"The Greater Scandal" March 13, 2016

Deuteronomy 15:1-8 Isaiah 43: 16-21 John 12:1-8 This week it was reported 150 Job Applications had been recovered of International Applicants to ISIS. More than Military Information, the scandal of this, is that over half made application to be Suicide Bombers. That their goal in life, their purpose, what each longed to grow up to be was DEAD and to cause others deaths with them. The Greatest Scandal is that when offered eternal everlasting life with God in the Garden, Humanity selfishly chose death instead. The point of Easter, the whole point of Christian Faith in the resurrection, is that death shall have no power, no fear to isolate us, that death does not have the last word. Instead of suicide bombers, the final and eternal hope is community. This day is more than the Start of Daylight Savings Time, more than indication of the coming Spring, According to the Bible readings we are six days before the Beginning of Passover. As much as we are Christian, we cannot forget that Jesus' Passion also fulfills the Scandalous Death of the First Born, Sacrifice by the Lamb of God for the redemption and salvation of the world! This means next Sunday we sing “The Palms.” It means that next Sunday is Palm Sunday with Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem where the pace of the story escalates to his Last Supper, his Betrayal, his Trial, His Crucifixion, his Death and Burial, AND After, our hope and expectation of the Resurrection of Easter! Instead of Death, living in the past with our fears recognize: God is Doing a New Thing! As today is 6 days before; today is also Days After. Yesterday being Saturday was the 7th Day, Jewish Sabbath. The day before that, Jesus had called Lazarus out of Death's Tomb. 3 days before, Lazarus had died. For several days before that, Lazarus had been ill to death, laying in bed with fever, vomiting and diarrhea, the windows of the house shut, the air in this still, hot dry village dead as so many visitors came and went, weeping, mourning, burning incense, bringing cut flowers that had died. WOW! Can you smell that? This house is filled with the stench of death! It is like when the Garbage trucks have been driving for days in August on their way to the Landfill. Death is the smell of bacteria decomposing, death is offensive, causing our bodies to withdraw and shudder. Not only the physical reality of Lazarus' illness and death; but the number of all the strangers, the incense; then also anointing Lazarus' dead body, the meals in that house for three nights before Jesus' coming, plus the Sabbath, smells of stale curry, garlic, 3 day old fish, lamb, all hanging in the dead air. Making the stench worse was Lazarus himself. He did not rise like Jesus on Easter Morning with the scent of lilies. No, Lazarus is The Walking Dead, the lifeless corpse of the past. When Jesus finally arrived at the tomb, he wept for the power given to death, he wept for loss, he wept for the scandal of life giving up; Lazarus and Mary's sister warned “LORD, there is going to be a stink!” Then Jesus' called out Lazarus, Jesus screamed, scaring death away, but there is nothing in that story about new life in the body of Lazarus. Jesus and the 12, Lazarus, Martha and Mary, all are there inside the house for dinner, they had the smell of FEAR on them, when suddenly Mary did something scandalous for an unmarried woman A) Mary let down her hair. B) Mary took a lavish amount of the most costly perfume and broke open the container. (When Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were married supposedly she wore Clive Christian Number 1 Imperial Perfume, 2 ounces of which would cost most of us half a year's salary!) And Mary opened a Pound of the Stuff! Imagine the invigorating smells of Eucalyptus and Mint suddenly opened in that place of death. C)Mary did not anoint Jesus' head, as a King before his coronation, she anointed his feet as for the dead D) Mary not only anointed his feet, she rubbed it in with her hair! Any of these four would be embarrassing, but the Greater Scandals are these 1) the personal intimacy of Mary with her Savior. This is not Philosophical, not theoretical, but real. 2) She gave everything to this act of faith, without reservation. 3) In the presence of her brother's death, her anointing dared name Jesus' coming death, which he repeatedly had said “Tell No One”. 4) Rubbing the perfume into his feet with her hair, the scent of him and the excesses of the perfume would have been upon her afterward. While each of the Gospels describes this same story, John connects this with Jesus' closest friends, his adopted family: Martha, Mary and Lazarus; and John does two new and unique things with the story. Later, when Jesus prepares to share His Last Supper with his disciples, he strips and washes their feet drying them with the towel covering his waist. Jesus' using this washing as His Command to serve one another is a piece of what is different in Lazarus death and Jesus' resurrection to eternal life. Second, when she makes this personal extravagant gift, Judas argues why this was not used for the poor and Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 15 which we used in our Call to Worship this morning. According to a professor at Notre Dame: In the Ancient World Kings, Caesars and Aristocracy were in the top 1%. Moving down the Social Ladder, Tax Collectors, Police, Scribes and Priests were responsible for 5-9% of the economy. The merchants, farmers and fishermen represented 75% of the economy, who owned no worldly goods but worked at subsistence to survive each day, taxed for the land & lakes where they worked, for the nets & plows they used, taxed again for what they took out of the land & water, and for what they earned. Finally, below these were the Poor: the Untouchables, the Lepers, the Beggars, the Prostitutes, the Criminals made up the bottom 15% of the society. The distinction here, was not in how much or how little the poor earned compared to the Working Class, but that the Subsistence Working Class were connected as a community, while the Poor/ the ptochos had lost all Family and Friends and Connection, and means of making a difference, so they were forced to depend on receiving. In Deuteronomy, Moses made the point there will always be poor: the 1% always tax the 75%, therefore there will always be those without the power, without connection, forced to depend on receiving. In recent years, we have had Memorials for a generation who knew Subsistence. These are remembered by their children and grandchildren as able to sweat pipes, wire circuit boxes, pour footers and plaster. There were Family Farmers and Salesmen, who worked to put food on the table and a roof over the heads of their family. Somehow today, we have adopted the dream, of retiring at an early age with millions of dollars in our private portfolios. But the reality is that the 75% who had been at subsistence income have joined the 15% by losing connection to family and friends and community. Was it scandalous that Jesus, declared that there will always be Poor among you? Yes, but the greater scandal is that this has been the way the world of human society is designed to work. Was it scandalous that Mary break convention to let down her hair in public, for Mary to use an extravagant gift on Jesus, for Mary to anoint his feet as for burial of the dead, and for Mary to intimately touch his feet with her hair? Absolutely, but the Greater Scandal is that Death has been seen as the End. Her gift while providing an overwhelming scent that tingles the skin, came in contrast to the stench of lifeless death. Mary's Scandalous actions, Jesus Scandalous words, echo the prophecy of God through Isaiah, that God is doing A New Thing. Our Creator, in times of old was the Liberator judging and destroying Egypt; now is asking us to respond in faith, to live into a different reality where death is not The End. The Theologian Paul Tillich described that Growth always demands Sacrifice; something must be left in order to accept what is new. “If the new were part of the old, you would already see it as a possibility but instead God asks: “Can you see it?” recognizing that newness requires breaking the Cocoon. “Remember Not” is not a command of Forgetting, an absence of memory. Remember, this is the people commanded to remember their ancestor was a wandering Aramean, to remember the Poor and Sojourner, and to remember when you come into the Land promised you, remember who gave it to you. “Remember Not Former Things” is recognition of what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget, what we find on earth and what we lose, and the fears we free ourselves from. This morning we are invited to live a scandalous life, where our scandalous words and actions: HOPE, RESURRECTION, REDEMPTION, help others to recognize the scandals we have taken for granted.