HOW DARE YOU STOP AND SMELL THE PERFUME!
John 12:1-8
Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C
Analysis by Jonas Ellison
1Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him. 3Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’s feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 6(He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
From Wikimedia Commons
“I can enjoy the smell of Mary’s perfume that fills the room and lifts our noses and our faces to see the anointed One who heals our deepest wounds and turns us toward each other in love.”
DIAGNOSIS:
Step 1: Initial Diagnosis (External Problem) – The world needs you!
Have you looked at the news lately? If you’re like most people, you carry the news around with you in your pocket (and even on your wrist) all day. We’re plugged into the news 24/7/365. We’re never offline. (Remember the days when we used to have to actually LOG ON to “go online?” Ahhh… Those were the days, weren’t they?)
We know about every catastrophe that happens on the other side of the globe within minutes of it happening. The algorithm knows our closest-held biases and fears and gives us the hot takes of every pundit who strums our deepest stresses. And with the political fervor such as it is, the inciting news has reached a fever pitch. Look at all of those people in need with so many losing jobs, facing cuts in assistance, being sent “home” without legal recourse, etc. Look at the whip-swinging markets! How can you think of anything else but the pain of the world? How dare you?
Step 2: Advanced Diagnosis (Internal Problem) – It’s too much
We know that it’s too much for any one person to take. But we’re “good Christians,” right? We feel guilty for unplugging or celebrating even the slightest of life’s simple joys (let alone outright miracles!) for the risk of seeming privileged or unattuned to the pain of others. We know we should turn to God and trust. We know our anxiety and despair are in desperate need of healing, and this level of calamity awareness is unsustainable. (And that’s just the stuff on the major headlines! What about the stuff in our own lives that doesn’t make the headlines? Addiction, relationship trouble, estrangement from family, personal insecurities, financial issues, mental health, career uncertainty.) How can we stop toiling and worship at Jesus’s feet when there’s so much suffering out there (and within us)?
Step 3: Final Diagnosis (Ultimate Problem) – Seeing the reflection of our frantic (albeit well-meaning) violence
Jesus knows us more deeply than we do. He knows our propensity to – instead of trusting God – want to play God (which always strikes us as well-meaning). He sees how the more helpless we feel, the more shallow and performative we become. Like Judas, in our frenetic plight, we publicly one-up the goodness of even our closest companions. We draw the purity circles even tighter. We snipe and shame people publicly to show how righteous we are and how “much” we’re doing for the cause (whatever cause our ‘side’ feels most beholden to). Yet we do not consider how in all our self-concern that it is the poor and the oppressed who are with us still, and neither can they find rest. And in the weeks ahead, we’ll see where our performative toil takes us… To the foot of the cross where we hang the world’s biggest “problem” up on a tree to be executed. Because how can we have a God who calls us to rest and adore Him at a time like this? We do not consider that the judgment of God falls upon us for all our own dirty hands in all this violence.
PROGNOSIS:
Step 4: Initial Prognosis (Ultimate Solution) – Even in this, Jesus has not left us!
With Christ on the cross, that’s when we see it… We’ve killed the Source of our rest. The one who raises us to new life out of death. When we finally reach the end of our rope… When we see where all of our frantic posturing, peacocking, and pontificating has gotten us – we have no option but to fall on our knees and surrender to the Spirit that only wants to love us back to life in the darkest recesses of our tombs. Like George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life peering out from the bridge over the icy waters below begging God to let him live again. For in Jesus, God has not left us! Through the Spirit, Jesus’s salve-ific healing presence is as alive as ever. The judgment of Death has not stopped Him! And we have nothing to fear.
Step 5: Advanced Prognosis (Internal Solution) – A healed perspective of Who our true Source of life is
In this, we can lay down and confess… We’re exhausted. We can’t do it all. We may be a mere toenail in the vast body of Christ, but even for Luther that was enough to be a vital part of the priesthood of all believers. And a toenail – no matter how stressed out and performatively righteous it gets – is not going to solve the entire body’s problems. The toenail is a small part of a greater whole and is made alive by a Source outside of itself. When we see this, we relax into our toenailness and allow Jesus to be the true Source of Life who does His most miraculous work in the areas we see the most impossibility. When we catch glimpses of this, we can allow ourselves to fall to the ground, not in self-defeat, but in reverence and awe that we are a part of this miraculous body – as imperfect and flawed as we think it is. In other words, we can be at peace with our toenailness and live as part of the whole in the Mystery that it is.
Step 6: Final Prognosis (External Solution) – Freed from toil and sent toward the world in love and levity
In this emotional (dare I say ‘spiritual’) posture, new possibilities arise. I become less anxiety-ridden. I can be a non-anxious presence to those around me who need hope and release from the heavy yoke of the world. I can rest and work with a joyful heart, knowing God is God and I am not. I can do the countercultural thing of not taking myself so damn seriously. I can access the healing balm of humor and levity! I can appreciate this brief life, realizing how quickly it passes and being at peace with the fact that when I die, there will be PLENTY of work left to do. But in the meantime, I can enjoy the smell of Mary’s perfume that fills the room and lifts our noses and our faces to see the anointed One who heals our deepest wounds and turns us toward each other in love.
