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Twinbrook Baptist Church Rockville, MD 5th Sunday in Lent March 25, 2007 Pastor: Kip Ingram Kip@TwinbrookBaptist.com |
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Today is the last in a series of four messages on ”the role of women and motherhood in the ministry of Jesus.” We've looked at ”Jesus and the Mother Compassion of God,” growing out of the passage where Jesus looked out upon Jerusalem and longed to gather all the people together like a mother hen. We've looked at the gospel story where a woman bent low in sickness was enabled to stand up straight through the healing touch of Jesus, and through it we tried to acknowledge the voice of women in a dialogue sermon of ”He Said/She Said.” We've looked at the parable of the diligent woman and her lost coin as a picture of God's seeking out all of us who are ”Lost and Found.” And today we come to the gospel story of Mary, the sister of Lazarus, and of Jesus, who received a special gift from her. We start with the feet of Jesus. Maybe all of our ethics starts not with grand moral principles but with the feet, the tired human feet of others who have been dirtied by life's circumstances. Jesus had come to the home of Lazarus and Martha and Mary. He was reclining at the table with others, when all of a sudden Mary came in with a pound of costly perfume. It was expensive, worth about a year's salary, and Mary thought this was just the special occasion to break out the good stuff. She poured it out on Jesus' feet in an act of blessing and gratitude. And in a semi-scandalous gesture, she wiped the feet of Jesus with her hair. It was semi-scandalous because women in that time and society did not usually even show their hair in public, generally waiting until they were with their husband in the confines of their own home. As Mary finished her excessive gesture, the fragrance of perfume, the fragrance of what she had done, the fragrance of blessing filled the house. Like the very presence of God, you couldn't see it, couldn't measure it, but you knew it was real. However, Judas doesn't like what he smells, and he is ready to raise a stink. Was it the scent of a woman that bothered Judas? Or the whiff of money lost? Whatever his reasons, and we are told that they are not good, Judas does offer a biblical position against what Mary has done. The Jewish Law in Deut. 15:11 commands: ”Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, 'Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.'” Armed with this biblical command, Judas lays down the law with a statement that is more of an accusation and less of a question: ”Why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor?” Judas voices what sounds like a pious protest, and we've heard this kind of protest around Jesus before. Why is it in the gospels that whenever Jesus heals a woman or a woman does something significant that there is always someone there to offer a biblical protest? Remember the woman bent over in illness that Jesus healed? What happened next? Some religious types protested that Jesus was working by healing on the Sabbath. And in this story Judas responds to Mary's deeply personal gesture of gratitude and faith by saying that she has broken God's command to give to the poor. Well, Jesus responds to Judas by telling him to leave her alone because she has saved this perfume in recognition of his eventual death. The poor are going to be around, Jesus says, but she is giving it to me now because I won't be here for long. Jesus' statement was less about the poor and more about Mary and the reaction of Judas. In short, Jesus tells Judas that the present context made what Mary has done a good thing. You see, for Jesus, it is not just being biblical, it is how the Bible is used in relation to people and contexts. When biblical commands are used to exclude, in this case the ministry of a woman, then those who use them in such a way are anti-Christ. Many of you know that my alma mater, or I should now say, ”my alma pater,” was Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. I was there in the 90s when the fundamentalists took over the Southern Baptist Convention, and I saw a number of good professors harassed and pressured out of their jobs. So I wasn't too surprised to read that just this past year a female professor was fired there because of her gender. Dr. Sheri Klouda, who taught Hebrew at the seminary since 2002, was forced out last year because she was a woman teaching men. Southwestern trustee chairman Van McClain had explained that the seminary is taking the 'traditional' position that women should not teach men in theology or biblical languages and thus only men should instruct future pastors. McClain continued: ”That position is based on a Biblical verse in which the Apostle Paul says, 'I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man.'” It breaks my heart to see what has happened to my school, as religious types use biblical commands to discount the gifts of women. Yet I can almost hear Judas echo an "amen" as he asks: ”why don't we take that female professor's salary and give it to the poor?” He would even volunteer to oversee it all as treasurer! Judas tried to discount Mary's gift, but Jesus gladly received and honored and defended it. It's that gift that I want to pay attention to today. What does it mean to give a gift? For Mary, first of all, it was an costly gesture, with expensive perfume. Second, it was unexpected, coming as a surprise to everyone present. Third, it was not only unexpected, it carried no expectations. Mary doesn't seem to give in order to get something. She doesn't leave the price tag on the perfume bottle for Jesus to see. Consider this: if a gift carries any expectations with it, even for a thank you, then it ceases to become a gift and merely becomes an obligation, a debt to be repaid. The gift becomes overtaken by an emotional economy of exchange, with all the expectations surrounding it on both sides. Fourth, Mary's gift is also of herself, a kind of self-offering. All gifts say something about the giver, because every gift carries something of the giver's perspective and intention and effort and sacrifice. When you stop and think about, really think about it, a pure gift is a rare ideal that we desire but always find to