Sermon 4-6-25

Sermon 4-6-25 5 Lent C John 12:1-8

I come from a very large family. My Dad had twelve brothers and sisters. On Sundays and holidays when everyone showed up for the noon meal we ate in four shifts.

The adult men ate first, then the teenage boys, the younger kids and lastly the women. There was no rhyme or reason for this set up, it was just the way it had always been. No one complained or suggested a different method. My grandmother and a couple of the middle girls did the serving, probably because there wasn't enough room for anyone else in the kitchen around the table.

Our Gospel reading today is about a meal Jesus attended at the home of Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary in Bethany. The dining arrangements were similar to the one I just described in my own family except, it looks like Martha is the only one serving the men.

There would have been room for another server, Mary comes into the room during the meal. She just chose not to help with serving the food, sisters can be different from one another. She chose to serve something other than food.

Do not make the mistake of thinking this was a quick, spur of the moment backyard Bar-B-Que. Lazarus would not have run into Jesus on the street and said, “Hey, come on over to the trailer and I'll throw some pork burgers on the grill”. In that time an place you only invited your social equals to a meal.

Yes, Jesus had just raised Lazarus from the dead after he had been in the tomb for four days. The gospels lead us to believe that Jesus was a friend of the family. He had been to their home on other occasions. If someone raised me from the dead I would not bat an eye about inviting him over to the trailer and cooking a big meal, friend or stranger. I've done so for lesser reasons.

We know Lazarus and Jesus were on about the same social rung of the ladder. We don't know what Lazarus did for a living, but we know Jesus was an artisan, a carpenter. When the Jews came into the promised land they were all assigned a piece of land. If for some reason they lost that land to debt, taxes or something else, they would have worked the land as share croppers for the new owner.

If for some reason the share cropper position failed, they were driven from their ancestral land and the more industrious would eventually become self employed as artisans such as carpenters some where else. We all know carpenters who have done well in life, some better than others.

I contacted my friend at the Internal Revenue Service, but He couldn't find any financial records for Jesus. Scripture tells us Jesus hailed from Nazareth and His ancestors were from Bethlehem. Some bible scholars suggest at some point in history Joseph or his ancestry might have followed that path of employment.

Lazarus was healed enough that his younger sister could afford three hundred denarii for a bottle of pure nard, about a year's wages for a laborer. I'm nearly certain Mary didn't work nights at the Hucks down the street, she would have relied on Lazarus, a dowry or an inheritance for that kind of money.

Versions of this story are in all four of the Gospels. The Synoptic Gospel versions are a little different than the one we have here. The Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke were pretty obviously not written by anyone who was an eye witness to what happened here. John, however, could have easily been in the room, easily been sitting at the very table in which this episode occurred.

The synoptic authors would have retold this story from what they had heard from other people. John's version would have been written from what he had seen with his own eyes. Perhaps that is why he is the only one who mentions Judas by name. Even sixty years later John would have still had a bad taste in his mouth just thinking about Judas.

Anointing a dinner guest with perfume was not an unheard of act. In fact it was a cultural expectation, a custom. But, the customary perfume would not have been nard. Nard was used mostly for burial rituals and was super expensive, as I mentioned earlier. Only royalty and the very wealthy could afford nard.

Remember just a few days ago Mary's own brother was dead in his grave. I wonder if she had nard to anoint Lazarus? Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial”. I think this might have been her only vial.

Mary didn't seem to want to help serve the first shift of dinner guests with her sister. Though we do not know her family's last name, I can guarantee her last name was not Shuler.

But, she did serve one of the guests. Served Him with something extra special.

After the raising of Lazarus everyone on the street knew the chief priests had put a price on Jesus' head. He had even gone into semi-hiding. It was Mary who had planned for the inevitable. It was Mary only who anointed the body of Jesus, a week before it was actually needed.

Amen.