Lent V, Year C, 2007; St. Stephen Episcopal; Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton
Freeing the Future from the Tomb of the Past; the Resurrection of Our Faith
All our readings today speak powerfully of leaving old beliefs behind. Old ways of being and
thinking, once revered traditions, everything formerly thought to be important and necessary for
righteousness and faith are shown to amount to nothing and be of no use whatsoever in light of
what God creates anew.
Through the prophet Isaiah, the Lord says, “Do not remember the former things or consider the
things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth.” From the social and cultural
upheaval that is the Exodus from Egypt, the ancient Israelites created totally new ways of relating
to God and one another through the innovation of the Law. God showed the people a new way,
creating a path where none thought a path could be made, a path across the sea separating an old
way of life from a new way of life. Through water, they emerged into new life.
In his letter written to the Christian community in Philippi, Paul – a paragon of the Law abiding and
faithful Hebrew tradition created by the Exodus event – considers all of that, all that made him
formally righteous, to be as rubbish. “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what
lies ahead,” Paul comes to regard all that has gone before as loss, “because of the surpassing
value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
Just as God created a new way for the followers of Moses, God again creates a new way for the
followers of Jesus. The path through the water is the way of Baptism, separating old ways of life
from a new life in Christ. The God who makes all things new, again revisions the human
relationship with the Divine through the innovation of intimate love, making it possible for the
human and God to connect in the human world through a mutual love of God’s son. Through the
fulfillment of Divine love, we are re-created as children and heirs of the work and promise of the
Kingdom of God. Through water, we emerge into new life.
Finally, in the story from John’s Gospel the images of death and new life to come are found in the
resurrection of Lazarus and in the anointing of Jesus by Mary, the sister of Lazarus. At the
beginning of his ministry, Jesus is baptized by his cousin John and so leaves a safe and familiar
way of life behind and begins his ministry by going first into the wilderness. In this story, Jesus is
anointed by Mary marking Jesus’ departure from what has been his earthly life and journey into
the immortality of people’s hearts, wherein – he says – is the Kingdom of Heaven.
As an experience for Christians of God on Earth, Jesus does everything with passion. He loves
the people, all the people, passionately. He loves the poor, the oppressed and those
marginalized by society and religion. He loves the high and the low, but he crosses the
boundaries of every taboo to get closer to the real life and needs of the people. He challenges
traditions, Law and all the social norms of Hebrew and Roman culture that keep people apart
economically, socially and theologically. He teaches anyone who will hear him, and he heals the
sick of every kind, whether they are poor or wealthy, Hebrew or gentile, old or young, male or
female; he loves them all and reaches out to them all, inviting them all into relationship with him,
into a different kind of relationship with God.
But in this story, when Jesus draws nearer to Jerusalem even though there are threats on his life,
we see Jesus loving the family of Lazarus in a way that is different from the way he has loved
those in need, or the people of Israel, or his family of origin or even his other disciples. In the
reading we hear today from John, we begin to understand that Jesus loves this family very much,
very tenderly and very protectively.
When Lazarus dies, we have the shortest sentence in the Bible: Jesus wept. He shows great
respect and focus to Martha and Mary in his visit and condolences on Lazarus's death. He
resurrects Lazarus from the tomb, crossing over even the taboos associated with death rituals so
that Lazarus can be restored to life in his community and with his family.
Six days before the Passover, Jesus goes to Bethany where Lazarus lives with his sisters Martha
and Mary. It is the Passover season, in the springtime. Bethany is two miles from Jerusalem near
to the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane. The story in John is set on Saturday night,
after the end of the Sabbath from Friday-evening to Saturday evening, and they are breaking their
Sabbath fast with dinner as served by Martha. Scholars suggest that it was at their
house that Jesus and his disciples lodged, when he returned from Jerusalem to Bethany every
evening of the last week of his life (the week he begins with this reading). The last week of his
life is spent with these people, with this family that he loves, and it begins with his own anointing.
The tradition of the anointing of Jesus is reworked in each Gospel for different ends. In John the
woman anointing Jesus is identified as Mary, sister to Lazarus. She is a faithful woman of some
financial means. In Luke, the woman who anoints Jesus and dries his feet with her hair is a sinner
(Luke 7:36-50). In Mark and Matthew she anoints Jesus’ head. Mark’s tradition suggests
recognition of Jesus’ royalty, anointing him as the messiah which becomes a major theme in the
passion narrative: Jesus dies as King of the Jews. John and Luke have the feet anointed, but in
Luke the woman wipes away tears; in John she wipes the oil. In Matthew the disciples object. In
Mark those people present object. In Luke, Simon the Pharisee objects. In John it is Judas who
objects.
But the real focus in John’s version of this story is Mary. She is a person expressing and
responding to great love and acceptance. Her actions and intimacy with Jesus in this moment
convey the vulnerability that is essential and necessary to living life from a place of passion.
Mary becomes the model of selfless action and of unyielding commitment and love for Jesus and
so for God. In the common Scriptural source for Mark and John, Jesus is ultimately abandon by
his inner circle of male friends; in the end it is only a few women who are left standing near
Golgotha, their comparative lack of worth in the eyes of Hebrew and Roman culture protecting
them from being considered equally as followers or leaders (and therefore potential
insurrectionists) as the men.
The position represented by Mary is not one of humility since she is already in lesser social
position; rather, it is Jesus who humbly and gratefully receives her ministrations. The love
between them is shown here as profoundly mutual, and it denotes the same intimacy of love that
God extends to all that we are invited to know through our love for Christ. In a few days time after
this story, Jesus willingly chooses a different social standing than the privileged one he has
known as a free Roman male citizen when he washes his disciples’ feet. But just as with this story
of Mary, the focus should not be understood to be Jesus being humble or humbling himself but as
Jesus showing profound and intimate love for his friends. He closes every distance, social and
theological, between the human and the Divine; it is the ultimate relational barrier he crosses, the
one imposed by human limitation in understanding God’s immediate presence to us. Nothing can
keep us from the mercy and love of God, not even death.
As a hospital and hospice chaplain, I have been privileged to be present at the time of many
deaths. As with birth, death is a personal and intimate event. If we have the opportunity, we can
care for our loved ones as they prepare to die. We stroke their foreheads, rub their hands and
feet, bathe them one last time and rub their skin with lotion or oil. Touching someone as s/he
prepares to die is a sign of the love, compassion and intimacy that continues to connect us even
beyond death. The relationship does not die, it just changes. But the love never does.
As disciples we are called to live life passionately, in ways that challenge what would oppress the
beauty and joy of life and seize the courage from our hearts. We are called to confront what would
be death dealing to us and to others and instead live from actions and messages of compassion.
From the stories of the Exodus and from the Gospels, we know that our focus should be on the
future that God would make new in our understanding and in our reality for all people.
Just as flowers must take a new shape from that of the seeds or bulbs from which they spring, so
must the future of the Kingdom of God take new shape from the forms of the past. Sometimes
what we must companion in a dying process are our own old ways of being. Sometimes, we must
leave our own old lives behind, former communities and families. Sometimes we must forsake the
traditions and beliefs that would keep us in a place of shame instead of accepting responsibility
for our lives, that would capture us in tombs of despair instead of beckoning us forward into days
of hope, and that would place any void between us and God, any distance within humanity.
Mary does not only anoint Jesus in preparation for his death. She anoints him also in recognition
of the healing and renewal that his resurrection means to the future of the faith community. With
her anointing of Jesus, we become something new; the Body of Christ passing from death into
life, from what we have known into what we have yet to imagine, in the infinite heart of God.