Can Lent be Relevant?

Good Morning!  Grace and peace to all of you this 5^th Sunday in the Lenten Season.  Now, I don’t know about all of you but 5 weeks into anything I tend to get pretty philosophical.  Whether its five weeks into a diet or 5 weeks into an exercise routine, we all begin to ask those really deep, introspective questions like  “My God, what did I get myself into?,” and, “Why in heaven’s name am I even doing this?”  Lent, it seems, isn’t really all that different. 

                We all know the rules for Lent, right?  It is a season within the church year that we are supposed to give something up for God, or if we’re feeling particularly medieval we end up lining our Friday meals with fish, but Lent just isn’t something we Protestants tend to do very well.  I think we don’t do it very well because we don’t really understand it.  As a people who tried like the dickens to get away from Roman Catholic tradition, I think Lent ends up being treated like crazy uncle Lew at those family holiday dinners – we all knows he’s there, he only shows up once a year, and we figure if we just ignore him long enough maybe he’ll finally go away.

                As far as church seasons go, I’ll admit it doesn’t have the rock star appeal of either Christmas or Easter, but that doesn’t mean Lent doesn’t have something very meaningful to bestow on now.  Traditionally, Lent is meant to represent the 40 days that Jesus was in the wilderness.  It is a time meant for reflection, of looking deeply inward, and learning to do without so we learn to rely on God.  But you may still ask me, “All that’s fine, Keven, but as you pointed out at the beginning I don’t know why I am doing this and quite frankly year after year, Lent has had no bearing on my life at all, save to make church services more depressing for about a month.  What is Lent’s relevancy for today?

The answer to that, oddly enough, is found within our gospel story.  John tells us that six days before the Jewish Passover Jesus has returned to the house of Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead.  Now that event was of special Jewish significance.  As modern readers of the ancient text we often miss the more subtle hints…no, not subtle, because they aren’t - The more silent hints at Jesus’ Divinity.  In the first century, it was believed that Leprosy was so terrible, so thoroughly deplorable a disease that only God could remove it.  So when our gospel writers have Jesus heal lepers, what are they saying?  When our gospel writers show that Jesus has complete mastery over nature, calming its chaos with but a word – what are they saying?  In the same manner, Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead had special Jewish significance because God alone had that power, and now He was coming over for dinner.

Can you imagine?  I mean what do you do?  What food do you put on?  What serving wear do you set out?  Not only is God coming over for an extended brunch, but He’s coming after giving you a gift that literally no ever gets.  After getting your brother back from being four days dead, do you bring out your finest grilled cheese?  I mean, what do you do?  The reality is we would all do exactly what they did – pretend it’s normal.  I love how true to life this story is.  There’s Lazarus just hanging at the table with guys, pretending like nothing’s happened.  Martha’s in the kitchen as she always is, drowning out the awkwardness of the situation with the dishes, but Mary…Mary doesn’t.  Overwhelmed by everything that has gone on, overwhelmed by the gift of her brother back, overwhelmed by the radical forgiveness and love involved in giving that gift to a thoroughly unworthy and sinful family, Mary is the only one who reacts properly.  She brings out the most expensive thing in their house and she takes on the role of a servant, wiping Jesus’ feet with her own hair.  She opens the bottle of perfume and pours it on Jesus’ feet; wiping off the grime, the dirt, the many miles of Judean countryside in this one shocking act of humility.  With every pass over his feet, as her hair becomes caked with the dust of every mile that Jesus walked she is saying, I know who you are, and the dirt of this world does not belong on you.  I am the dirty one, thoroughly unworthy of the tremendous gift that you are given.  I am grateful. 

Yes, out of love, out of tremendous gratitude for having her brother returned to her, Mary shocks everyone in the house and breaks every … possible… Jewish taboo.  A lady of the house acting like a servant, doing the very worst of servant jobs, using expensive perfume rather than olive oil, and daring to even touch a man in a culture that did everything to keep them separate.  But out of the entire family, Mary is the only one who believes that God is to be valued more than custom.  Like any other shocking act, however, it tends to bring out people’s very worst.  When something happens that is sudden and, yes, even offensive, we aren’t given the opportunity to think, to keep up our normal appearance.  All we can do is react and so we see a window into everyone’s soul.  What lurks hidden beneath the surface becomes seen, and a person’s true character is revealed.  

It is here that Judas, the disciple who was about to betray Jesus, speaks.  And of course, of all the things that he would complain about it is about the money.  He does not protest Mary’s actions because she is taking on a task unworthy of her station; he is not objecting that Mary, a woman, is touching a man who is not her husband.  A person’s obsessions are often their undoing, and Judas’ eyes are on the very expensive bottle of perfume…watching as Mary first brings it out and reacting as its seal is broken and its contents wasted when olive oil would have sufficed.  It is this that Judas disputes, it is over this that his ire is raised – a glimpse into his true character that only now, years later, does our gospel writer mourn that he did not see.

