Not super happy about this week’s sermon, but what can you do. Here’s to thinking about the whole reason for doing things.
John 12:1-8; Philippians 3:4b-14; Psalm 126; Isaiah 43:16-21
We’ve reached the last Sunday before Holy Week, and Jesus is now just outside of Jerusalem, in the town of Bethany, which one could easily consider a “suburb” in our way of thinking. This was the town in which he raised Lazarus from the dead, and apparently was rather close to the family, that he would stay and eat with him before the Passover.
During the dinner, Mary, on of Lazarus’ sisters, took a jar of expensive perfume, made of nard, and poured it on Jesus’ feet. We’re told that Judas Iscariot was upset at the wasted expense, claiming it could be used to help the poor, but Jesus’ response would likely have puzzled the disciples. He says, “This perfume was intended for the day of my burial. You’ll always have the poor, but you won’t always have me.”
Looking back from nearly 2,000 years later, we know that Jesus, the next day, will enter Jerusalem, and five days after that would die on the cross, so we can understand what he was saying much easier than the disciples would. Since there wouldn’t be time to anoint him after he died, Mary anointed Jesus beforehand.
But in a lot of ways, the gospel isn’t the “highlight” of today’s readings. No, that honor goes to Paul’s writing in Philippians. It highlights how different God’s ways our than our own, something that our Lutheran heritage is particularly fond of. Martin Luther used to write of a theology of the cross in contradiction to a theology of glory. A theology of the cross is centered around the thought that God’s glory is revealed in the shame of the cross, and it’s in the times when we are at our weakest that God is at His strongest within us. A theology of glory, on the other hand, becomes more about us looking at our own strength and rejoicing in God’s strength.
It’s this contrast which Paul is illustrating in Philippians 3. Paul says, “If anyone has reason to be confident in my own accomplishments, I can beat them. I was a faultless Jew, the perfect Pharisee, I even went so far as to persecute the Church, but all of it is worthless compared to what I have in Christ. It’s all [rubbish].” Now, to be clear here, rubbish is not near strong enough a word for what Paul is saying there. What he’s writing to the church at Philippi is that all of the things that might contribute to his own glory is, when compared to Christ, a bunch of poop.
Yes I just said that in a sermon; to be fair, the actual word is stronger in Greek. The whole idea that the things that he has now because of God make everything else look completely worthless, as well as shocking his reader into this realization. Because now, after finding Christ, Paul wants “to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
Just like Isaiah and the Psalm today talk about, God has done a new thing with Jesus’ death and resurrection. Through him we are given new life – both here on earth and eternal life. Sadly, we often forget that in Christ we have a new life now, not just new life later. Paul celebrates the “surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus [the] Lord”, that same greatness of knowing Him gives us new life now. It’s why Mary could pour expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet; he was more important than anything else.
The Christian life isn’t about waiting for the resurrection of the dead, but about following Jesus in the here and now and spending time with him, as we do those thing that he’s called us to do.