4-7-19 Readings & Sermon

We will read Psalm 126 by the half verse as indicated by the asterisk.

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dreamed.

Then was our mouth filled with laughter.

And our tongue with shouts of joy.

Then they said among the nations, The Lord has done great things together.

The Lord has done great things for us.

And we are glad indeed.

Restore our fortunes, O Lord.

Like the water horses with man.

Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.

Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come and shall bring their sheets.

A reading from Isaiah.

They lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched, like a wick.

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.

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.

The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I will 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.

The word of the Lord.

Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews as to the law, a Pharisee as to zeal, a persecutor of the church as a righteousness under the law, blameless.

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as a loss because of Christ.

More than that, I regard everything as a loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.

Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through the faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own beloved.

I do not consider that I have made it my own, but this one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.

I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus, the word of the Lord.

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

There they gave a dinner for him.

Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair.

The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, the one who was about to betray him, said, Why was this perfume not sold for 300 denare and the money given to the poor?

Now he said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief.

He kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.

Jesus said, Leave her alone.

She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.

You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.

The word of the Lord.

So last week we heard the overplayed parable of the prodigal son.

And if you were with me for the Lent and Quiet Day, you would have heard me say that the father in that parable practiced the art of offensive love.

And when I say offensive, I mean what he did most likely caused great offense to many people.

What he did to the younger son caused great offense to the older son.

And I'm sure many people in the community were shocked by that love and mercy that he showed to his younger son, that they would have been offensive.

Offended, excuse me.

And I suggest that today we are once again hearing another example of offensive love.

I mean, Judas was offended, and if we're perfectly honest, we would probably too question the spending of a year's wage on some oil to be put on someone's feet.

Putting Judas's attentions aside, we would think surely that money could have been used to pay for those who have no food, could have been providing shelter for those that don't have a home, vocational training for those that need work, education for those who are uneducated.

Surely that money could have been used for something else.

And so it was offensive.

But I suggest that acts of love are often offensive.

They go beyond our standards of morals and ethics to something greater and more complete.

And this act of love that we experience today as Mary anoints Jesus' feet is also offensive in other ways.

That aroma, I'm sure, was a bit much.

If we're talking a whole jar, and we hear how it just overwhelmed the house.

Before the jar was broken, I'm sure there was this nice pleasant smell of Middle Eastern spices wafting in the room from the hospitality that Martha was offering.

But now the senses are being overwhelmed by this nard.

Then there's the offensive touching of the feet.

I'm pretty sure Jesus' feet were not well pedicured.

They were dust covered, calloused.

I don't know about Jesus, but I would have had a hard time letting someone touch my feet.

I have a hard time going to get a pedicure, to pay someone to touch my feet, because as a runner, my feet are nasty.

So I don't want someone to touch my feet.

I don't want to receive love in such a way.

And so that must have seemed offensive.

And then there's this oil being used, an oil that was most likely usually reserved for special occasions.

And here we are at a simple meal, having dinner with our friends and our family, and this oil is being used at inappropriate timing.

A king is not being anointed, or so we think, in that moment.

His burial is only being foreshadowed.

So offended by inappropriate use of this oil.

And then there's the hair.

And I think this is a key point.

For an Israelite woman at this time, hair was seen as the symbol for a woman's glory, for a woman's self-worth and self-respect.

And so in that moment, she could be saying, I put my self-worth at your feet, Jesus.

Or it could be that she is, in fact, in that moment, offering her very best to Jesus.

Not only the very best of her financial offerings, but the very best of all of who she is, mind, body, and spirit.

She's using this as an offensive way to love on Jesus.

And Jesus receives love in this gospel narrative we have today from Martha, who we can't underestimate the importance of the hospitality that she is offering and how love is seen in that.

But then also in Mary in the anointing of feet.

And it might be suggested that Jesus, being human as well as God, in this moment is in need of love.

And I don't know, when I first heard that idea, I was offended.

For Jesus is God.

How does Jesus need love?

God doesn't need love, God is beyond that.

But I think in this moment, Jesus needs love.

And what's cool about this story is that a week later, Jesus takes what Mary did in this moment and mirrors it when just a couple chapters later in this Gospel of John, instead of hearing about the communion, we hear about how Jesus tied a towel around his waist, took the role of servant, and washed the feet of the disciples.

So, in a sense, Mary taught Jesus how to love in this moment.

Again, could feel offensive, but I think it's beautiful.

And so, if Jesus needs love, how much more do we who are fully human need love?

But how often do things get in the way of us being open to receiving love?

Going back to last week's story of the prodigal son, one more time, don't forget the older son.

The son was not able to receive the love that his father so freely offered him.

And I think it's probably because he was so busy trying to be the perfect older son.

There were rules in place of what his responsibilities were supposed to be, how he was supposed to take care of the family's property, and now, since the younger son ditched him, he had twice the amount of work to do.

He was so busy with the law and the responsibilities that he couldn't receive the love of his father.

Similarly, we hear that in Paul's language today when we read the Philippians passage.

Paul was so caught up in the Hebrew laws, so caught up in trying to be the perfect Israelite, that he lost sight of the love of God.

And it wasn't until he had that Damascus Road experience where his world was flipped upside down, where he had new vision, that he was able to put law aside and receive God's love.

For Judas in this narrative, Judas clearly also has trouble, maybe an understatement, has trouble receiving the love of Jesus.

Whether it's because he was greedy in this moment, or more likely, I think because he had an ungodly worldview of who Jesus as Messiah was meant to be.

