Year C Lent V Isaiah 43:16-21 John 12:1-8

Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters,

who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.

Today’s first reading, from Isaiah, starts by recalling the past. Some of the Children of Israel had been taken into exile in Babylon while others remained in the land, but both groups suffered to varying degrees from the debilitating effects of being a conquered people.

Physically, economically, culturally, and religiously, the people felt the might of Babylon, and it seems that one of the tasks of the prophet Isaiah was to rebuild the people’s understanding of themselves as God’s own people and to reassure them that their God was fully capable of taking on the Babylonian superpower in order to save them.

Speaking for God, Isaiah tells the Children of Israel:

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing;

And God, through His prophet Isaiah, describes that new thing which includes rivers in the desert and animals giving God honour. But God does ask one question as He promises the “new thing”:

Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

How difficult it is sometimes in the midst of troubles and misery to perceive the action of God. How often we forget that God is never absent. We look around us today at what is making the news and it is violence on a huge scale in the Ukraine and on a small scale on a stage at the Oscars. Where is this “new thing” God promised? Have we somehow missed it?

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead.

It is the last Sunday in Lent before Palm Sunday, before Jesus turns His face toward Calvary. He has come to the home of his dear friends Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus, and they have given a dinner for Him, a fine example of generous hospitality in the context of a small, close-knit Jewish community of the time.

These visits must have meant a great deal to Jesus. We tend to forget that He wasn’t always a welcome guest. In the house at Bethany, we become more aware of the poverty of the human Jesus. It becomes visible in Mary’s extravagant gift of anointing - given to the One for whom there was no room at the inn at His birth, for whom there was precious little hospitality given during His lifetime, and for whom, in the end, there will be a borrowed tomb.

On this day in our reading, Mary of Bethany comes into the dining area with a bottle of expensive oil, the sort that was customarily used to anoint the dead before burial. She pours it lavishly over Jesus’ feet and then dries his feet with her hair. It is an extremely costly and generous gift, one that comes totally unasked for, totally unexpected from her head, heart, and soul. This is Jesus the Lord of Life, who had raised her brother Lazarus from the dead only weeks before, and inexplicably to those gathered there that day Mary treats the Lord of Life as if He were already a dead body.

We do not know how anyone in the house interpreted this extravagant gesture except for Judas. Judas asked the money question: would it not have been better to spend all that money on the poor and needy? Questioning Mary’s generosity in this way was surely valid. Jesus had built much of his reputation on the way he accepted, fed, and healed people who were outside the socio-economic safety zones, men without status in the eyes of the temple and court authorities, widows who were unable to stand on their own two feet, and children who were unable to make choices for themselves.

For these reasons, Jesus’ response to Judas is interesting. He tells Judas to let Mary be; she had bought the oil for the day of His, Jesus’, burial. Jesus’ death comes into view on the horizon as He continues, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” The words seem gentle, but perhaps there is a note of sharpness and certainly of poignancy. But Judas sees only the money, not because he cares about the poor, but because he controls the purse of the little group of disciples, and steals from it regularly.

What do today’s readings say to us? They pose a question, a challenge, how do we look at things? War is raging all around us, not just in obvious places like the Ukraine, where the human rights violations can bring one to tears. Not just on the stage at the Oscars, where, after the violence, Denzel Washington pointed out to Will Smith that, “At your highest moment be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you.” There is a daily war which involves each of us. Do you not perceive it?

The problem is that often we do not perceive it, because we are not looking for it, are not aware that it is happening. All our training and upbringing teaches us to look at life through worldly eyes. We look back, as the Children of Israel were tempted to do, at the past, and do not focus on today. We look outside ourselves, and blame other people or situations for our troubles. And then we feel justified in whatever unloving responses we make to what is happening right now, this day, or worse, we use what we see (or think we see) to act in terrible ways.

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Putin thought he had the knowledge and the power to take the Ukraine – and he felt he had the right to do so. That’s how he saw things. Certainly Will Smith must have thought he had the right to slap Chris Rock. We do a lot of things because we feel “right” and “justified” – and all of it comes down to a terrible sin of pride called hubris, which is arrogance, pride carried beyond the bounds of reason.

But – we argue, we are not starting wars or slapping people. We are peaceful folk. Nonetheless, even when we aren’t violent we still feel we have the right to spend time living in the past and using it to criticizing the present, the right to find fault in others whom we blame for our own misdeeds. If you think of Judas’ complaint, Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?, to those who did not know his motives, it must have sounded like a “reasonable” question. In the same way, our worst actions often seem “reasonable” to us. There is, as there has always been, a war raging around us, one being fought for our souls, and we need to acknowledge it.

Jesus, though He knew what awaited Him in Jerusalem, lived in the present, and with great humility saw life clearly. That is really something new for each of us – to look humbly, not with eyes trained by the world, but with eyes saved by Jesus. It is new to forsake our arrogance and our attachment to this world and its judgments and justifications, to see life using the will of God, the Love of God, as our lens – but this is our calling.

St. Paul explained it thus: For Jesus sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. . .

We are heading toward Holy Week, that time when we relive our Lord’s journey on the road to Calvary and His death on the cross. It is a very good time to refocus and humbly prepare for the celebration of that which has been given to us, not because we deserve it, but because Jesus, who saw us as we truly are, loved us anyway and loves us still – to prepare for the gift of our salvation.

Let us pray:

Everlasting God, Heavenly Father, we know that when Jesus prayed in the garden, He accepted the suffering that awaited Him. Although Your will is always good, we know that it is sometimes necessary to suffer for the good of others. We know that we also fail to acknowledge your blessings, because we are not looking for them. Dear Lord, give us the fortitude and courage to accept Your will, and follow it. Teach us to love and give and see according to Your Holy Will, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.