A woman accompanied her husband to the doctor's office. After his checkup the doctor called her into his office alone. "Your husband is suffering from a very serious disease. Combined with stress, it will surely kill him in six months if you don't do the following:
Every morning fix him a healthy breakfast. Be pleasant and make sure he's in a good mood. Be patient if he's grumpy. For lunch make him a nutritious meal. For dinner prepare only his favorite dishes, just the way he likes them. Don't burden him with chores. Don't nag, pester, or complain to him. He's already overloaded with stress. Not only that. Make love with your husband several times a week and satisfy his every whim. If you can do that for the next ten months to a year, your husband will make a complete recovery."
On the way home the husband nervously asked his wife, "What did the doctor say?" "Honey," she answered, "you're going to die in six months."
It's always easy to give a little. It's not always easy to give a lot. The line between "a little" and "a lot" is different for each of us. Some- where we all have a line beyond which we will not go. It's just too much to ask.
Wherever you draw the line I'm sure Mary of Bethany went way beyond it. She produces a large quantity of perfumed oil. This is not the cheap Wal-Mart variety. This stuff goes for roughly $1,875 an ounce! Mary does not dab a few drops behind her ears. She pours it over Jesus' feet. Then Mary lets down her hair, a scandalous thing to do in public, and uses it like a towel to wipe up the excess. As a demonstration of love Mary goes to an extreme, shockingly beyond any reasonable line of decency.
Thing is, Mary might very well have decided to skip this dinner party entirely. In the previous chapter her brother had gotten sick. An urgent call was sent to Jesus. He didn't exactly rush to the scene. In fact he took at least two days longer than necessary to get to Bethany. In the meantime Lazarus died. When Jesus finally did show up Mary greeted him with, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." She was polite, even respectful, but you can also hear her seething anger. After Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead no doubt Mary was ashamed of her anger and still angry. It was great to have her brother back, but Jesus' delay put her through several days of emotional anguish. It would have been entirely understandable if Mary passed up this dinner and hid out for the evening watching reruns of "Star Trek."
Mary might very well have withdrawn, isolated herself, and nursed her wounds. Instead she swallowed her pride and committed an embarrassingly extreme act of devotion to Jesus. Mary made herself vulnerable and opened herself to criticism. Judas was the one who spoke up, but you can be sure his weren't the only eyebrows raised around that table.
What has this to do with us? Are we to go beyond all bounds of propriety in our public displays of affection? Are we to surrender any shred of self-respect and deny our dignity as responsible members of society? I mean, religion is fine as long as you don't take it too far.
The answer comes in the next chapter. Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. Peter is defiant, "You shall never wash my feet." Jesus goes on to say to his followers, "you also ought to wash one another's feet." He told us to eat bread and drink wine, and we do it. When it comes to foot washing in our tradition, we drag our feet. Perhaps there's more of the defiant Peter in us than we'd like to admit. In washing his disciples' feet and telling us to do likewise Jesus is acting out his great commandment: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another." It turns out Mary jumped the gun. Mary wiped Jesus' feet before he washed the disciples' feet. Mary acted out Jesus' great commandment before Jesus gave it. Mary intuitively understood how to respond before she was told. A thousand years of doctrine and dogma to the contrary, in the Gospel of John it is a woman, Mary of Bethany, who is the supreme disciple. We may not wash one another's feet, but we are to love one another with the same lavish, shameless, abandon with which Mary loved Jesus.
How far are we willing to go in our love for the Lord? Are we willing to go so far as to be embarrassed? Are we willing to risk criticism and rejection? Are we ready to swallow our pride and surrender our self-respect? Are we ready to go to extremes? When I greet people after the service and a child approaches I often squat down to the child's eye level. When I encounter a child in the Social Hall who is shy or afraid of me I pretend to be even more shy or afraid. I let the child call the shots. It's the sort of silliness that's tolerated, even welcomed in our society.
It's infinitely more difficult to let another adult call the shots. If we are to love one another we will need to move so we can see the world through the eyes of others. We will need to try to see the world through the eyes of Jews who have known generations of persecution at the hands of Christians, who were themselves taunted as "Christ killers", who were compelled to recite the Lord's prayer when they were in grade school. We will need to see the world through the eyes of Palestinians who were evicted from land their families farmed for generations, who feel powerless in the face of overwhelming forces beyond their control, who awake to find more of their olive trees cut down under cover of night. We will need to see the world through the eyes of young men who are constantly under suspicion because of the color of their skin. We will need to see the world through the eyes of people who are not like us.
If we are to love one another we will need to practice feeling what those around us feel. We will take upon ourselves the loneliness, confusion, anger, hurt, fear, and, yes, the wonder, joy, and boredom of those we profess to love.
It's one thing for me to put myself in the hands of a child. I can always take myself out, discuss adult matters with other adults and demonstrate I really haven't lost my dignity. But if we truly love one another we will put more than our feet in each other's hands. We will surrender control. We will serve the needs and wants of others even to the point of looking foolish, embarrassing ourselves, and enduring criticism that we've gone too far.
There is also the other side of the transaction. Suppose I stopped here and called for volunteers for the ritual of foot washing - which Jesus told us to do. Volunteers to wash feet line up over there. Volunteers to have their feet washed line up here. Suppose you have to choose one. Which would it be; to wash the feet of someone else or let someone wash your feet? Wash feet? Let your feet be washed?
Hard as it is to give extreme attention, care, and love it can be even more difficult to be on the receiving end. Judas questions the extravagance of Mary's act, but it is also a criticism of Jesus. How could he allow this to happen? How could he accept such extreme care for his tired, dusty feet? Has he no pride? Has he no self-respect? Has he no sense of decency? Whether giving or receiving extreme love, we have to surrender the same things. We have to lose ourselves. Which may explain how Jesus wound up on a cross. He just didn't know when to quit. He went way over the line. Something in us couldn't take it.
If we were to let others wash our feet they might learn things about us we'd rather they didn't. They might find out there are holes in our socks. They might discover our toenails need clipping. They might notice our feet need to be washed. It's easier to change someone else's flat tire than to let someone else change ours. When we're on the giving end we have some power. When we're on the receiving end we are vulnerable, open, at the mercy of someone else.
When we act in loving service we need to keep in mind the tenderness and sensitivity of those we serve whether they are homeless men at the Safe Haven Shelter, a Christmas In April homeowner, or a child in a Sunday School class. If we are to be true followers of the Lord we also need to learn to receive with grace. I have a hard enough time accepting a compliment. May the Lord give me the courage to receive with grace.
It turns out when we go to extremes on either side of the equation, giving love or receiving love, we lose. We lose our pride, our self-importance, our place of honor in the world. In going to extremes we lose ourselves. In so doing, by the grace of God, we find ourselves.
Amen.