episode in Tortilla Flat when John Steinbeck's ne'er-do-wells find something good to do with their money beside pooling it for a dollar gallon of California red.

They buy a candlestick for the altar of the church.

What did they do that for? Poor deluded souls, misguided by the authorities. They could have spent that on themselves, maybe pulled themselves up out of the pot-swilling life they were leading.

They choose instead to do something beautiful for God.

And I think, now that I have reflected on it, they put something beautiful into their own lives. For them, the sanctuary of the church was the most permanent interior they knew. And it was therefore a refuge for them, a homeplace.

One Wednesday evening when I was volunteering as a counselor at the evening shelter for the homeless, it was movie night. So the screen was set up, and a movie chosen. I noted, and remarked to one of the patrons, that the videocassette said on it, only for home use, not for public display. And he replied, this is our living room.

Jesus finds us where we are, and makes his home with us. He becomes our living room. And if we find room in our hearts, they can be the doorway to the living room, the safe place in which to dwell, that has room for all of us to share, all of us to be in our homeplace.

An edited version of this article appeared in the Arizona Daily Star feature “Keeping the Faith” under the title “Finding the doorway to Jesus” on Sunday April 10th 2022 page E3.

Are there yet tears?

"Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.... Then said Jesus, 

Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this." (John 12:3,7)

Are there yet tears?

Imagine then a pavement scored for gaming: counters fit in slots, die is cast; cloak is torn, garments shared out. Shouldering the cross-piece of his death, a condemned man is led, taunted, through the narrow streets of a busy marketplace. The curious stare. The indifferent turn away, or don’t bother. The guards shove the man forward. Stumbling, he drags his sandals up the stones of the street. Twists and turns. There is the city wall, and outside it his fate. And ours.

They lay him flat on a stone, the better to attach him to his engine of destruction. Up and in and down he goes, just another one of thousands, this one in full view of spectators. How long will this one live? More gaming. 

Either side of him, thieves, murderers, rapists - and some are good people. They will all die, one by one, gasping, suspended, a spectacle. And then, the bodies are checked. Thorough work. The soldiers lance his body. They’re sure, and can report.

Down later onto a slab of rock, weeping mother and friends place his violated body, so sweet and precious to them however it appears to the bystander. They prepare it - him - for the tomb, carved in the rock, donated, nearby, perhaps in a garden. 

That’s it for now.

Are there tears yet? Can they still flow? Can we join such sorrow to our own?

We cannot escape it. Shove it down, deny it, however angrily, however numb; it will out. 

And that is why we are here today at the foot of that self-same cross, wanting to touch it, the places of the nails, the binding, the torn and bleeding body. Or feel the sorrow. 

We don’t need to see it; we know it, in our own bones. We too have grieved, will grieve. 

For our world, for ourselves, for strangers and friends. For mothers and fathers, children, hope. 

And that too is why we are here. Because however hopeless and awful this scene of destruction, of humiliation, of death-dealing merchants and military men, the one they sought to kill yet lives. 

Hope there is still, and faith, though all will be taken away. Only love will be left. Only love endures. 

JRL+ 

Passion 2022.

Suzanne Guthrie writes: "In this season, the church encourages her people to grieve and grieve deeply. Why suffering exists in the first place is not the point, at least for now. In Holy Week the church provides the time to grieve, to break open our hearts of stone, to allow shattering and crumbling and the necessary softening to receive the sacred gifts only grieving confers. Hearts of flesh, perhaps. A new life, represented by deep and universal compassion."  http://edgeofenclosure.org/passion2.html

The Arizona Daily Star published a version of this story under the title, “Only love will be left; love endures” on Easter Sunday April 17th 2022 page E3 in the Keeping the Faith feature of the Home + Life section.

Patrick

Ellen Sasahara sent me a copy of a book she had designed: St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography by Philip Freeman (Simon and Schuster, 2005). Together with the sermon by Herbert O'Driscoll given at Saint Alban's Church, Edmonds, Washington, January 31, 2010, it was the primary resource for this day's preaching. I did not stick to my notes. These are the notes I walked away from:
 

When the world came to an end, it was the summer of the year 410. Rome fell – civilization was erased. A century and more before, Roman officials had executed a Christian martyr in Britannia, one Alban. Then Constantine took legions to the continent and won the imperial throne. But now a century after these events Rome crumbled before the onslaught of a Visigoth horde.

Arthur held together some promise of hope in Britannia. He called it Logres – kingdom of the Grail. And Ninian set sail for the north, Galloway in Caledonia. On the shores looking west and north to Hibernia, however, Irish pirates came across the water and they brought chains. They came for slaves.

One son of a patrician house, now we call him Patrick, was too near the shore, and he was taken. He found himself far across on the other side of a strange island and it was not until he was a teenager (and more) that he left the sheep he’d been set to herd – and walked away, across the island and back across the sea – but to a new future.

He fetched up in a monastery started by Martin of Tours, and he learned a new depth of Christian hope and practice. He was going to be a priest.

Strangely enough it was, then, that this trafficked human, enslaved by the Irish, saw in a dream his calling: to serve those who’d enslaved him, to free his captors. “Come here and walk among us!”

So to Ireland Patrick sailed. He even sought reconciliation with his old master. And he became a champion, confronting the evil of the slave trade, human trafficking.  When in turn Irish Christians, ones he himself had baptized, were captured by British Christian slavers, he wrote an excoriating letter, naming and rebuking one Corocticus, making a plea (a strongly worded one) that the slave-master set his fellow Christians free.

Patrick and other mission bishops brought the gospel to fertile soil in Ireland. They were a people ready to receive the word, and it quickly grew, in part because of the form, or lack of it, he used to carry it.

The world had come to an end, the Roman world, and there was little left to hold onto, few elements of the sacred, clad lightly in poverty – not wealth.

But he embraces that poverty, poverty of worldly means, as he taught people to embrace the only things that mattered, that remained (and as long as we have these, Herbert O’Driscoll taught us, we’ll be all right).

These are just a few things – look at the postcard – six words to define the church – and here are six: story, water, oil, bread, wine, people.

We are the water oil bread wine story people.

We have the gospel – the story of God’s love for humankind, the Spirit’s restless seeking for our souls.

We have the baptismal waters and the oil of Chrism (“you are sealed as Christ’s own for ever”).

We have bread, the bread we need, and wine – sustenance and reminder of the Godly provision of Christ our Savior.

And we are the people imbued by the Spirit, called and gifted to tell the story, immerse and bless, share the Table’s abundance, and – gather others in. For these gifts are not ours to keep to ourselves – they take us, break us, transform us, and make us ambassadors for Christ.

And we love to tell the story, and spread the news. He whom Mary wept over and anointed and served is the One who shed more than tears for us, who died indeed and rose to new life, that he might take us with him, and with us others, that all may be reconciled to God, all be freed.

Working for the simple physical liberation from slavery of trafficking victims, we work also for the liberation of souls – even of those who enslave.

May we live into this costly freedom, heed God’s call, and follow the dream of our own calling, that we may come over and bring Jesus even to those once separated from us by far more than a sea. May we be one in Christ, reconciled to one another God through the power of the Spirit, and the work of our Savior, in whose name we pray, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8
Fifth Sunday in Lent

Herbert O’Driscoll – 10:30 Service January 31, 2010

JRL+