"The Economics of Love" - Sermon for Lent 5, 2019

Sermon for Sunday 7 April 2019

Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem

The Rev. Carrie Ballenger

John 12:1-8

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Years ago, when I was still a seminary student, I attended a sort of “Holy Week talent show” at the church I was attending. As I remember it, members gathered after church in the fellowship hall and were invited to share their musical talents as others filled their plates with potluck food.  At one point, an adorable little girl about 9 years old stepped up to the microphone. Congregation members were pretty much smiling from ear to ear before she even started to sing, because she looked so earnest, so serious about whatever she was about to offer. Soon, the first chords of the recorded music played, and she opened her mouth to sing:

“I’m in love with Jesus, and he’s in love with me. Oh, I’m in love with Jesus, and he’s in love with me.”

And I…didn’t know what to think. I didn’t even know what to do with my face! Did she just sing I’m “in love” with Jesus? This seemed to me the epitome of the “Jesus is my boyfriend” praise songs we’d been taught to despise in our seminary classes! Also, she was 9 years old. I felt very uncomfortable with her being “in love” with anyone, even if it was the Son of God.

I admit that I’ve held on to this memory and have felt completely justified in my judgment of that performance for a very long time. That is, until this Lenten season, when I started diving into the writings of the Christian mystics. In preparation for our Wednesday Lenten suppers, I’ve been reading Julian of Norwich and Thomas Merton, Catherine of Siena, Antony of Egypt, and Teresa of Avila. At some point in my reading, that 9-year old’s passionate love song for Jesus came back into my mind. And it sounded very different.

It sounded different, because I was reading things like this:

From Teresa of Avila: “Lord, you are closer to me than my own breath, nearer to me than my hands and feet.”

From Catherine of Siena: “Eternal Goodness, you want me to gaze into you and see that you love me gratuitously, so that I may love everyone with the very same love.”

From Julian of Norwich: “Do you want to know what your Lord meant? Know well that love was what he meant. Who showed you this? Love. What did he show? Love. Why did he show it to you? For love.”

And again, from Julian: “The trinity is our maker, the trinity is our keeper, the trinity is our everlasting lover, the trinity is our endless joy and our bliss, by our lord Jesus Christ and in our lord Jesus Christ.”

And I thought: OK. Maybe I was a bit quick to judge. Maybe that little girl’s extravagant outpouring of love for Jesus isn’t so strange. Maybe she was a mystic in the making! Amen!

For that matter, maybe that earnest little girl at the microphone was merely continuing in the tradition of Mary, sister of Martha and of Lazarus. How different is “I’m in love with Jesus” really, from Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with costly perfume at the dinner table, and wiping it with her hair?

Certainly, my judgmental reaction was not much different from the words of Judas, who sat at the table with Jesus and the others that night.

“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” grumbled Judas, apparently scandalized by Mary’s extravagant display of love and gratitude.

Couldn’t this money be used for the sake of the poor? Isn’t there a better way to construct the budget? Did the church council meet about this first? Who authorized the use of funds for anointing feet, anyway? It’s just going to make everything sticky. And let’s not even talk about Mary’s hair…

Although the Gospel writer says Judas merely complained because he was a thief, I hear in this story (and in his grumbling) echoes of conversations we often have in the church. On the one hand, we want to worship God, and worship God well. We want organs and beautiful sanctuaries and thoughtfully prepared liturgies. We want visitors to feel welcomed and members to feel at home. We want our songs and our sermons and our spaces to honor the crucified and risen Lord.

And at the same time, we know that the church budget cannot and should not go only to tasteful worship and well-designed buildings. Jesus clearly calls us to use the resources we’ve been given to love and care for those he loves:

“Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’” (John 21)

As followers of Jesus, we know well that we are called and empowered to feed the poor, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, liberate the oppressed, and heal the broken-hearted. And all of this takes time, and energy, and resources. In fact, Jesus wants us to be “all in” when it comes to loving our neighbors as ourselves!

So maybe Judas was not wrong. Maybe Mary should have really saved that money, sold that costly perfume, and withheld her feelings of  love and gratitude for the sake of the poor in the village of Bethany, where she lived.

