|
Love in Action vs Talk in Distraction
- by Leonard Tay Six days before Passover Jesus went back to Bethany, where he had raised Lazarus from death. A meal had been prepared for Jesus. Martha was doing the serving, and Lazarus himself was there. Mary took a very expensive bottle of perfume and poured it on Jesus' feet. She wiped them with her hair, and the sweet smell of the perfume filled the house. A disciple named Judas Iscariot was there. He was the one who was going to betray Jesus, and he asked, "Why wasn't this perfume sold for three hundred silver coins and the money given to the poor?" Judas did not really care about the poor. He asked this because he carried the moneybag and sometimes would steal from it. Jesus replied, "Leave her alone! She has kept this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor with you, but you won't always have me." John 12:1-8 I will be speaking mainly from the text in John Chapter 12. Here we find Jesus at the house of Martha and Mary. And once again Mary is the cause of some tension and conflict between Jesus and someone else. The other time it was Mary who was sitting at Jesus’ feet while Martha complained that she was doing all the work and Mary should come and help her. (Luke 10:38-42) This time round, we find Mary again at the feet of Jesus, and once again in the centre of controversy. The account we read this morning is also contained in Matthew 26:6ff and Mark 14:1ff. In these two accounts, the chronological setting appears different but it seems that Matthew and Mark are giving the account not according to chronological order but as a way to contrast the hatred of the Jewish leaders. John gives us the timetable. It was the Saturday before Passover. It was after dusk meaning work could once again be done . . .the Sabbath was over. Martha, Lazarus' sister was in the kitchen. . . as usual. Lazarus and the other men were out at the table eating and enjoying each other's company. After this night, things would happen really fast. The next day, Jesus would march into Jerusalem among the cheers of the crowd but facing the hostility of the rulers of Jerusalem. In fact they were so determined to stop his increasing popularity that they were willing to take extreme measures. So extreme were these measures that in a week’s time. . . Jesus would be dead. In this setting our story unfolds. Mary’s Act Let us look at what Mary did to cause such a commotion. Mary was at the position of Jesus’ feet. This time though she was not content just to sit quietly and listen, but took an expensive bottle of perfume and poured it onto Jesus’ feet. She goes on to wipe his feet with her hair, with the smell of perfume permeating the entire house. Mary’s actions can perhaps be described as impractical, and wasteful. Maybe more than a little shameful. She was after all acting so brazen with her very act of showing love to our Lord Jesus right in front of company. And that company included men. This type of public display would be frowned upon even in our modern society today, let alone a male-dominated Jewish culture of the past. Mary was hardly being prim and proper. Mary did not seem to know her place. Mary did not seem to know how to behave in public. Not to mention that she also blew away a year’s salary on the bottle of perfume, which was emptied in just a few seconds. So why did not Jesus admonish her for doing something so silly, after all Jesus constantly admonished Peter for doing and saying stupid things? Instead why did Jesus commend her actions? In front of everyone else no less? Let me try and offer a few reasons why Mary actions are still commendable today. And why there are precious lessons to be learnt. Lessons about how we deal with one another in the sphere of human relationships. Don’t wait to show love, the chance might not come around again. On March 7, 1876, a Mr Elisha Gray submitted his brilliant idea for a break-through invention to the U.S. Patent Office. The only problem was, a patent was given to another man with the same invention just a few hours earlier. Elisha Gray was a few hours late so we now remember Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone. Mary was not afraid to display her devotion to Jesus publicly, and then, just one week later, Jesus was dead. DEAD. I am sure many of you might have seen movies where a father or mother, or husband or wife, or son or daughter remained stoic and impassive. Keeping a stiff upper lip when faced with an opportunity to tell their loved ones “how much they mean to them”. And in the end, when their loved ones are suddenly taken from them through some Shakespearean act of human tragedy, they are faced with a lifetime of regret and remorse. When we are in regular contact with those we love, we tend to take their presence for granted. And sometimes we might think that we will always have the opportunity to tell them, or to show them our affection and our love. But just as Jesus says in verse 8 of John 12, “but you will not always have me.”, we too will not always have those who we cherish around us forever. The time to express love to those around us is now. The time to let down our guard and be vulnerable enough to show outward appreciation is now. Showing love is costly. Mary spent a year’s wages pouring Chanel No.5 onto Jesus’ feet. “It was worth a year’s wages” verse 5. Goes to show that love can and is, often costly. A few years ago, when I was doing demographic studies in order to spot trends in the Singapore property market, I calculated the cost it would take an average family to raise a child from conception to graduation. About half a million dollars per child. So if you have two kids, you are essentially in net present value dollar terms, a millionaire. And hey, I calculated this conservative figure without allowing for toys for the children, and if the kids get sick, only panadol, no doctor’s fees. And yet we are willing to invest so much in our children, and in our families, because we love them. However, to love Jesus… to love Jesus is even more costly. Not only in monetary terms, but also in terms of our time, our efforts in service, sometimes to the extent of giving up careers or a safe environment. Loving Jesus, and loving our neighbour means we sometimes are called to surrender our ambitions and our comfort zones. But let us remember how much Jesus himself gave up for us in the first place. Judas’ Reaction Next, Judas’ reaction to Mary. Judas objected to Mary’s extravagance. It was too wasteful, he said. The money would have been better served by donating it to the poor. All of Judas’ reasons seem very practical and rational to me. In fact, I think I can even see myself saying the very same words during PCC meetings, especially now that we really have to save money. However, I do not think that Jesus is trying to say that we should totally abandoned practicality and reasonableness in favour of foolhardiness. We read in verse 6 that