Passion Sunday

The danger for all Christians when approaching any Gospel story is that we think we know it.  We do not expect to be surprised.  We do not expect to see anything new.  I once saw written on a stone in a convent, “Jesus Christ is always avant garde”.  The person of Jesus Christ and the stories about him always come in different guises and wake us up, if only we open our eyes and see.  And they wake us up in order to feed us, to move us and to give us grounds for hope. 

Our Old Testament today from Isaiah starts us in this vein, warning us to be ready to be surprised.  Through Isaiah, the Lord says, 

I am about to do a new thing;    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness    and rivers in the desert…. 

for I give water in the wilderness,    rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people,    the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise. 

Today is Passion Sunday, marking the beginning of the events that lead up to Jesus’ death on the cross.  Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week.  We call this whole period up to and including Good Friday, Passiontide.  And we start with quite a passionate story – in the other sense of the word, today: the anointing of Jesus feet with costly perfume by Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. 

What would it be like for any of us to know that this time next week, we would be dead?  By this point in his story, Jesus would have known that this would probably be the case.  We are told by John, our gospel writer, that the meal in Lazarus’ home happened six days before the Passover.  Seven days would therefore be Good Friday when he would die on the cross.  But only Mary gets the danger Jesus is in or only Mary is facing up to it.   

We know from other references, that Jesus had tried to tell the disciples three times that he would be arrested, tortured and killed in Jerusalem and that for whatever reason they couldn’t hear it, probably because they couldn’t bear it or it just didn’t fit in with their idea of what the promised messiah would do.  Only Mary gets it or she is the only one who is honest enough to own what they all knew perhaps, deep in their bones, was about to happen. 

How dramatic this story is.  The young woman, breaks into a male only meal – I mean, only the men are sitting and eating whilst dear Martha, true to form and true to the custom of the time, is serving them – Mary comes in, kneels at Jesus’ feet, brings out the immensely expensive perfume, bathes Jesus’ feet with it, and then dries his feet with her own hair.   

In ancient Jewish culture, a woman's hair was considered a source of beauty and self-worth, a symbol of her glory.  Mary's act of letting down her hair and wiping Jesus' feet with it, as described in John 12:3, is a powerful act of humility, devotion, and love, signifying the value she places on Jesus and his teachings, as well as foreshadowing his impending death and burial.  Judas responds to this unseemly action by saying the money should have gone to the poor, and the gospel writer raises the undercurrent of suspicion about Judas being a thief, and the significance of the perfume in relation to burial customs.  All that we know.  All that we have heard many times. 

This year, however, what struck me was simply how unexpected most of the actions of this scene are. It was unexpected that someone would use such a costly amount of perfume to clean someone’s feet. It was unexpected (at least to those in attendance) that Jesus would dampen the mood of the feast and the gift by talking about his death. And it was unexpected that he would engage in an argument over dinner with one of his disciples. 

But there are two other very unexpected things that we can glean from this passage.  The first is that Jesus was anointed by Mary, a woman. It was usually men who anointed men. Samuel anointed Saul to be Israel’s first king. Male Popes anointed male emperors throughout western history, and so on. But here, Mary lets down her hair and anoints Jesus with perfumed oil, this sign of respect and reverence, usually reserved for royalty or important guests, as a way of expressing her deep love and gratitude to him.  

The other thing that struck me forcibly and for the first time as I considered the text, is how this episode precedes the other washing of feet.  In six days-time, Jesus will kneel down and wash his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper.  Then it will be with water.  What is similar in both stories is that it is the feet that are cleansed.  This is Jesus’ powerful act of humility, service, devotion, and love to his disciples.  After washing their feet, Jesus instructed his disciples that they were to do the same for others; they were to be the servants of others. 

People were usually anointed with oil being poured on their heads.  The feet are altogether a more vulnerable and unloved part of the human body.  Day by day they carry our weight and particularly in hot countries like Israel, would have got hot, smeared with dirt and cut by loose stones.  In Mary’s touching act of bathing Jesus’ feet with this wonderful perfume, she not only becomes the first disciple to do unto others as Jesus had done to them – i.e. to serve, but she bathes the soon to be soiled, tortured feet with special oil and with great tenderness wipes them dry with her beautiful and glorious hair. 

All of this reminds me that God is often up to unexpected things with, for, and through unexpected people. People expected the messiah to look like King David; what they got instead was a former carpenter and itinerant preacher. The crowds who welcome Jesus a few verses after this story, expected Jesus to throw out the Romans; instead he was crucified by them. Even his followers expect his crucifixion to be the end of the story; but it turned out to be just the beginning. 

God regularly loves to do the unexpected with, for, and through unexpected people. And the culmination of Lent and celebration of Easter are the highlight of the work and activity of this unexpected God, as death is assumed to have the last word, until Jesus is raised from the dead. 

Our God is the God of Surprises, always showing us fresh, new things.  So, one thing we might ask this Sunday is what do we expect of God and are we prepared to be surprised as God again does the unexpected?  I think if we are honest with ourselves we might say we long for God to come into our lives more fully but…we expect the same old same old.  Perhaps we have to dare a bit more, come out of our comfort zones, make ourselves vulnerable as Mary did in her action of anointing Jesus’s feet. (Washing of feet – Maundy Thursday). 

One thing that we can see from this story is that God used Mary, younger sister of Martha, an ordinary young woman in a village, to express a truth that nobody else could see.  I wonder which ordinary person in our congregation might surprise us with their Godly insight or generous action sometime.  Perhaps you will surprise yourself!