Judas was too busy trying to put Jesus in his little box of who Messiah was, too busy working in that rubric to actually have Jesus break that box wide open and reveal who he as Jesus as God really is.

Judas wasn't able to receive that love.

So what holds us back today from receiving love?

Is it pride?

Do we think that admitting that we need love is a sign of weakness?

Is it insecurity?

Do we think that we're not worthy of love?

Or is it fear?

Fear that if we are open to receiving love, that it will be painfully taken away from us.

What holds us back from receiving love?

The lyrics in Nature Boy, a song first sung by Nat King Cole and then later adopted into one of my favorite movies, Moulin Rouge, is the line: The greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.

And there are times in our lives that it may feel easier to love someone else than it is to allow someone to love us.

But I would suggest that truly, to really be in a loving relationship, to really love someone else, by the nature of what love is, you need to be open to receiving it.

For love is a reciprocal, mutual thing.

And so, first off, how do we love God?

Mary is showing us an example of how to love God in this moment, but how do we do it?

I think part of it is by coming here on a Sunday morning, by participating in worship and prayer, by allowing our lives to continually be turned towards God and the life that God desires for us to live.

But we can't do something like Mary did.

We don't have Jesus physically present with us today.

We cannot break oil on Jesus' feet.

So how can we actively love Jesus?

We can't break oil.

Or can we?

And they're like, When did we do that?

And equally he says to the goats, you visited me in prison, you fed me when I was hungry.

And the sheep are like, When did we do that?

And his response to all of this is, When you have done this to the least of these, you have done this to me.

Which implies that today, for us to love on Jesus as Mary loved on Jesus in this story, we are to love on our neighbors.

We are to love on those who are poor, those who are pressed and marginalized, those who are the outcasts of this world.

And for some of you to think, okay, I've heard that before, but wait, but Jesus in this passage says, you will always have the poor with you.

How does that work out?

I don't know about you, but I've heard that line being used as an excuse why we actually aren't really to bother caring about the poor.

It's inevitable, the poor will always be there.

Why should we bother?

And I'm sure most of you innately know that that is false, but it's hard to make sense of it.

Now, some of you probably already know this, but when Jesus is saying that, he is quoting Deuteronomy, and he's quoting this longer part of this passage that talks about the reality of life is that people will experiencing experience circumstances that will inevitably put them in a poor position.

And that is part of reality.

And a part of your job as an Israelite community is to always take care of them.

And so there are examples about how we are to make sure that an indentured servant has a limited period of time, how we are supposed to forgive debts and return land to the original owners again after a set period of time, so that the poor don't perpetually remain poor, and so that as a community we care for one another, no matter what our circumstances are.

And what's interesting is this line that Jesus says, when it's translated into the Greek, it can be translated then into English in two ways, because the Greek word, the verb, is actually an imperative.

And so it actually can maybe say, keep the poor with you.

Keep the poor near you.

So instead of saying the poor will always be with you, it's saying, keep them close so you can take care of them.

And that reminds me of this phrase I once heard.

To know the poor, I'm sorry, this phrase is that you say you care about the poor, then tell me their name.

Again, you say you care about the poor, then tell me their name.

And I would suggest that unless you're keeping the poor close to you, you're not gonna know their names very likely.

And this was something I personally came to realize recently.

Large seasons of my life, I have put myself in positions where I got to know a lot of people who were living on the fringes of society.

But since moving here to Houston, that has not naturally been my reality.

And so I didn't know the names of the poor in Houston.

And I didn't realize that until I began to know the name of a boy who's in first grade, studying at McQuerter, and I got to know that his parents are first generation, or sorry, he's first generation, his parents are immigrants, new to this country.

And this boy is struggling with math, just hasn't clicked yet.

This boy reads at a fast level, but his comprehension is just not there yet.

And the reason why I know his name is because I have taken the opportunity to start tutoring him once a week for 45 minutes, and that's why I get to know his name.

And more importantly, I get to love on him.

And again, this last weekend I got to know the names of a family of a single mom and her three beautiful young women and their cat.

Their cat named Pork Chop.

I renamed him bacon because I prefer bacon over pork chops, but you know, that's okay.

And they had found themselves homeless and were living in their van until their van was repossessed.

And so they were living out in the back porch of Family Promise one night.

On a Friday morning, they were found hoping that they could get into Family Promise.

And Family Promise, you're required to go through paperwork and background uh search just to make sure that we're not putting other families at risk when they're being housed together, which meant there was going to be a few days before they could enter into Family Promise, which would provide them shelter and help them to get back on their feet.

So for the weekend, they were put up into a hotel, but this hotel didn't allow pets.

And so I got the privilege of practicing offensive love by ignoring my rental agreement.

Sorry if anyone is here from the falls, by ignoring my rental agreement and having a cat for the weekend, so I could love on that family and they could be at peace knowing that their furry family member was being taken care of.

And I tell you these two stories of how I got to know names of some individuals, not to congratulate myself or pat myself on the back, but to point out that sometimes it takes us putting ourselves in the line of fire, in the line of those who are poor before we get to know their names and before we get to really love on them offensively.

And while things like contributing finances are important and necessary for ministries like Family Promise, it takes those relationships, those that are working on the ground, to actually bring that transformative love to those people's lives so that they can experience change.

And what I've discovered when I have known the names and been in relationships with others is as much as I am loving on them, they have the opportunity to love on me.

And if I'm truthful with you, I will admit that I need love.

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.

So go ahead.

Love offensively and be open and willing to receive love in return.