History Healing

Sermon

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the daughter of your pastor emeritus, that Jim Moiso guy who’s listed on the back of the bulletin. I’m of the Westminster youth-group era where we played sardines in the creepy corners of the basement before it was remodeled, and we used the old service elevator as the entrance to our annual haunted house. My mom was in the choir, my sister was in the kids’ musicals, and all the Moiso kids went on mission trips. I was confirmed here. My grandparents’ memorial services were here. My ordination was here. My mom’s ashes are in the columbarium. I know Lindsey from the years we both lived in Nashville. And I know Deana Reed, who is giving the charge to the congregation today, from my seminary days in California. Deana also gave a charge at my ordination.

It’s great to be here with all of you.

I want to start today with a little refresher on Mary, because between now and Easter, there are going to be a lot of Marys. The woman in our text today, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who uses a lot of perfume on Jesus’ feet — that Mary is known as Mary of Bethany. Because she’s from Bethany.

But there are more Marys. According to John’s gospel, on Good Friday, Mary the Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Jesus’ mother, Mary, are all at the crucifixion when Jesus dies.

Then, on Easter morning, Matthew says Mary the Magdalene comes to the tomb along with “another Mary” and a woman named Salome.

In Luke, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James go to the tomb with Joanna. In Mark, it’s Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. In John, it’s just Mary Magdalene who gets up early and sees the risen Jesus.

But as far as we know, none of the Marys at the crucifixion or the resurrection are the Mary in today’s story, Mary of Bethany.

If you’re confused, you’re not alone. The whole church has been confused about these Marys for centuries. And the confusion is partly because of today’s text.

There are four different stories about anointings of Jesus by women, one in each of the gospels.

In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the anointing woman has no name. In some tellings, the woman anoints Jesus’ head. In Luke, the woman weeps on Jesus’ feet, wipes the tears dry with her hair, and then anoints his feet with oil.

Luke’s version is different in other ways, too. The unnamed woman who comes to Jesus is described as a “sinner,” so when she wipes Jesus’ feet with her hair, the scandal is not the cost of perfume but her social status. Early church leaders labeled her a prostitute, an image that stuck through the ages, but there is nothing in the text itself that suggests what her sin might be. Either way, Jesus defends her, granting her forgiveness and peace, and honoring her extravagant show of love for him while chiding the rude and judgmental bystanders.

Over the history of the Christian church, these different stories of ungovernable women and their anointing, and hair, and preparation for burial, and smelly, oily perfume, became fused into a single Mary; Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the unnamed sinful woman, all wrapped up into one. Up until the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church celebrated a feast day for Mary Magdalene, the sinful woman, and Mary of Bethany as the same person.

Given the overlapping stories, combining these characters into one single Mary might have seemed to make some sense. Or maybe it just didn’t seem realistic to those early church leaders that so many different women could all be followers of Jesus. There’s a lot more to the history, but the point here is that the interpretation of this text has at times been kind of a mess. Over our history we’ve tried to untangle some of the mess. Sometimes, we made the mess worse.

Part of following Jesus is continually having to figure out what that means. Sometimes, when we try to follow Jesus, we have to backtrack, regroup, unlearn, change course, start again — none of which is easy at the best of times.

In times of turmoil and confusion and fear, figuring out what it means to follow Jesus can be even harder.

That’s helpful to keep in mind as we revisit this story of Mary of Bethany and her big jar of pure nard. Because a week before the Passover when the authorities were already looking for reasons to arrest Jesus and poking around for folks who might turn him in, I bet everyone following him was a little on edge. Turmoil, confusion, fear: not the easiest time to know what to do.

Mary could see that Jesus’ time was short, that what he was doing was likely to end as it did. I bet she was scared, sad, even angry. I’m sure she wondered if there were other paths; surely this didn’t have to end with an arrest or a brutal state murder. Maybe they could hide or run away from what was coming. Maybe the crowds would decide to join with Jesus and resist the repressive authorities. Maybe the story wasn’t over yet — Jesus had brought her own brother back to life, for crying out loud.

But then again, that’s why Jesus was a target: he kept bringing life. He was threatening to the authorities because he could make things alive. He kept bringing life, right in the middle of everything, even at the risk of his own destruction.

And Mary got that. Mary is the one who got it.

