Extravagant Worship

Sermon based on Mark 14:1-11 (Covenant Mennonite Church, Winkler, MB)

Peoria Mennonite Fellowship in Peoria Illinois was a small but quickly growing and vibrant Mennonite church. They met Sunday evenings renting use of the sanctuary of the local Episcopal (or Anglican) church. The building was in an older and increasingly lower-economic area of the city. While this Mennonite Fellowship was growing and full of life, the Episcopal church was shrinking and aging, and finally the diocese decided to close the church. These two congregations had a strong relationship sharing worship a few Sundays each year, and the Episcopal Diocese offered to sell the old church structure to the Mennonite Fellowship for $1. The Fellowship knew the place needed some updates, and maintenance would be ongoing but were thrilled at all the new possibilities a large facility could provide them, so they purchased the church. They had several visioning meetings about how they could make use of the space. There were dreams for an after-school drop in center for the local children, creating a free-store with donated items and food, providing office space for some non-profits working in their community. They had all sorts of ideas of how this space could be a center for justice and community making.

One day a long-time member and retired music professor met with the pastor over coffee and told him how excited he was about the new place and all the opportunities, and then said he would like to donate $350,000 for the purchase and installation of a beautiful new pipe organ. He could also arrange for organists to play.

 All these dreams of serving the community and now $350,00 – for a pipe organ. What should the church do?

We will return to them, but now let’s turn to our text. Our text tells us two stories. At the beginning and end it is the story of people in the shadows, scheming for ways to end Jesus’ life, and in the middle a story we hear of anointing, and people’s response.

Beginning with the beginning of our text. We are two days before the Passover. Two days before the celebration of God passing over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and killing the first-born sons of all the Egyptians. Two days before retelling this story; two days before celebrating God sparing their life, the religious leaders are plotting to take a life. In John’s version of this story (and a version of this story appears in all four Gospels) the Sanhedrin, or Jewish leaders want Jesus dead, so that he doesn’t cause a disturbance and Rome doesn’t take their power away. The life and ministry of Jesus was a threat to their tenuous power and stability. And we know that when we get to the end of our text these leaders are one step closer to carrying out their plans.

In the Gospel of John’s version, Caiaphas, the high priest says that it is better that one man die than the whole nation. The end goal of maintaining political their power justifies the means of the death of one man. “Peace” by any means necessary. Martin Luther King Jr. said, however “Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.” Peace by means of death is no peace.

But that scene now falls into the background and next we find Jesus in the house of a leper – violating all sorts of laws of cleanliness. Another example from Jesus’ life of moving from exclusion in towards inclusion. And it’s noteworthy that in the middle of a very stressful week, Jesus is visiting and dining with outcasts.

And as they sit there, a woman with an alabaster jar of “very costly ointment” shows up. A few weeks back we heard Rita’s wonderful reflection on this woman from the Luke text, but our Mark text has some significant differences. She anoints his head, and not his feet as in Luke, and in Luke nothing is mentioned of the value of the perfume in her bottle. But here in Mark we are told it is expensive perfume, and we soon hear more details of its value. And after this act of anointing, of devotion and deep love, some present at the meal are indignant and ask “Why was this oil wasted in this way?”

Why was this oil wasted this way? Through this act this woman demonstrates her deep devotion and extravagant love for this Jesus, and these people, and I think we can safely assume these people are men, look at this act of devotion and see nothing but waste. This act serves no useful purpose. The cost benefit ratio of this act is absolutely zero. Then they comment – “it could have sold for more than a year’s wages”. She was busy anointing Jesus in love and they were busy figuring out the market value of a jar of nard. Her worship was surely not as valuable as more than a year’s wages. And think of all the good and noble things they could have done with that money. (I have to think this expression of concern for the poor comes across as a little bit of convenient, self-righteous piety compared to this wasteful and thoughtless woman. I wonder if in their hearts they were thinking of other, less noble ways to spend that money.)

“And they rebuked her harshly.” They shamed her. Shaming this foolish woman who just wasn’t thinking logically. This woman was just squandering her resources. This is a ridiculous woman.

Now let’s stop this story for a bit. Place yourselves in the shoes of the disciples. How would you have felt seeing this extravagant and expensive act? Whether out loud or in your heart wouldn’t we be thinking about all the better and more just and useful ways we could spend that money? Isn’t this Less with More and not More With Less? Would we be thinking about all the poor you could feed? I’m guessing we would.

But Jesus rebukes the men just as he rebuked them when they attempted to keep the children from him. Jesus states “She has done a beautiful thing for me.” These guys saw poor economic decision making, and Jesus saw beauty. A beauty that had no price. Where Jesus saw love they saw economic value that could be turned into charity.

And I love Jesus simple statement “She did what she could.” You disciples are sitting in judgement and she is doing what she could. What she could do is worship and love Jesus and prepare Jesus for his death. And she did it in the most beautiful way. Like Jesus’ reply to Martha “There is need of only one true thing, and this unnamed woman has chosen the better part.”