Judas “did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper to the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.” And I think that there are two important points that is being reflected in Judas’ actions that we should guard against. Saying to sound good, without meaning it. In my previous, previous workplace, during our monthly department meetings, there would always be this guy presenting. I would be the first to admit that I could not stand him. He would present his little song and dance to management, and his presentation would be the epitome of reasonable, sound and logical thinking. I mean he knew all the right words, all the right management buzzwords and catchphrases that were popular at the time, during the late 1990s. He would say things like “yes sir, I agree that’s just substance over form” or something like “that’s right it would shorten our staff’s learning curve”. And all the while some of us knew that substance and form made no difference to him as long as he did not have to do more work. I am quite sure that in the course of working, some, if not most of us would have had the chance to meet someone like that. Someone who is so enthusiastic at trying to sound good in front of the boss, without caring about the merits or the concerns of the work at hand. Judas, by sounding like the pragmatic voice of reason, was attempting to take advantage of the opportunity presented by Mary to make himself sound good, in front of the rest, in front of Jesus. Judas was making use of Mary’s apparent like of propriety to bring himself up publicly, by putting Mary down. Sooner or later people will start to see through this type of charade, if we continue to say things that sound good, only to make ourselves look good. And after a while, we would not be fooling anyone else, except ourselves. Saying to sound good, in order to hide some self agenda. But what is worse, is if things are said to sound good, not only so that we look good, but so that we can hide some deeper self motivated agenda. A few years back, I was on a consulting team for a large office development. Anyway, we gave our assessment about the highest and best use of the site in question. Our proposal on how to configure the building such that it would be most attractive to the profiles of office tenants in Singapore. Our client, the land developer, had several executives on this project, and whenever we had a meeting, they were always bickering over some small issue or other. Well, during one of the meetings, the CEO came in. Just with his presence and eloquence, he managed to quietened down his own quarrelsome executives. And when he spoke to us, his own people and external consultants, he was really the mature voice of intelligence and profound wisdom. He sounded so good and really had me sold on his vision of how the building should be built. It seemed that with words alone he included our ideas together with the issues of his own staff and summarised it up beautifully to make everyone in the meeting happy. It was like magic. Some time after that, I read in the papers that this same man was convicted of using company funds for his own private use. And I can understand how he could easily do that. Because he was so fluent and poised, he could make anyone trust him implicitly. And in that position of trust he could get away with anything. Judas was trusted with the money bag. Judas made himself out to be the rational level headed financial advisor by putting Mary down. Judas also took from the money bag. And finally, Judas sold Jesus out for 30 pieces of silver. Let us not get caught in the situation of trying to sound politically attractive just so that we can hide, or facilitate some underlying self agenda, where we are the primary beneficiaries. Instead, we should emulate Mary who gave honestly, who gave sincerely. Tension between Mary’s actions and Judas’ reaction Having heard about both Mary’s actions and Judas’ reactions, it does seem like there is an obvious tension between the two. While we might admire Mary’s extravagant and noble act of devotion to our Lord Jesus, how many of us can say that at the very back of our minds we feel she was a bit impetuous without any sense of proper decorum in public? And how many of us would not frown on improper behaviour in one way or another, even though the motives might be genuine and idealistic? And while Judas is generally the bad guy in the passage that we have read today, the world in which we live in demands that we constantly have to be the voice of prudent wisdom as opposed to whimsical foolishness. The world in which we live in today sometimes demands that we sound good even if we don’t know what we are talking about. Management gurus have taught us that we have to present ourselves well, eloquently and logically if we want people to pay any kind of attention to us… if we want any kind of recognition in our society. Can you see the tension? The irony? The paradox? On one hand the passage of scripture that we have read today tells us of the need to be honest with our devotion to love, while on the other hand the conditioning of our socio-political environment tells us the opposite. That is, to be headstrong, to look and sound analytically articulate. How can we possibly find some form of balance in which to behave properly, and still be able to express love to our God and to our neighbour sincerely? How can we be rational without being manipulative or calculative? How can we be warm and sensitive to others, without being too weird that we make those around us uncomfortable? Conclusion Just like in the parable of the Good Samaritan, we too have to make a choice whenever we are dealing with others, with people around us. We can either be the priest or Levite who merely walked passed the injured man without stopping. To them stopping would have been improper, they would have defiled themselves in the eyes of the law, should they touch a dead corpse. And they couldn’t tell for sure whether the guy on the ground was dead or not… but he sure looked dead (Luke 10:25-37). Or we can choose to be the Samaritan. For the Samaritan doing good in love was more important than cultural prim and properness. I’ll be the first to admit that choosing to show love in our actions, especially when it goes against cultural barriers or social norms is difficult. But perhaps we can find some inspiration in the Apostle Paul’s words for our Epistle passage today. Philippians 3:12-13. “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers (and sisters), I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead.” So we try. And we will make mistakes along the way. But at least we continue trying. And maybe if enough of us try hard enough, despite our obvious shortcomings and imperfections, the world out there would realise that this is the light of the church of Jesus Christ. [Top] |
|
Church of the Ascension, 13
Francis Thomas Drive, Singapore 359339 |