Until this week, it had never occurred to me that six days before the Passover, Mary washes Jesus’ feet. She’s the first one who knows what to do. She is the disciple who gets it. The Greek word for “wipe” in this story — where Mary of Bethany wipes Jesus’ feet with her hair — is the same word used when Jesus washes and wipes the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper in the next chapter, and those are the only times that word is used in the whole gospel. Six days before the Passover meal, she enacts Jesus’ command to wash the feet of others without ever being told to do so.

But Mary doesn’t just wash Jesus’ feet. She slathers them with oil. She engulfs them with a pool of fragrance. She overwhelms all the other smells in the house with that perfume — on Jesus’ feet, on the hem of his robes, on her hair and scalp and face, running down into her collar and neck, and all over the floor.

Mary got that the love and life Jesus was pouring out was like the fragrant oil pooling on the floor and infusing the world with its scent that would linger forever in the cracks and the dirt and the linens and the rafters…and in the people. Every time they swept, every time they shook out the cushions, every time a breeze ruffled the curtains or the sun warmed the stone, all around, in every nook and cranny, the smell was there. That scent of healing, of love, of life.

I’m sure that smell of life lingered well beyond Passover, well past whatever death might come next.

***

Many of you have gotten to know my dear friend Deana, who I mentioned will be giving the charge. I met Deana when I was a seminary intern at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Napa, California, and Deana was the pastor. Back then in 2004, the Presbyterian Church (USA) still didn’t “allow” LGBTQIA people to be pastors — which meant that if you were gay and a pastor, you had to choose how much of yourself to let people know, you had to wonder whom you could trust, and you had to be cautious about getting on anyone’s bad side who might expose you. You could be brought up on charges in the church courts, lose your church, lose your vocation.

A week or two into my internship, Deana and I were driving around Napa running churchy errands (which we did a lot), and she told me that she lived with Jan. And then after a pause, she said Jan was her partner. I came to learn what an honor it was to be trusted with that knowledge, and what it meant for someone to follow Jesus while constantly having to consider what might be coming.

In 2015, Lindsey and Crystal moved to Nashville, Tennessee, so that Lindsey could be the campus minister at Belmont and Vanderbilt Universities. I was on the campus ministry board there at the time, and we were thrilled for her to get started. Even though the Presbyterian Church had lifted its LGBTQIA ban by that point, we were also nervous, because there had been an issue with that presbytery and a previous candidate who happened to be gay and was not approved for ministry. The approval committee created obstacles for Lindsey that strangely didn’t seem to come up for others, like my husband who entered the presbytery at the same time. So we were all relieved when Lindsey’s call was finally approved at the presbytery meeting. She went on to many years of brilliant affirming and welcoming ministry for our local college students, several of whom went into ministry themselves.

These chairs up front sit empty today to remind us who isn’t here and whose voices we haven’t heard, to remind us of the many Marys who have been shoved aside by misogyny or racism or expediency. It can be hard to know how to follow Jesus in the best of times. And in times of turmoil, and confusion, and fear, it can be even harder. The church has often screwed it up. We have screwed it up.

But here in the gospel of John, six days before the Passover, we have the story of Mary, Mary of Bethany, who got it. Jesus brought life, and love, right into the middle of everything. Mary knew what to do. She took that huge amount of oil, and sharing the overwhelming love and life she had witnessed and knew in her very bones, she washed Jesus’ feet. And the scent of love and life filled the house, and persisted beyond the Passover, even beyond death.

And so we, too, know what to do, even in confusion and turmoil and fear. When things seem the scariest, the most horrifying, the most full of dread about what is to come, that’s when we joyfully, resiliently pull out the best perfumed oil, enough to fill the whole house with its scent. We break out the most lavish, abundant, overwhelming love, remembering the life poured into the world by Jesus.

The love and life of Jesus will not be bound by historical misinterpretation or poor translation. It will not be stifled by unjust policy or haughty proclamation. It will not be contained in a jar or a tomb. Even now, the heady fragrance of God’s love is all around — in the beginning of a new ministry today, in empty chairs ready to be filled, and in all the ways we pour out extravagant love right into the middle of whatever is to come.

We know what to do, thanks be to God. And today, thanks be to Mary of Bethany.

Amen.