Sunday Morning Worship Service - 4/7/19 - Rev. Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor

22:13 So we're in John's gospel this morning, the fourth one, which is so different from the other three that it helps to keep a few things in mind. The first thing is that John was the last to write down what he had seen and heard a long time after those things happened. Children whose parents had brought them to Jesus for a blessing were great-grandparents by then, if they were still alive at all. John had been thinking about who Jesus was and what his life, death, and resurrection meant for a long time. If he had read any of the other Gospels, he did not feel compelled to harmonize with them. He had his own sense of how the story should be told, and he felt freed by the Spirit to tell it in his own way. So that's the second thing.

23:06 John tells stories that none of the other evangelists does. Without him, no one would ever heard about Jesus turning water into wine, or talking to Nicodemus late in the night, or to the Samaritan woman at the well. There would be no ritual of foot washing in the church without John's gospel. Bach would never have written St. John's Passion. Rembrandt would never have painted the raising of Lazarus from the dead because John alone tells the story. If you've never heard it, it's one of the tenderest and most startling stories in the New Testament, how Jesus arrived too late to save his sick friend's life, how he started crying when he saw Lazarus' sisters, Martha and Mary, crying, how Martha tried to stop him from entering her brother's tomb, how Jesus did it anyway, calling Lazarus out, and out Lazarus came trailing his burial cloths behind him like streamers. It was as hard to believe then as it is now, which is the third thing to keep in mind about John's gospel. Believing is huge for John.

24:25 If you're a number person, the numbers really stand out. John uses the verb to believe. He uses it ten times as often as any other gospel writer. He uses it twice as often as Paul. In Jesus' mouth, it comes out like this, Do you believe? Why do you not believe? Believe in God, believe also in me. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light. John's Jesus even added a new beatitude to those found in the other gospels. He asked his disciple Thomas, who had a hard time believing Jesus had come back from the dead, Jesus asked, have you believed because you've seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.

25:22 That one is aimed straight at us. Writing as late as he did, John knew there were going to be a lot of people who had not seen the things he wrote about. Believing was going to be huge for them too, and it is. I don't know about where you live, but where I live, the first thing people want to know when they find out you're a Christian is what you believe. Do you believe in the virgin birth? Do you believe in the physical resurrection? Do you believe Jesus is the only Son of God? Do you believe every word of the Bible is true? Just last week I was at a book signing when one woman kept stepping back to the back of the line so that no one would hear her when she finally slid her book across the table to me, leaned down, and said, So what do you believe about Jesus?

26:13 And I said, That's a big question for the end of the line. And she said, I know it is, but it's the one I'm working on, and it is hard. She kept her voice down, but I'm not sure she had to because she has a lot of company. According to the Pew Research Center, 60% of American adults who don't identify with any religion, the rapidly growing nuns, they say that questioning religious teachings is a very important reason why they are unaffiliated. 25% of them say it's the most important reason they're not affiliated. And since I know a lot of people who are affiliated, who question the teachings of their religion, I wonder how high the numbers really are. How many people equate believing with belonging? How many worry they don't believe enough to belong?

27:10 Or that a religion built only on beliefs isn't concrete enough to save their lives? I recently heard from a vibrant young woman, already the de facto pastor of a thriving congregation on the margins of a big city, who was recently turned down for ordination when she could not explain the nature of the Trinity, the efficacy of the sacraments, or the divinity of Jesus to her examining committee's satisfaction. In an open letter to them later, which she shared with me, she wrote this, What, I wondered during this line of questioning, is this really about? And more importantly, what is its lived effect? While belief may bring a great deal of comfort to some, which is extraordinary and beautiful and all good things, Why can't Christianity also encompass the embodied reality of Jesus' ministry, since the gospel is entirely practical?

28:14 What, I wondered, is so egregious about a minister of the gospel, by the way, having little attachment to belief, she concluded, but intense attachment to concrete action. here's where things get interesting because belief never shows up in john's gospel believing does but it's a verb not a noun no one has has belief in john's gospel no one has faith for john believing in jesus means trusting that he comes from god it means seeing him knowing him, coming to him, remaining with him. It means receiving what he has to offer and accepting what he wants to give. It means abiding with him through thick and thin and doing what he says do. If you love me, keep my commandments, feed my sheep, receive whom I send, wash one another's feet, love one another as I've loved you.

29:20 so what does love look like when it's a verb and not a noun let's go back to Martha and Mary's house where a great act of love is about to take place it's a week before Passover John says the sisters have decided to give a dinner for Jesus their recently revived brother Lazarus is there though he does not say a word Judas Iscariot is there which suggests that the other disciples may be there as well. Everyone in the room is a Jew, which is something else to keep in mind when you're reading John's gospel. He has such a burr under his saddle about the Jews. He says such mean things about them that sometimes you have to wonder if he remembers Jesus is one. It's another topic for another time, but you should feel free to neutralize John's meanness with Jesus' love commandment whenever it comes up, John would probably appreciate the reminder. You should also bring your nose to this story because you're going to need it. First for the smell of life in the room and then for the smell of death, which hovers over this dinner, which comes at it from both sides.

30:37 A week or so, it was Lazarus in his tomb. A week from now, it will be Jesus in his. In between, Martha is doing what she does best. She's organizing things. She's filling the room with the smell of supper. While Mary slips away to go find something in her room, Martha's used to this. Mary's the moody one who just disappears sometimes even when she's sitting right in front of you. There's this look that comes over her face as if she were listening to music that no one else can hear. Martha knows there's nothing to be done about it but to work around her sister, being careful to reel her back in when she drifts too far.

