Sermon
3-25-18 – Palm Sunday Year B
Mark 14:1-9 (The woman anoints Jesus at the home of Simon the Leper in Bethany)
Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our
lord and savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Sometimes the right music
helps to get me into the right mindset. And nothing quite gets me in the mood
for Holy Week… than Jesus Christ Superstar. If you know that musical, you are already
hearing that epic guitar riff at the start (Yes, I did make the guitar noises) … but it’s not Jesus
or even Peter who sings first…it’s Judas. The show starts on the eve of Jesus’
triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Judas begins to question the direction of this
whole Jesus movement. Judas sees the direction that this was all likely to go –
downhill fast, likely resulting in a clash with the powers-that-be: a clash
that they will almost certainly LOSE. Judas sees the writing on the wall, and
sing, “Listen, Jesus, do you care for your race? Don't you see we must keep in
our place? We are occupied! Have you forgotten how put down we are? I am
frightened by the crowd, for we are getting much too loud. And they'll crush us
if we go too far.”
If you think about it, Judas gets all the best songs in
Jesus Christ Superstar. In fact, in most musicals I can think of, the
“villains” get some of the best songs. The same goes for that smash hit “new”
show Hamilton… Alexander Hamilton’s nemesis Aaron Burr sings all my favorite
songs. Aaron Burr longs to be where the action is - inside the room
where the decisions get made, privy to information that Hamilton knows, and he does not.
Burr laments, “…. No one really knows how the game is played, the art of the
trade, How the sausage gets made…. Dark as a tomb where it happens…. I
gotta be in the room where it happens!”
Despite getting some of the most memorable songs, both
Judas in JC Superstar and Aaron Burr either missed out on where the action was,
or was in the middle of the action and didn’t understand the significance of
what was happening. We have been able to be draw in on both counts. Even though
we are over two thousand years removed from the events written about Jesus,
every year we get a front row seat as we enact and remember the story
again. During Holy Week, WE get to be in
the room where it all happens.
This is Holy Week, the week where it happens. A week where
time stretches out, where we spend a lot of time in and out of rooms - in the upper room, in the home of the high
priest, in and out of rooms with Pontius Pilate… we’ll get to be in rooms where
a whole LOT happens.
But HERE is where things really get going….in Bethany, away
from the crowds, off to the side in the suburbs of Jerusalem, so to speak … here
is the room where Holy Week really kicks off, as Jesus eats with his disciples
behind closed doors at the home of Simon the Leper.
As usual, Jesus is always hanging out with people on the
margins – and today is no exception, as he visits the home of a man who is
known for having a terrible disfiguring skin disease. Suddenly, A woman
enters the room with a jar full of nard, an expensive perfume made plants that
grow far away, in the mountains of China. Somehow, she had a whole jar full, in
a lovely alabaster container. We don’t know who she was, or where she got this
jar, or how she bought it, but what she carried contained the equivalent of nearly
a year’s worth of wages for a typical day laborer. In today’s cash, that’s some
fifteen-thousand-dollar perfume she’s got there.
She doesn’t just crack it open a bit and dribble a little
on Jesus’s brow. No, she busts it open and upends the whole thing on
Jesus. Everyone at this gathering was understandably shocked to see this.
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| Artist He Qi |
No, they were more than shocked. They were indignant.
Think about how many cows or chickens could be bought from ELCA Good Gifts!
Think about how many meals for Aid for Friends this money could make, or meals
for Soup and Sandwich, or Code Blue! Why waste this generosity in just one
person? Even if he WAS the messiah?
And they were right – this woman COULD have done all
kinds wonderful things with the money from the perfume. But in their anger,
they all completely overlooked what she did do. She helped
Jesus get ready for Holy Week. She anointed him as king… and anointed his body
for burial.
Just a few minutes ago we heard the crowds welcome Jesus
into town in a parade, shouting their excitement that the return of the reign
of KING David was at hand. A reign that they expected would right the wrongs of
the Roman oppression they have suffered. Had this woman heard about the parade?
Was she anointing Jesus as this kind
of king? Or did she have some inkling that, once the crowds realized that Jesus
was NOT this kind of king, they would be persuaded to turn on him, and hand him
over to humiliation and death?
Jesus knew that he was not being anointed for his coming glory, as his ancestor David had
been. For Jesus, there would be no coronation ceremony. This was it, this was the
room where it started happening – a meal in a small room, a kind woman, a
jar of perfume, and a group of angry people completely missing the significance
of what she had done for him.
There was no way this woman could have known the full
extent of what Jesus would face in the coming days in and out of all those
rooms - that Jesus would be betrayed and handed over by Judas, denied by
another, abandoned by the rest…. falsely accused and slandered, tried in the
middle of the night under false pretenses, given an expedited death sentence….
beaten, mocked, and finally killed as a common criminal.
That is what is on the horizon for Jesus in the coming
week. But, that day in Simon’s house, that woman gave Jesus the last bit of
human kindness he would receive before the cross. This woman will be remembered
forever, Jesus says. And so, she is, here in Mark’s account, though we don’t
even know her name.
But…. At least she got to be in the room where it happened.
Over the course of the next few days, WE are going to get
to be inside a lot of rooms where the salvation of the world happens.
We will be in the upper room with Jesus and the twelve
disciples, - including Judas, eating one last meal with him. We will hear the
words that Jesus first said to them, that this bread is his body and the cup of
wine is his blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. We will
hear Jesus reveal that one of them will betray Jesus, the dismay of the
disciples…. While hours later knowing that they all abandon Jesus at the first
sign of trouble.
We get to be in the room where Jesus is questioned by the
high priests and the Judeans who sold themselves to the Roman empire for power
and influence. We hear Jesus face unfair charges … and if we strain our hears,
we can just make out the voice of Peter just outside the gate, denying Jesus for
the third time as a rooster crows.
We will be there in the room as Jesus faced Pontius
Pilate, to be subjected to more unfair accusations and questions. We are in the
room when Pilate interrogates Jesus. We are in the room where Jesus’
humiliation happens, where he is mocked, and a crowd cries “Crucify him!” a
criminal is released instead.
After this, we leave all rooms behind, and go instead to
a cross on a hill, where Jesus died, looking like a failed king, with only
weeping women to mourn him.
But like all these rooms we find ourselves in this week,
the tomb is not where the story ends. Like the rooms where things happen…. A
BIG thing is about to happen in this tomb… it’s not going to stay empty for
long.
But before resurrection comes death. Before dawn, the night rules. Before
victory comes betrayal and rejection. Before Easter, we walk through Holy Week.
Which, honestly, feels more than a little familiar to us.
As Aaron Burr rightly sings, outside the room where
things happen, “We dream of a brand-new start—But we dream in the dark for the
most part. Dark as a tomb where it happens…”
But until it happens… we … wait for it. We wait for the door of the tomb to open.
Because we know that it will.
Welcome to Holy Week, the week where it happens. Amen.
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