Multiple Choice

John 12:1-8

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?” (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.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Four friends gathered around a table with Jesus. Jesus had just raised one of them, Lazarus, from the dead and that made Jesus more than just annoying to the Romans. It made him a leader… and a leader with a following… and that was something the Romans simply couldn’t tolerate. Everyone in that room knew that the next time Jesus walked into Jerusalem, he’d be killed. The multiple choice question asked of those four friends that night was what were they going to do with this horrible thing they clearly saw coming?

Lazarus sat in stunned silence. Martha ran around in a panic, trying to push the reality from her mind by being busy. Judas tried to change the subject… to stewardship, of all things! So you know he was desperate! And then there was Mary. Mary chose to lean in. She went into the bedroom, found a jar of perfume and anointed Jesus not on his head, as you would a King, but on his feet as you would a corpse. Jesus was walking toward the cross and Mary, with complete clarity of what would happen next, chose to walk with Jesus anyway. Why would she do that?

Why would anyone walk into a horror like that on purpose? I think the “Why” for Mary basically boils down to her desire to walk toward the Kingdom of God. But then as now, the path to God’s Kingdom… the path to the reality designed by God from the beginning, where there is enough food, shelter, healing, dignity and purpose for ALL people... is a path perpetually strewn with endless obstacles and far too many horrific plot twists. So how do we do now, what Mary chose to do then? How do we walk through the horrors of the world toward God’s Kingdom?

A couple of weeks ago when we gathered in the wake of our community’s tragedies, Rabbi Liz Hirsch sang the Psalm we just sang. “Those who sow with tears, reap with shouts of joy.” She sang it over and over again, inviting us into the song with her. She did for us, what God’s people have always done for one another as we walk this path. She helped us remember what God has done before, and then asked God to do it again for us now. Today we heard another story like that. Our God is the One who makes a way through the sea, a path in the mighty waters. Our God is the one who parted the Red Sea.  The God who extinguished chariot and horse, army and warrior… like the wick of a candle…to make a way for God’s people. 

THAT is how we walk toward the Kingdom of God, even with the horrors of the world that are always in our way. We tell these stories and sing these songs… to help us remember… to clear the fog of it all… so we can see more clearly, the Kingdom of God.  We tell these stories and sing these songs to give one another direction... to give one another enough HOPE to take one more step.

You and I are more fortunate than those original four dinner guests.  We have one additional story to tell that those four dinner companions didn’t have.  We have the story of Easter. Like the Psalm and like the first lesson, the Easter story reminds us that God has fixed it, so that… every… single… solitary Good Friday type horror the world can throw at us, is always, always, ALWAYS followed by Resurrection which is why we proclaim the mystery of faith! Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again! 

ALL of those stories are there (the Easter story included... even in Lent) so that we might have HOPE in the face of whatever horrors we encounter along the way. This is not a baseless wish or an impossible dream... this is HOPE! HOPE that the God who has ALWAYS been there for God’s people before, will be right there for us again, telling us one more time, “I am about to do another new thing! It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? There it is! I’m making a road through the desert, rivers in the wastelands. So much water the wild animals will say ‘Thank you!’… drinking water for the people I chose, the people I made especially for myself.”

Our take home for today… is THAT God… the God who created ALL things… THAT God, has a vision for this world. It’s a vision of a creation forged in divine, perfect, self-giving love. A creation made to function fully and solely out of that same kind of love and not out of fear. It’s a reality where everyone has enough, where the sick are healed, the hungry fed… peace, justice, compassion and joy are lived out in our individual lives AND on a world wide scale!  

God continues even now, bringing that vision into reality.  God will continue to provide a crossing through any sea that blocks your path forward.  God will continue to bring water to your every desert, and will continue making a way for your to harvest joy in place of every tear that is sown. God WILL continue to do ALL OF THAT and anything else that is needed, up to and including raising the dead, in order to get God’s way of love to work in all of creation.  

And that, leaves THIS group of friends, gathered in a around THIS table, very much like Lazarus, Mary, Martha and Judas were all those years ago. Like them, we look outside and clearly see… things are not going as we had expected or would like them to go. And we too have the same multiple choice question. Will we sit in stunned silence, paralyzed in fear like Lazarus? Will we run around in a panic, trying to drive the outside world from our minds with our busyness like Martha? Will we desperately try to distract ourselves from the reality of the world by any means, like Judas? Or… will we lean into it and walk the Jesus Way like Mary?  If you’re up for THAT sort of walk, I’ve got a book full of stories that promise you have every reason to have HOPE along the way. Amen.