Sermon: “Mary and Her Love.”
I don’t know how to love him, what to do, how to move him……”
These beautiful lines and haunting lyrics are from the famous rock musical. “Jesus Christ Superstar” is a rock musical from the early 1970’s. The lyrics written by Tim Rice and the music by Andrew Loyd Webber.
We are just one week from the beginning of our Easter Week. And this time always reminds me to listen or watch the wonderful moving Musical again. I vividly remember the first time I listened to the original album. At the home of one of my best friends in high school in 1981. Anne Maren was a pastor’s kid, and she was even more the youngest of 6 children. So, she was introduced to a lot of music by her older siblings mixed with religious and cultural reflection by her parents. One night in the old parsonage we listened to the album on a scratchy record player. And even if I loved the title song: Jesus Christ Superstar… it was the haunting strange love song that moved me. Recorded in one take at Olympic Studios in June 1970, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" has been universally acclaimed as the high point of the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack since the release.
Listening to it brings me back to the dark living room at the old parsonage with my friends, but it also brings so many questions and reflections on love, how to love – and how love can change you.
“I don’t know how to love him,
what to do, how to move him.
I’ve been changed, yes really changed.
In these past few days when I’ve seen myself,
I seem like someone else.”
In the musical, after her encounter with Jesus, Mary Magdalene sings this haunting song … I don’t know how to love him…. The lyrics do make a thought-provoking point: That Mary might have been in love with the man Jesu, but even more that we are at a loss to know the right way to love our Lord, the son of God, Jesus Christ.
Six days before the Passover, the Jewish Easter, Jesus attended a dinner at the home of his best friends. Which makes this text so fitting for this Sunday, just one week from Palm Sunday.
Six days before the Passover, Jesus attended a dinner at the home of his best friends.
Martha was serving.
Lazarus was reclining at the table with Jesus. Lazarus who had been raised miraculously and called back from the dead.
So, Jesus was visiting the home of his beloved friends Marhta, Lazarus and Mary.
And Mary, who often chose the good part of listening, instead of doing chores, came to the table with a pound of extremely expensive myrrh, an anointing and burial ointment, a fragrant perfume.
This Mary is not the same as Mary Magdalene, singing her song in Jesus Christ Superstar. But Mary, Marthas sister, might also have hummed like Mary Magdalene: I don’t know how to love him… I don’t know how to show my love and faith in him… I don’t know how to thank him for everything he has done for me… I don’t know how to repay him for his miraculous touch and healing.
Mary expressed her love and faith with this action of love and extravagance. It was customary to anoint the body of the deceased prior to burial, as the women do in the Gospel. But Mary enacted a spontaneous conflation of these rituals. Her rite is moving. It is lavish. Intimate and sensual. She took the costly perfume and anointed Jesus’ feet, wiping them with her hair. The house fills with the fragrance of perfume.
We might imagine how the dinner would proceed: the light would be dimmed, the oil lamps would glow, the wine would flow, like the tears mixed with laughter. The diners, the friends and the followers of Christ would listen to him one more time. Nourished by his words. Filled with his presence. Blessed by his love. An evening to remember.
A week before Passover, they knew danger was looming, that the hours were few to share, that the moments were sacred few.
I do think that Mary’s spontaneous beautiful, creative ritual act did just for a moment change the tone of the evening. It was a meal, a dinner, a time that sustained and soothed all of them.
However, Judas disrupted that peace, faith, hope, and love. Criticizing her extravagant rite. What a waste! He shouts. Why… we could have sold the perfume and given the money to the poor.
Yes, Judas, we know the voice and the concern. Why waste expenses on a ritual, on a church, on wine and bread for communion, on beautiful new floors and soft cushions, on tender pastoral care, when we could have directed the money to the needy, the poor, the homeless, the hungry?
But these kinds of human calculations and stingy refusals of expenses for moments of liturgy, ritual, generous fellowship, or places for mourning or rejoicing, - based on a guilty self-righteous mind - do not cancel out our care for the poor. It is not either or. It is both.
Our rituals, our celebrations, our dinners, our sustained care for the other does never cancel each other out in God’s accounting. In God’s economy comfort is always an offer. Love and grace are free.
Mary made her calculations. She lavished love and grace on Jesus when she had the chance. She did not know how to love him, but showed her love and faith, if not in lavish love.
The readings today are paired with images of God making rivers bubble up in the desert, turning tears into joy and forming a people made to praise.
So, Jesus commended Mary’s spontaneous love enacted in the moment. Mary had learned something sitting at his feet for hours, listening, learning and reflecting.
That God spares nothing in loving us and asks us to spare nothing in loving each other. Her acts exceed words as good rituals do. We know that from Baptism and communion.
It is a week before Easter Celebration begin. With the joyous Palm Sunday, with the moving Maundy Thursday dinner, with the dark long Good Friday and with the joyous jubilant Easter morning.
With Mary’s extravagant action and gracious love, we prepare for Easter. We know the story. We are Easter people. We too have been sitting listening to the teachings of Jesus: love God with all your heart, strength, mind and soul, love your neighbor as yourself, treat others as you would like to be treated, be the light and salt of the world, do not be afraid, pray, believe, hope.
So, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet. This is how she showed him how much she loved him.
Isn’t it interesting that in the very next chapter in John Jesus is washing the feet of his disciples, giving them an example of how they are to serve one another in love. This passage is telling us that there is real connection between worshipping Jesus and serving Jesus; between loving God and loving our neighbor as well.
“You will always have the poor with you, ‘ is kind of a wake-up call to all of us to love, to serve, to give thanks to Jesus, showing how much we love him, by serving the poor, the lonely, the outcast, the sick, the hungry and the homeless.
Our world and our time need a wake-up call like that – as our world and time increasingly is a world of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots.’ And the ‘haves’ are not sharing much.
As it says in Matthew: I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.’
All Mary wanted was to show hos much she loved Jesus. We are told that after Mary poured the perfume on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair that ‘the house was filled with the fragrance.’
A fragrance of love, devotion, of giving, of believing in Jesus. We too, as Christians, believers and Easter people, are called to fill the entire world with this fragrance. We too are to show Jesus how much we love him by giving, serving and being doers in the world. So the question just a week before Easter is: Do we know how to love him?
Amen.
. Prayer Reflection (inspired by John 12)
Mary moved to the table,
holding the precious ointment,
her eyes meeting and holding.
the gaze of the One preparing to die.
Mary fell to her knees.
and broke open her treasure,
massaging the fragrant oil into his feet,
and wiping them with her hair.
Mary kept her eyes on his,
as a collective sigh arose,
followed by a bitter criticism,
an attempt to disqualify her action.
Mary’s tense shoulders relaxed.
at his words “Leave her alone”:
Defended by Jesus
she could take on the whole world.
Jesus, friend and defender,
may we who remember her story,
be emboldened to live.
with sensuality, courage and passion. Amen.