Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

The Reverend Paul DeLain Allick, St. George’s Episcopal Church, March 21, 2010

Today in the Gospel of John we see one of the first Church fights. You know the fights we have: how do we spend our money, how do we pursue our mission, what is the most important item on the agenda.

The community is gathered around Jesus. There is Judas who is in charge of the bank account. Martha as usual is busy serving and not really seeing or hearing what Jesus is up to. There are the other apostles eating and drinking. Lazarus whom Jesus has raised from the dead is probably still a little stunned. And there is Mary, Martha’s sister, the one who hangs on every word that Jesus utters.

Mary decides to anoint Jesus’ feet. She loves him so much that she wipes his feet with her hair. Judas becomes annoyed. He thinks that the community’s money is being wasted on this costly ointment. Jesus is always going on and on about the poor. Shouldn’t that money be spent on them? Judas is later of accused of thievery but that could a later invention. He may very well have seen the hypocrisy of spending that money on something that wasn’t needed.

Jesus shoots back at Judas, “Leave her alone. She bought this ointment for my burial. The issues of poverty and injustice are always going to exist; there is something more important going on right now.”

Mary wins the argument. She has been paying close enough attention to Jesus’ teachings that among all the financial concerns and all of the serving and cleaning up Mary knows what really matters. She knows that at the heart of Jesus’ message is death and resurrection. She saw it with her own brother when Jesus resurrected him.

This story reminds us of one in the Gospel according to Luke. Martha is complaining that Mary is just sitting around while she does all of the work. Jesus tells Martha, ” Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; Mary has chosen to focus on the one thing that matters.” (Luke 10:38-42)

The one thing that matters to us as Christian community is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At the core of everything that is going on within the faith community and out in our everyday lives is the kingdom that Jesus is preaching. In the death and resurrection of Christ we learn again that even though this life is full of suffering and death there is always hope. God will always do a new thing. We are eternal beings and when we get that, when we start living as if we were eternal, then the kingdom begins to take shape within us and among us.

This past Wednesday at our Catechism Class we were studying the section on the “The Church.” In that discussion we learned that the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other. We learned that the Church pursues that mission through the ministry of all its members. We pursue that mission as we pray and worship, proclaim the Gospel, and work toward peace, justice and love.

The revelation that I received from that discussion was that at the core of pursuing our mission is the proclamation of the Gospel. Our prayer and worship life will deepen and take on greater significance when we keep the Gospel at the core of our being. Our efforts to pursue peace, justice and love will be strengthened by our kingdom infused worship and prayer.

Our mission is hindered by, as we prayed in our collect, our unruly wills and affections. We need God’s grace to love what He commands and promises. We are distracted by the “swift and varied changes of  the world.” If we want our hearts to be fixed where true joys are to be found then we should follow the example of Mary of Bethany.

In the effort to place the Gospel at the core of our hearts and our communal life we are going to suffer loss. We are going to lose pieces of our wills. And some things that we feel the most affection for will be replaced by other concerns.

But the loss of our own unruly wills and affections will be worth it. Our temporal concerns will be replaced with the joyous life of eternity. As St. Paul writes to the Church in Philippi, “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.”

When we surrender our wills to God and to each other, we experience a kind of crucifixion. And we know that in Christ, if we are really doing it for that reason, we will experience a resurrection.

As we prepare for Easter, the Paschal Feast, I challenge each of us to find out where in our lives our unruly wills and affections are causing us grief or grief for others. Let them go. Die to them. Get ready for the resurrection that is to come.