Trinity Episcopal Church Hattiesburg, Mississippi Fifth Sunday of Lent March 25, 2007 Go To Trinity's Home Page

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8
Collect of the Day
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 75 th General Convention of the ECUSA

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “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.”(John 12:1-8)

Becoming Empowered
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop

     Bible stories are memorable things.  If you’ve sat in the pews long enough, you’ve probably heard the stories in the Sunday lectionary so many times, you could probably recite them word for word; okay, maybe with a little prompting.  But the gospel we just heard used to not be heard in the Episcopal Church on a Sunday.  We used to hear the story from John about Mary anointing Jesus’ feet on the first Monday of Holy Week.[1]  But the Revised Common Lectionary, which we now follow in the Episcopal Church, puts this story on the fifth Sunday of Lent.  And I am glad.  

     I am glad because the story of Martha and Mary is a compelling and rich story that is both nuanced and provocative.  We all know the story, don’t we?[2]  Jesus came to Bethany to visit Martha and Mary.  Martha, the consummate housekeeper, quickly busied herself cooking a meal for their guest, while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to him. 

     But wait!  That’s not the story we have here.  That is the story of Martha and Mary from the Gospel of Luke.  There are in fact two quite different stories of Mary and Martha in the New Testament, and I believe the story from Luke is better known.

     Both stories record that the two sisters were very different from each other.  Mary was quiet, restrained, even a little withdrawn; probably an introvert.  Martha was active, eloquent, and used to giving orders.  She bossed her shy sister Mary around.  The Lukan and Johannine communities remembered Mary and Martha as women close to Jesus, but they remembered them differently; with different personalities, and quite different gifts. 

     Both Luke and John were well disposed to women.  They were Greek Christians familiar with the role of women in Greek society, and they honored them, although in different ways.  Luke was partial to rich, prominent women. In Luke’s gospel, Martha seems to have been a well to do landowner who looked after the family estate.  Luke tells us about other prominent women such as Lydia (Acts 16:14-15) and Joanna (Lk 8:3) who were close to Jesus and who were indispensable to the early church.  Luke, who always strove to level the playing field, realized that most of the parables he had read about Jesus were taken from the world of men’s work.  Consequently, he introduced parables about women’s activities, such as baking bread, cleaning, and looking for a lost coin to put them on the playing field with men.

     John, on the other hand, revered women even more.  In the early Johannine Church, women were very prominent.  It is in John’s gospel that the Samaritan woman becomes a disciple of Christ and speaks to the Gentiles about him (Jn 4:1-30).  As Jesus was dying on the cross with many female disciples at his feet, he acknowledged his mother in equal standing with his male disciples.  Jesus’ actions symbolically embody the new community where women are co-equal with men.

     John tells the story of Martha and Mary differently from Luke.  In John’s story, Lazarus, Jesus’ friend, and the brother of Mary and Martha, was sick, and the sisters made that known to Jesus with the hope that Jesus would come and make him better.  But five days later, when Jesus arrived, Lazarus was dead.  When Jesus approached the house packed with mourners, Martha confronted Jesus, “Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died.”  Martha was not one to keep silent, and she had a passionate conversation about faith with Jesus.  She did not leave theology to the theologians.  She was a thinker, and she argued her point.  She charged Jesus with failure.  She knew, theologically that resurrection happens on the Last Day, but she also hoped that Jesus would help now.  Martha did not embody any of the traditional Biblical feminine attributes:  obedience, tranquility, subservience.  She was stubborn, forward, and passionate.  And Jesus loved her and respected her.

     John’s Mary was the introverted sister.  Despite her shyness, she is the protagonist of the story.  She stayed in the house with the other mourners, and only came out when summoned.[3]  When she encountered Jesus, in an almost embarrassed voice she tearfully stated the same things as her sister, “If you had been here, my brother need not have died.”  She fell at Jesus’ feet and burst into tears.  Mary did not say much, choosing to let her emotions speak for her.  Jesus loved her too; his heart was touched, and he was greatly moved (Jn 12:7-8).  Mary, the contemplative, was drawn to Jesus, and at that moment, there seems to be a new element in the relationship between Jesus and the women around him. 

