LENT 5-C – March 28, 2004

Last week at Rotary the gentleman who gave the Invocation began by telling this story. A woman was visiting a local art gallery and came to a picture that puzzled her. She could not determine what was being depicted. Fortunately for her, the artist who had painted the picture was standing right beside it. Not being the most tactful person in the world, she looked at him and asked, "What in God’s name is that?" "It’s supposed to be a mother and child," said the artist. The woman looked at him and asked sarcastically, "Then why isn’t it?" Beauty and art are not only in the eye of the beholder; one person’s antidote is another person’s poison, or so it seems.

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus was visiting with his friends Martha, Mary and their brother, Lazarus. In fact, the sisters were holding a dinner party for Jesus, perhaps not only to celebrate Lazarus’ being raised from the dead, but also to thank Jesus for his miraculous and wondrous deed in giving a dead man new life. Jesus’ disciples were there with him as well.

Sometime during the dinner Mary arose from her seat, took a jar of very costly perfume and with no fanfare poured the perfume on Jesus’ feet as a way on anointing them. And then, and then, much to everyone’s surprise, one would surmise, she proceeded to wipe his feet with her own hair. Reflecting on this event almost two thousand years later, one has to wonder what everyone at that dinner thought about what Mary had just done because certainly everyone did. Everyone did. Everyone had to have had an opinion even if each kept it to himself or herself.

Everyone, that is, except Judas. Judas watched as Mary anointed Jesus' feet. He knew how expensive that perfume was. He knew how much it cost. "What a waste!" Judas thought to himself. But Judas did not keep that thought to himself. He voiced that very opinion loudly enough for everyone in that room to hear. But Jesus being Jesus did not scold him. Jesus simply, calmly, explained the situation. Jesus saw justified extravagance. Judas only saw waste.

Obviously Judas not understand Mary’s act. But even if he did, he thought it to be too extravagant. She did not have to use all the perfume, did she? An ounce or two would have been more than enough. But, no, she had to use it all. What a waste! But Judas had no sense of what was happening. All he saw were dollar signs, money wasted and better spent somewhere else. The money certainly could have been given to the poor. Even if Judas believed Jesus’ body needed to be anointed, he certainly did not think it should have been so anointed. Mary did what she did simply out of love. And her love knew no bonds. Judas simply did not get it.

Sometimes neither do we. Sometimes we see what others are doing and wonder why in the world they are doing it. We judge their actions without ever understanding the internal motivation for those actions. All we know is that we would not do what they are doing, certainly not in the way they are doing, perhaps not to the degree they are doing it. To make matters worse, instead of simply keeping our mouths shut, we openly criticize their actions. Then to make it even worse for ourselves, like Judas, we get taken to task for both not understanding what is happening and for butting in on someone else’s personal business. Of course, when the shoe is on the other foot, we become indignant when another dares to criticize our actions and/or the motives for our actions.

Why Mary acted the way she did, only she knew. Perhaps no one else could understand her actions. In fact, no one could. And it would have been useless for her to try to explain why she did what she did. No one would have understood anyway. There is an old Indian adage that says we need to walk two miles in another’s moccasins before we can understand that person. But, of course, we cannot. We can never walk in another person’s shoes nor can another walk in ours.

Why each of us does what each of us does is so very, very personal. What is even truer is that nothing we ever do is spur-of-the-moment. Oh, it may seem that way, like both Mary’s anointing of Jesus feet and then the wiping of those feet with her own hair. Perhaps what she did was planned, but I seriously doubt it. Yet even our sudden reactions to a situation are the result of a lifetime of acting, thinking, reflecting, and believing. Mary’s act of love did not come out of the blue. Again, even if it seemed such, it did not. It was a response to whatever had gone on before in her life, to whatever Jesus had done for her, to whomever he was for her. Again, whether or not she had planned ahead of time to anoint him, that anointing was a loving response to everything that came before.

So, too, in our own lives. There are times when it seems that we are responding spontaneously to a situation. Someone criticizes something we have said or done. She walks up to us and says she does not like our painting. Or someone hears our answer to a question and immediately voices his disagreement with our opinion. We’re driving down the road and come upon someone in need. Whatever response we make to whatever the situation does not come out of the blue. We have been preparing ourselves for it for quite a while. If asked to explain, we could not, just as Mary could not, just as those whom we are tempted to criticize could not. And even when we try to explain, those who have not walked in our sandals cannot understand why we make the choices we do or why we feel the way we do. Sometimes we can’t even explain to ourselves why we do what we do.

Gerald Sittser is an acquaintance of mine and is a professor at Whitworth College in Spokane . Several years ago he was driving the van in which his wife, his mother and one of his daughters were all killed in a traffic accident by a drunk driver. In his book, A Grace Disguised, he tells about his pain and struggle, his rage and grief, his deep and abiding sense of loss. But he also speaks of his deepening faith.

He says this: "Yet the grief I feel is sweet as well as bitter. I have a sorrowful soul; yet I wake up every morning joyful, eager for what the new day will bring. Never have I felt as much pain as I have in the last three years; yet never have I experienced as much pleasure in simply being alive and living an ordinary life. Never have I felt so broken, yet never have I been so whole."

Try as we might, no one of us can ever understand exactly what Sittser is saying. We have not walked in his moccasins. Nor would we want to. God forbid that we ever would! Sittser has struggled to see beauty in ugliness, to sense an antidote while everyone else would see and feel poison running through their veins. But Sittser did not come to that ability, that grace, suddenly. It came through a lifetime of struggling to live out his life of faith as best he could in a very confusing and uncertain world – or, to use the words of this morning’s Collect: "among the swift and varied changes of this world."

Life in this world is difficult. It is fraught with uncertainty and confusion compounded by our own sins and the sins of others. What we do not need to do, what we should not do, as I mentioned last week, is be like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, or be like Judas in today’s Gospel. We must not rush to judgment about another’s actions or motives or even the other person’s faith. We have not walked in his moccasins, his shoes. All we can do, must do, is try to understand why we do what we do and discover that the grace of God is at work in our own lives as we walk in our own shoes.

As Sittser discovered amid much pain and grief, the grace of God was at work even in that unthinkable tragedy. He did not sense it or feel it or see it at first. It was, as he said, a grace disguised. But God’s grace was there as he walked his road. The most you and I can do at times, when confronted with events we cannot understand, is to try to sense and try to look for the grace of God that is somehow, somewhere present.

This will not always come easily, as it did not for Sittser, not in this life anyway. And it may not come at all, as it seems it did not, tragically, for Judas. But when it does, then and only then will we begin to see the beauty in the ugliness, the grace and love in the seeming waste, and, like Mary, like Gerry Sittser, see the presence of God among the confusion and uncertainty that so often surrounds us. As Sittser says, the grace of God is often disguised, but it is never absent. It is there somewhere. And when we discover it, even in the midst of what we do not understand, even in pain and suffering, we find life itself, even life in abundance.