But Jesus said to Judas:

“Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

I think it’s hard to know what to do with this statement from Jesus, on a first reading. Is he saying nothing can be done about the poor, so forget about them? Is he saying he expects holy pedicures on a daily basis? I think not.

Rather, I hear Jesus honoring the fact Mary loves him, and is grateful that her brother Lazarus, who once was dead, could join them at the table. And Jesus knows that love needs to be expressed. It’s not so much that he needs it from us—it’s that we need to give it, in the same way we need to express our love for a spouse, for a child, or for a best friend. Love of this magnitude insists on being shared, insists one being expressed, insists on bursting forth from our hearts, our words, or our actions.

And here is the best part: we can show love extravagantly without fear that it will somehow be used up.  

Whether he was a thief or not, Judas believed Mary’s abundant outpouring of love for Jesus would mean less love, less energy, fewer resources available for the poor.

But the opposite is true!

When we love God, when we show gratitude for what Jesus has done for us and for all the broken, when we pour out our costly devotion for the one who loved us to the end, we’re never depleted but rather strengthened for service. Our reserves are not used up, but rather replenished.

Now I am terrible at math (I often joke that because I was a music major, I can only count to 4 over and over and over) but I’ve experienced something about the economics of love:

I’ve experienced that we can love Jesus, and we can love and serve the poor.

We can love Jesus, and we can advocate for the oppressed and occupied,

We can love Jesus, and we can love our enemy.

We can love all the children and grandchildren in our family, it turns out! And a partner! We can even have multiple friends at the same time! It’s a math miracle.

The economics of loving Jesus and loving others is simple:

Love, poured out extravagantly, multiplies extravagantly.

There really is no need to pit love of God against love of the poor,

We don’t need a war between the worship and music committee and the evangelism and social justice committee,

And there’s no need to decide between love of Jesus and advocating for peace and justice in Palestine and Israel, for example,

because the two are not in competition.

“Leave her alone” Jesus said. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

On that night, with Mary and Jesus, Judas and Lazarus at the table, Jesus knew he was nearing the time when he would enter Jerusalem and take his place not at the table, but on the cross—and it seems Mary knew it, too. 

And for this reason, we can trust that love is not an endangered resource, no matter how terrible things seem in the world today, no matter how it seems that evil and hatred and division are multiplying at an ever-increasing rate. We don’t need to hoard our love and spend it only for God, or only for our family, or only for people who think and look like us. We don’t need to worry that if we love and serve the oppressed and occupied, we can’t also care about the humanity of the oppressor or the occupier! We can love extravagantly, audaciously, boldly. Like Mary, we can pour out our love even when others say it is inappropriate or impossible, even when others say our love (or God’s love) can’t possibly extend that far.

This is true because an extravagant fountain of love flows from the cross of Christ to the whole world. Amen!

Still, some might say Mary was being a bit “extra” that day, using something so costly just to wipe Jesus’ dusty feet and then wiping it with her hair. And you know, it’s not like she had a shower that afternoon. Bathing was not very common in Jesus’ time! 

Mary’s hair most certainly smelled like nard for days.
Weeks, even.

For sure, she smelled like nard on Good Friday. And, most likely, long after Easter.

The lingering fragrance of her extra love for Jesus—and his love for the world—would have filled the room. Every room!

It would be hard to ignore. This love would be hard to miss:

Like a 9-year old singing “I’m in love with Jesus”.

Like Julian writing about the Trinity as her lover.

Like the pilgrims carrying rented wooden crosses along the Via Dolorosa, tears running down their faces.

Like the young adult volunteers who come to the Holy Land to teach in Lutheran Schools and leave with the love of Palestine in their eyes.

Like Christians around the world who, along with Mary, carry the fragrance of Jesus’ costly love into refugee camps, into hospital wards, into homes for the elderly, into places devastated by natural disaster or by war,

Like you, who carry the fragrance of this mutually extravagant, audacious, wondrous love into the church, into the workplace, into the grocery store, into your own homes. 

Thanks be to God for this love, poured out by the church in song and in service.

And thanks be to God for Jesus, whose love for sinners—whose love for you and for me—is always a bit “extra.”

May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.