     It is through her actions that Mary spoke.  She took a flask of very expensive perfume and poured it on his feet.  We can safely assume that Jesus was lying next to her on the cushions surrounding the supper table.  Silently, but with great self-confidence, she anointed Jesus.  And the whole house became filled with the fragrance of the sweetness of her actions.  Martha did not urge her; Mary did what she did on her own.  “All of the spontaneous ways she was accustomed to express her love, respect, affection, and tenderness for Jesus – the tears, the concern to be near him and have his support – [were] released with the fragrant oil [she lovingly spread on the feet of her friend, Jesus.]”[4]  And yet, that was not enough.  She used her hair to clean his feet of the dust and oil.  That was the task of the lowliest slave of the household; the master at the table used to wipe his dirty hands on the hair of the slave. 

     Many people today would look at Mary’s actions as servile.  Certainly, no man would do such things then or now – they would be inconceivable to Martha.  Is this self-defilement or debasing?  The feminine theologian and scholar Elisabeth Moltman-Wendel says that what Mary did was revolutionary, because what she did, “she did of her own accord and in the light of her personality.  It was her idea, her way of showing love.”[5]  She was not led by her sister this time.  Mary “broke out of the ghetto in which she placed herself, or where others had held her.  She came out of her own shadows to become herself:  a somewhat clumsy, but incredibly loving, independent, tender, and restrained woman.  She willingly, and lovingly treated Jesus with love and respect; she did not act out of obedience or servility.

     There was another character in the room.  Judas Iscariot, the financier of the group, was provoked by Mary’s action.  He saw Mary as a spendthrift and eccentric; perhaps as a woman who had forgotten her place in Jewish society.  His social wrath was kindled, and he rebuked her for wasting money.  He tried to establish a situation of either/or love:  either you love Jesus or you love the poor.[6]  But, just as in the Lukan story when Martha wanted to force Mary into the kitchen, Jesus said, “Leave her alone!”  Jesus had recognized Mary’s eccentric and extravagant behavior as expressions of pure love.  He affirmed the kind of both/and love that Mary showed.  It was that expression of her love that he took with him to his death. 

     John’s story is a story of empowerment.  It is a story of a woman who becomes herself.  Mary who had been restrained by the society in which she lived, began a voiceless yet impressively powerful revolution. 

     Mary discovered how she could offer herself, her faith, and her  love to Jesus, a man she clearly adored. 

     Mary embodies the kind of rebirth that comes about by a deep understanding of the power of the resurrection.  Although shackled by society and always careful to fit in, she became someone else through her love of Jesus.  Although still tongue-tied, she grew into herself, capable of provoking conflict with a powerful man, Judas, which no one – particularly Martha – expected of her.  She came out from under Martha’s shadow to live an independent and self-expressive life.  She was freed from the bindings that held her in her place. 

     Jesus came so that we might live life more abundantly.  Mary learned to be herself, and found an abundant life as a result.  Jesus moved her to action; she was born again, and she learned how to live.  And that is the power of the gospel. 

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Isaiah 43:16-21

Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.

Psalm 126 In convertendo  

1 When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, *
then were we like those who dream.

2 Then was our mouth filled with laughter, *
and our tongue with shouts of joy.

3 Then they said among the nations, *
“The LORD has done great things for them.”

4 The LORD has done great things for us, *
and we are glad indeed.

5 Restore our fortunes, O LORD, *
like the watercourses of the Negev.

6 Those who sowed with tears *
will reap with songs of joy.

7 Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, *
will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.

Philippians 3:4b-14

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

John 12:1-8

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “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.”

Collect of the Day

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

[1] See the Book of Common Prayer, page 914.
[2] I am indebted to the work of Elisabeth Moltman-Wendel for the comparisons between the Gospel stories of Luke and John about Martha and Mary.  See Elisabeth Moltman-Wendel.  “Martha.”  The Women Around Jesus.  (New York, NY:  Crossroad Publishing, 1996), 15-48.  I am also grateful to the work of Edith Deen.  See Edith Deen.  “The Master is Come.”  All the Women of the Bible.  (New York, NY: Castle Books, 1955).  176-181.
[3] I am also indebted to Moltman-Wendel for her descriptive work on Mary, Martha’s sister.  See Elisabeth Moltman-Wendel.  “Mary of Bethany.”  The Women Around Jesus.  (New York, NY:  Crossroad Publishing, 1996), 51-58.
[4] Moltman-Wendel, 55.
[5] Moltman-Wendel, 56.
[6] Gail R. O’Day “John.” IN Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Eds).  Women’s Bible Commentary:  Expanded Edition with Apocrypha. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 387-388.

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Copyright © 2007, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
23 March 2007

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