31:21 Finally supper's on the table and they all sit down to eat, but the smell of food is quickly, quickly overpowered by the smell of perfume. Mary's not interested in food. She's interested in Jesus' feet, where she's knelt and broken the neck of a slender clay jar. When the air hits what's inside, the smell of spikenard, it fills the room, a sharp scent somewhere between mint and ginseng. And everyone stops what they're doing to watch Mary do four remarkable things in a row. First, she loosens her hair in a room full of men, which a pious woman doesn't do. Then she pours perfume on Jesus' feet, which also is not done. The head, maybe. People do that for kings, but not the feet. Then she touches him.

32:16 A single woman caressing the feet of a rabbi, also not done. Not even among friends. Then she wipes the salve off again with her hair. Totally inexplicable. The bizarre end to an all-around bizarre act. The love in it is so lavish that it's just hard to watch. The eloquence of what she does is so intimate that no one knows what to say. Judas is the first to betray the silence with an ethical objection that clarifies his rightness in this matter. Why wasn't this perfume sold for a whole lot of money and given to the poor, he asks. John says he's a thief who uses the common purse for a common, for a personal expense account. He doesn't care about the poor, but he knows that Jesus does. So he says what he knows Jesus would have said if Jesus weren't so polite.

33:14 What a waste. What an extravagance. Whatever you meant by it, Mary, this movement, it's not about us. It's about the less fortunate. Try to remember that from now on, huh? but Jesus can speak for himself he turns to Judas and says leave her alone to Judas and anyone else who might agree with him she was keeping it from my burial you always have the poor with you but you do not always have me it's an odd thing for him to say but Mary has broken more than a jar in that room she's also broken open the truth that Jesus is the first to see to speak to The poor are sturdy perennials in God's garden. There will be plenty of opportunities to tend them for all time, but Jesus, tonight, he's an annual, and his time is almost up. If he didn't know it before, unlikely in John's gospel, he knows it now, having just witnessed, I'm going to call it the way I see it, a prophetic act.

34:19 whatever anyone else in the room thought about mary's silent performance jesus recognized it as a message from god all the pieces were there just waiting to be pieced together judas the betrayer challenging her act the flask of spikenard could it have been left over from lazarus funeral and out in the yard a freshly vacated tomb that still smelled of burial spices waiting for a new occupant. The air was dense with death, and while there may at first have been some doubt about whose death it was, Mary's prophetic act revealed the truth. She was anointing Jesus ahead of time for his burial, and while her behavior may have seemed strange to those standing around, it was no more strange than those of the prophets who'd gone before her. Jeremiah, smashing a clay jar to show God's judgment on Judah, or Ezekiel eating a scroll as a sign that he carried God's word around inside him, or Isaiah walking around naked for three years as an oracle against the nations, or John the Baptist showing up in the wilderness wearing animal skins and eating bugs, proclaiming the coming of God's beloved. That's what prophets did. It's what prophets do. They act out the truth that no one else can see yet, and those who see them either write them off as crazy or fall silent before the disturbing news that God brings.

36:02 When Mary approached Jesus with that pound of pure nard, it could have gone either way for just a moment. It could have gone either way. She could have anointed his head, and everyone there could have recognized their new king. But that's not what she did. She poured it on his feet instead, which could only mean one thing. The only man who had his feet anointed was a dead man, and Jesus knew it. Leave her alone, he said. Just leave her alone and let her do her job. It's troubling when you read the commentaries on this passage to notice how much ink is wasted on whether Mary is a true believer or not. Does she really know what she's doing? Does she have an adequate understanding of Jesus' identity and purpose? If so, why doesn't she say so out loud? Why doesn't she confess her faith as lucidly as Peter or Thomas did?

37:02 Where is her statement of belief? I'll tell you where. It's in her hair. It's in her hands. It's in her bent body. It's in her nose. This is the gospel with a sound turned off. Other people in the room are talking, talking, but Mary's not talking. Her believing is in her body and not in her speech. It's what she does, not what she says that counts. Love so lavish that it's hard to watch. Love so eloquent that Jesus tells the talkers, please, to just shut up. Writing the scene down so long afterward, John got the connection, though we can't hear it in English, When he chose the verb for what Mary did with her hair, he chose the verb wipe. And when it came time, on the night before Jesus died, to choose the verb for what Jesus did to his disciples' feet, John chose the same verb Jesus wiped.

38:13 You don't know what I'm doing, he said to his disciples that night, but later you will understand. I'm not sure they ever did. I'm not sure we ever will, not fully, which is why I cling to the syntax of one of the last sentences of Jesus. Did you notice? You don't know now what I'm doing, but later you will understand. The doing comes first. The understanding comes later. The love comes first. The belief follows. If you're still waiting for your understanding to come, if you're not sure what you believe, take heart. You have plenty of company. And you know what? There's plenty to do. Feed my sheep.

39:07 Wash one another's feet. Receive whom I send. Love one another as I have loved you. Mary got the message. and she acted it out without saying a word, while some of those who watched her thought her crazy or wanton or, God forbid, wasteful. She and the foot washer understood that where God is concerned, there is no need to fear running out of nard, of love, of life, because where God is concerned, there's always more. Gifts, more than we can ask for, more than we can imagine, from a lavish