This kind of anointing that Jesus received was typically reserved for the crowning of a king, and for preparing a body for burial. In this act the unnamed woman accomplished both purposes.

And where the men wanted to shame and dismiss her as being counter to the good work of Jesus, Jesus in turn praises her and say that the story of her and what she has done will be an essential part of hearing the good news for all the years to come. This act of reckless, wasteful love would be central to the proclamation of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is like expensive perfume running down your hair and face.

And after this scene where this woman comes into the house and comes toward Jesus, Judas in turn, leaves Jesus and leaves the house to bring us back to our opening scene of leaders plotting Jesus’ death. Judas goes to the chief priests and offers to betray Jesus. And here too, just like worship had a price, so to betrayal has a price – and betraying Jesus brings 30 pieces of silver. Wikipedia tells me that was about 4 months of pay. Far less than that bottle of perfume cost.

These scenes of assigning economic value to acts of worship and acts of betrayal portrays some of the violence of this text. In this text love, worship, beauty, betrayal, life all can be bought and sold for a price. And the market says that extravagant expressions of love and devotion just aren’t worth that much, beauty isn’t worth that much, life isn’t worth that much, but chief priest and scribes holding onto power is worth a whole an awful lot – at least to the chief priests and scribes.

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Sometimes I’m concerned about the language I hear about immigration in Canada. In conversations about immigration, I often feel like immigrants are seen as a commodity we need to keep the machines of Canadian capitalism running. We need bodies that can work in our factories to make more widgets, and then buy the widgets, and then pay our taxes, and increase profit margins. We need the economic values of immigrant labour to prop up our economy. This is a horribly misplaced value. It’s like looking at your young child and calculating how many hours of free labour you will be able to extract from her. Human life is not a commodity.

In this text moving toward Jesus is love, and moving away from Jesus is death. In this text we see the powerful plot death, while the powerless worship, love, and anoint a new king. In this text the violence of heartless, economic values finds its opposite in beauty and extravagant worship.

Jesus’ rebukes putting a price on love and beauty. The value of these things are far beyond any market capitalist price. Beauty and worship and life cannot be bought and sold. They are all gift.

Christ emptied himself and came among us to demonstrate to us of the immeasurable value of each person: the lepers, the unnamed women, and even the chief priests. How can we but join with this woman and worship such a Christ.

And so I guess I should return to our Peoria Mennonite Fellowship – they had received this expensive and extravagant offer of a pipe organ when their focus had been directed to serving their community. What do you suppose they did?

I have no idea, I made it all up. Personally, I hope they accepted and celebrated the pipe organ, and were deeply moved in worship   by the beautiful sounds echoing and resonating throughout their new church building as they blessed the food for the homeless.

Looking for Jesus in all the wrong places - Ascension Day Sermon

Acts 1:6-14

I used to work at a large library. It was Michigan’s state government and history library. It was four stories tall with hundreds of thousands of items in its collections, books, periodicals, government documents, maps, microfiche. I supervised our student workers and one of their jobs was shelving books. This also meant they looked for missing materials. When they just could not find the missing piece they came to report this to me. My common, if cheesy response to them was “If you don’t find it where it belongs, you look for it where it doesn’t belong.” I had a bit of a knack for intuiting where these wrong places might be.

It's easier to find something if you know what it is you are looking for. Imagine playing Where’s Waldo if you have no idea what Waldo looks like. Where would you begin to look?

In our Acts text we find the disciples staring up into the sky. Looking for something that wasn’t there. This is the same direction which Jesus just departed from them. Jesus was taken up into the sky. I recently saw an ancient painting of the disciples looking up and all that was visible at the top of the painting were Jesus’ pierced feet.

I can imagine the levels of confusion these disciples were dealing with at this moment. “Just a little while ago he died, and when we looked at the tomb, he wasn’t there, and then he just showed up. And now up he goes into the sky. Poof. And he’s gone again. So is this just another short term thing? Really, what on earth is going on anymore. I’m soo confused.”

And while they were staring up into the sky two white robed men appeared and asked “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

White robed guys asking questions about an absent Jesus was starting to be a pattern. Remember back in Luke when the women went to the tomb to look for the body of Jesus, and again our white robed guys appear and ask “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”

Every time they look for a missing Jesus these guys show up and say “Nope, not here. Not in the grave, not in the sky.”

So then, where do we look for Jesus? Where do we expect to find Jesus? How do you even know if we’ve spotted him? These disciples who had spent 3 years with Jesus were still looking for him and were quite puzzled about his absence.

Much earlier in his life, Mary and Joseph went looking for the young Jesus, who was not where they expected him to be. They returned to Jerusalem and found him in the temple talking with the religious leaders. This is not where you expect to find a 12-yr old boy. The women coming to the tomb looking for the body of Jesus did not find him where or how they expected. The Pharisees often found Jesus in places they didn’t expect him to be, with tax collectors and sinners.

