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The Fifth Sunday In Lent
O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The Fifth Sunday In Lent
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Scripture citation(s): John 12:1-8
A Sermon by
The Rev. Canon Carl Turner
on
John 12:1-8
✛
I want to know Christ.
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When I was first ordained, a middle-aged parishioner needed to have some complicated surgery on her leg; I went to take her Holy Communion in her home and was horrified to see what looked like scaffolding around her leg. I could not take my eyes off it – I kept glancing at the thin bars of shining stainless steel and marvelling at the way they pierced the flesh of her leg where they were bolted into the bones. I wondered why there was no bleeding. I was quite young and had never seen anything like that before. At the end of Communion she suddenly said, “Father, I think for the first time I have an idea of what really happened to Jesus on Good Friday.”
In the days and weeks that followed I, and many others, were deeply moved by her fortitude and the way that her own suffering and pain was joined to her spiritual life. The Good Friday liturgy was different that year – the crown of thorns, the nailing, and the piercing all seemed more real and more compelling.
I used to think that telling a sick or a dying person to unite their sufferings with the suffering of Christ was a bit of an insult or, at the very least, pious nonsense. What I learned very quickly, as a young priest, from the sick and the dying was that I did not need to explain things away or try and make things better. On the contrary, in most cases it was I that needed help and needed faith.
In our epistle, today, St Paul says that he wants ‘to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.’ This ‘knowing Christ’ is not the same as learning about history. Sure, it is easy for people to learn about Jesus from books and films and even listen to people preach about him but knowing Christ means having a relationship with him now, in the present and not like some fictional character from a favorite novel. What we are doing here, today in the mass, is more than just play-acting. Many people love a spectacle, and the liturgy and music of the catholic expression of Anglicanism is compelling because of its beauty. But this ‘drawing in’ has a purpose and a motive – it is a means for us to know Christ.
Next Sunday is Palm Sunday and you could say that our celebration of Holy Week is the liturgical expression of Paul’s determination to know Christ. Through words, symbolic actions, movement, the use of all our senses; through our silence and the use of our imagination, we will remember. But this re-membering, like the Eucharist itself, is more than just a re-telling of an old familiar tale; we enter into the mystery in order to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death. To do so demands our whole self; Jesus does not want us to bring just part of ourselves to the celebration and he certainly does not want us to bring the bits of our lives that we think are worthy. If we are to know Christ, then we have to bring the totality of who we are as imperfect human beings so that his love can begin the transformation of our lowly bodies into copies of his glorious body.
This is at the heart of the Gospel story today; we have a choice in our liturgical celebrations of Holy Week – are we going to be like Mary or like Judas? Both were friends of Jesus; both loved him and responded to his call but only one of them took the risk that allowed Jesus to touch her life and change it for the better.
Mary brought in the precious ointment, pure nard – very costly; probably her life’s savings, and anointed the feet of Jesus with her hair. This was a scandalous gesture; not only did she touch someone’s feet during the meal – something dirty and unclean, – but she wiped those same feet of Jesus with her hair. The scene is full of emotion, of human feelings and of actions that have sexual undertones. Elsewhere in the gospels we read of a woman who was a ‘sinner’, usually presumed to be a prostitute, who in a similar way, caressed the feet of Jesus at a meal in a Pharisee’s house and washed them with her tears, wiped them with her hair, and anointed them with ointment. We know the reaction of the Pharisee and the others at that particular table. Now, in Bethany, it caused a similar reaction; do you really think that everyone carried on eating, ignoring what was going on? From where does all the anger and resentment of Judas suddenly well up? Could it be that Judas was jealous?
Mary entered into the impending suffering of her Lord and intimately united herself with that suffering.
Last week I suggested that some of you might like to look at Rembrandt’s great painting ‘The return of the prodigal.’ This week I have another painting for you that, I think, says something of the intimacy that is required of the Christian if he or she is to know Christ, his resurrection and his sufferings. It is by the great English 20th century visionary painter, Stanley Spencer, and it is a painting called ‘The deposition of Christ and the rolling away of the stone.’ There is something very real and disturbing about the image of Christ looking like he really has just turned 30 – no beard or worn features. The almost naked attendants, who are removing the nails from his hands and feet with great pincers, seem to be caressing Christ’s wounds. I once used that image in a Good Friday meditation; when I told my friends they were horrified! “You can’t show them that in Church” they cried, “it will upset the congregation…it’s too….fleshy…too intimate.”
But this is the intimacy of the incarnation; as Mary touched Jesus in the most intimate of gestures, the Creator received, from the one he created, pure love.
This, then, is the stuff of Holy Week. We celebrate the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ not because it is the greatest story ever told but because we want Jesus also to be a part of us; discovering the real Jesus and not a product of our invention – like poor Judas.
Let me end with an ancient prayer sometimes said after a person has made a confession:
May the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
and of all the saints,
whatever good you do and suffering you endure,
heal your sins,
help you to grow in holiness,
and reward you with eternal life. Amen.