be mixed with other motivations and feelings and expectations. Two Thursday nights ago, I was here at church in handbell practice when a young man in his early 20s named Andrew came into the church. We chatted for a moment, and sensing that he was inside to get out of the rain, I invited him to stay and dry off for awhile. As I began to focus again on handbells, I lost awareness of Andrew until after practice was over and choir rehearsal was about to begin. I found Andrew again sitting in the multi-purpose room. I tried to initiate some conversation with him and started to get bits and pieces of his situation, although he was vague and somewhat wary in his responses. It seems he had nowhere to go for the night, basically. He had spent the night at a friend's house the previous evening, but had been told he could not come back the next night. Before that he had stayed at a local shelter, but he was not very keen on going back. I brought him into the office as I tried to make several calls about some possibilities for him. Nothing panned out, mostly because it was getting on in the evening and most social service groups are available during the day. He made a comment about an empty McDonald's cup in the trash, and I soon found out that he had not eaten all day. By this time, I was turning possibilities over my mind. What could I do? What would I do? I invited him to get in the car with me so that I could take him to get something to eat. As we rode to McDonald's in Twinbrook, I continued to try to talk with him. I went over his options about staying at the shelter, about contacting any possible friend, about where he could go. When we got into the parking lot, I handed him $40. I told him that he could get something to eat, that he had enough money to ride the bus, ride the nearby metro or even call a taxi. I gave him the number at the church and invited him to call me the next day, promising that we would try to find more help. As I drove back to church by myself, I went over what happened and wondered if I did the right or best thing. And I have thought about it a few times since then. Was what I did a gift? Was it a mixed gesture of convenience? I don't know. In one sense I had to get back for some of choir rehearsal to go over some music choices I had made with the choir and director, or else our morning worship might suffer. And I did not know enough about this seemingly troubled young man to invite him home with me or with someone else in the church. I did give him enough money to provide some options, at least for the night. Yet in another sense, I honestly did not do everything that could have been done. So how much of a real, pure gift was it? Maybe the answer is not as important as keeping the question alive. Maybe the challenge of a gesture like Mary, of a life like Jesus, is to keep us asking the question about our gifts. How pure, how real, are they? No one has stated this issue more forcefully than John Caputo: ”The gift is our passion and our longing, what we desire, what drives us mad with desire, and what drives us on. That means we must keep watch over our gifts, which should be ways of exceeding and surpassing ourselves, emptying and divesting ourselves, lest they turn into something less . . . bits of self-[promoting] selfishness meant to show the other what we can do, self-serving presents . . . in which we are not giving to the other but making an exhibit of ourselves.” This is the challenge of paying attention to our gifts and ourselves, of desiring to share the pure gift experience, yet keeping the question of our gifts always open as we consider ourselves. I think one of the closest examples of a pure gift in 20th century literature can be found in Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. The child in a small southern town, Scout Finch, passes by an old tree with a knothole in it everyday. One day she notices something shiny in it, reaches up and discovers two pieces of chewing gum, which she takes home and enjoys. Thus begins a series of gifts which she discovers in the knothole of that old tree-two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, two shiny pennies. She has no idea who has put them there, and in a sense it doesn't matter to her enjoyment of the gifts. We only find out a long time later, at the end of the novel, that her mysterious and misunderstood neighbor, Boo Radley, has given these gifts to her and her brother. They come as a surprise, without expectation, without recognition of thanks, without a circle of exchange. In a sense, they are simply given, and that is what makes them priceless. Now, don't misunderstand, I am not saying that only anonymous gifts are pure gifts, although there is a joy in doing that sometimes. What I am saying is that gifts become less like gifts the more we attach certain intentions to them-expectations, recognitions, obligations. We need to have a certain lightness in the way we handle our gifts. When we give a gift with our right hand, our left hand should not know what we are doing, to quote Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. I started off by saying that perhaps ethics starts not with grand moral principles but with the feet, and I would add in conclusion, the feet and the gift that blesses them. Mary's gift came from a place of gratitude and love in her heart. Her gift of love was not about an economy of debt and payment. It came from a different place altogether. The apostle Paul would later mark this same difference between economy and love when he wrote: ”owe no one anything, except to love one another.” I think Mary would have understood and agreed. i.Taken from two articles: "Baptists Divided Over Female Professors Teaching Men," Associated Press, Jan. 21, 2007; "Female Professor Sues Seminary Over Dismissal," Christian Post Reporter, Mar. 11, 2007. ii.Taken from Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, edited and with commentary by John Caputo (New York: Fordham Universary Press, 1996). I am generally indebted to the major ongoing discussion in theological circles of the phenomenon of the gift, which is summarized in Robyn Horner, Rethinking God as Gift: Marion, Derrida and the Limits of Phenomenology (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001). |
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