John remembers how Judas objected that this expensive object wasn’t sold and given to the poor, but John, as he so often does in his gospel, tells his audience the truth in hindsight.  John says that in the end Judas did not really care about the poor.  He was a thief, obsessed with monetary gain, and  he used to steal from the common purse.  Judas, the namesake of Judah, not only the name born by the faithful kingdom of Israel but also the name of the honest brother amongst Jacob’s sons.  Judas learned that because of his namesake people would trust him.  He knew how to hide behind it, cover up his sin, and John speaks bitterly as a man who fell for it for years.

Now it must be remembered the risk that Mary is taking in doing this; that cannot be overlooked.  Their households are not ours, and it cannot be ignored that Mary has placed herself substantially in harm’s way by doing this.  Judas has rebuked Mary, and in that time and place when a male guest rebukes a female it is the man of houses duty to discipline her.  Women who performed such acts were regularly beaten for doing such things.  Hospitality was a matter of great importance in those days, and if it took punishing a servant or a sister to satisfy a guest, especially a deeply honored one like Jesus and his disciples, the men of the house did not hesitate to do it.  But before anybody can act, Jesus speaks.  Rather than address Mary’s behavior in any way, he calls out his own disciple for his lack of compassion.  “Leave her alone,” Jesus says, “she bought this perfume for the day of my burial, a practice that women regularly participate in.  You have the poor always Judas, but you do not always have me.”  In one swift stroke Jesus not only rebukes Judas but he also saves Mary, showing Lazarus he is not offended by her actions.  But there is something else going on here, something a reader needs to pay special attention to notice.  Whereas the other gospels have Jesus speaking in the future tense when describing this scene, John has Jesus speaking in the present.  Notice that Jesus does not say, “You will always have the poor”, “you will not always have me”, but rather Jesus says that right now you have the poor, Judas, but right now you do not have me.  You have chosen your obsession over me, my disciple; you have willingly chosen that which chains you down over your own Salvation.  Many claim that Jesus is foreshadowing his upcoming death, but that is not all that Jesus is doing here.  He is also giving Judas a dire warning.  Do not think your motives are hidden from me, Judas.  The others here are fooled by you, but I am not.  Everyone here has their sin, but the difference is you love yours and it is going to get you into dire, dire trouble.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason for Lent.  That is why the Church sets aside 40 days every year and asks us to take a hard look at ourselves, to take real and practical steps to not just see our sin but to show our Savior that we want to be free of them.  The Church does this because in her ancient wisdom she realizes any one of us can be the next Judas.  Any one of us can learn to hide our true selves from our brothers and sisters; to nurture our obsessions and learn to love our chains more than we love the God who wants to set us free. 

Sin has been described as spiritual insanity, a state of the human heart that desires the cancer more than the chemo, the love of the sickness to the point that we reject being well.  The Church knows we all suffer from this condition, and it knows it is difficult, but to prevent us from being the next Judas and suffering his terrible fate it recommends we do everything the disciples didn’t – that we enter a time of ugly reflection and that give up the things that chain us down.  Most people think Lent is about misguided notions of purity. I think if the Hebrew Scriptures teach us anything it is that chasing after purity is a fool’s errand - it is God who makes us pure.  Lent is not about getting to Easter as a purified human being.  Lent is about showing my God upon the day of His Resurrection that I have shed the chains that He died to rid me of.  Just like Mary’s Perfume, Lent is my paltry gift to God in response to all that God has done for me.  It is a chance to show the Divine that I do not value my obsessions more than I value Him.

And so now I must ask you, as the elected parish minister of this congregation, what are your obsessions?  What are the things that chain you down that you don’t want to be rid of?  Are you like Judas, do you obsess over money?  Are you afraid of not having enough or do you feel shame at not being able to pay your bills?  Turn those fears over to God, money will never make those fears go away.  Are you like Martha?  Do you obsess over your work?  Do you find that you can avoid awkward social situations by just going off and doing something?  Turn those anxieties over to God, turn them over before all you have is your work and no one to share them with.  Are you like Lazarus?  Do you obsess over propriety?  Do you value acting normal so you don’t feel embarrassed, pretending like nothing has happened so you don’t have to feel you owe somebody something?  Turn them over to God, turn them over before your obsession with propriety turns you into an ingrate, demeaning each and every gift you are given.  Don’t be like those people, don’t be chained down by obsession and fears.  Be like Mary, turn your worries, your fears, and your brokenness over to God.   Be like Mary, Be free.