The messiah even appeared as a baby in a stable born to a young virgin. This is not where or how we expect to find the messiah.

The opening verses of our Acts text begins with the disciples asking Jesus “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They were still thinking that the Jesus they were looking for was a political leader. Jesus was right in front of them, but they couldn’t quite find him.

Once again, where do we look for Jesus? Where do we expect to find Jesus? How will we even know when we’ve spotted him?

Finding the divine in unexpected places is not unique to the New Testament. God’s presence in the Old Testament, the First Testament often comes in unexpected forms.

From 1 Kings 19
God said to Elija, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13 When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’

God was not in the powerful acts of great winds, of splitting mountains, of earthquakes, fires. Not in these “acts of God” but in the sound of sheer silence did Elijah hear God’s voice. In silence Elijah found God.

From Exodus 3
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ 4When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ 5Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ 6He said further, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Moses found God in a fiery bush. Moses wasn’t looking for God, and when he saw the burning bush he didn’t think “Oh look, there’s God.” I’m intrigued that Moses, turned aside to see the bush. This turning aside reminds me of Jesus’s call to metanoia, to repent, to turn around, to change one’s mind.

One key difference between these two stories of Elijah and Moses, and our New Testament stories of disciples is that while the disciples were looking for Jesus, Elijah and Moses were not out looking for God. Elijah was fleeing and asking that his life be ended and Moses was just out tending his flocks. These people weren’t looking for God, but God revealed God’s self to them.

Maybe our efforts at looking for Jesus, looking for God are misdirected. Maybe we are looking for Jesus in the wrong places. We’ve learned from the white-robed men that we won’t find him looking down among the dead, and we won’t find him looking up into some way beyond. Maybe we are even fooling ourselves thinking we can find Jesus.

Is Jesus, Is God there to be found like a lost coin? Will shining a light and sweeping all our corners lead us to find Jesus? Or is Jesus more inclined to just show up and be found, in a locked upper room, in a Garden by an empty tomb, at a table breaking bread in Emmaus? Does God, out of God’s own generous will simply reveal God’s self to us? Is it perhaps not on account of our looking that we “find” God. Christopher Columbus did not “find” the new world. Perhaps we do not “find” God. Perhaps we are found by God. Perhaps God reveals God’s self to open hearts ready to receive.

Or maybe it is both. Maybe our seeking is necessary. Maybe’s God revealing God’s self is necessary. Maybe finding and being found, maybe seeking and being sought, maybe these together are an essential to our relationship with God.

Just before my meditation we sang one of my favored hymns. The first verse reads “I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew he moved my soul to seek him seeking me. It was not I that found, O Saviour true, no, I was found of thee.” That verse pretty much summarizes what I have to say.

Both God and us seek and are sought. We both find and are found. We are completely separate from, and intimately one with God. There is a mutuality of desire and action between us and God. The kingdom is now and not yet.

If part of our call is to be found by God, how do we do that? How do we open ourselves to be found by the one we are seeking? How can we be good soil ready to receive the seed of God’s word? If we had problems with the question of where do we find Jesus, I think the question of how do we be found by Jesus is even more challenging. How do we prepare our hearts to receive the one we seek? How do we allow, and assent to God’s presence within us.

The final sentence in our Acts passage offers an important clue to answering this challenge of seeking God, and preparing our hearts to be found by God. After the ascension when the disciples had reconvened in Jerusalem, the verse reads “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.”

As fun as it is to make fun of the disciples for sometimes seeming clueless about what was going on, they show some deep wisdom here. They have learned that Jesus is not to be found among the dead and Jesus is not to be found in some far off home in the sky. They might not have completely figured out how to find Jesus, but in gathering together to spend time in prayer and reflection the disciples were opening their hearts in the direction of God and becoming attuned to God’s presence already among them.

As Jesus seemed absent, the disciples reconvened as a community of prayer. Perhaps they did this to try to regain the intimacy and immediacy of Jesus’ physical presence that had been with them. Perhaps they learned by Jesus’ example of repeatedly going off to pray. Perhaps they couldn’t imagine connection with God, without connections with each other.

In this gathered community of prayer the disciples, and ultimately us, continue the practice of seeking and being sought, of finding and being found. In this community of prayer we prepare our hearts to receive God in ways we might never have imagined possible. Together in prayer we till and nourish the soil to be ready for the divine seed of God’s word.

The call to be a community of prayer is not a call to withdraw from the world, but in this community of prayer we develop an awareness to be attuned to God’s presence in the world. While the outpouring of the holy spirit in Pentecost has not yet arrived, the disciples gathering in prayer are preparing themselves to receive God in these tongues of flame, and be empowered to bring the presence and power of God to all the world.

Where do we look to find Jesus? Gathered in the prayerful community, in a mutual relationship of seeking and being sought, Christ opens our eyes so that we may find Jesus wherever we look.