5 Lent C March 17, 2013
Is.43:16-21 Ps.126
Phil.3:8-14 Luke 20:9-19
In the Gospel story traditions there are
multiple accounts of a woman or women who have approached Jesus in social
settings and who have washed, anointed, kissed and wiped the feet of Jesus with
their hair.
One cannot get any lower on the human body than
the feet and so if one adores the feet of another it is an act of excessive devotion
or honor. In some cultures it was not a
voluntary act. Ancient monarchs had
protocols of bowing and prostrating oneself before royalty as the only
prescribed way of being in the presence of the great one. There are all sorts of protocol for showing
respect. Have you ever been to an
ordination? Often the ordination begins
with the candidate lying face down in front of the altar as the litany for
ordination is recited. You can been sure
that lots of brother cardinals were genuflecting and kissing the hand of the
prelate they elected to be their new Father in God, as their Pope even though he doesn't seem to be one so inclined to such stuff. The irony of a church that became an Empire
is that the princes of the church ended up taking over protocols of respect
that were practiced in secular culture where the Emperor had been reverenced as
a deity. It perhaps offends our
democratic sensibilities even as it inspires our sense of attraction to ancient
customs. Some cultures still observe the
practice of touching the feet of someone who is respected. Gurus and Sufi sheikhs often receive bowings
and kisses and touching of their feet. It is a cultural way of acknowledging what a
community regards to be a particular personal oracle of the sublime.
Comedians often satirize such behaviors: The
comedy team of Wayne and Garth used to mock such customs of adoration by doing
fake bows and saying, “We are not worthy, we are not worthy.”
There are lots of feet jokes too: there was the woman who said to her husband with a foot fetish, “I will only
let you honor my feet by buying a $1000 pair of Italian-made high heels.”
I doubt if any of us is too socially
comfortable with this scenario of Mary of Bethany pouring perfume on the feet
of Jesus and then drying his feet with her hair. How uncomfortable would this be for us? In our speechlessness we might be thinking, “Get
a room!” The only context for us to
understand such excessive and unusual display of devotion would be in the
privacy of the silliness of things done under the influence of the pathological
state of romantic love. Book her with a DUIL,
done under the influence of Love.
There is something quite transgressive in
going public with such stories of devotion.
We know from first century culture and from many traditional Middle
Eastern cultures today, the practice of the public segregation of men and
women. So, the event of a woman touching
Jesus in the presence of other people was a violation of social custom. Mary was unwomanly for doing so; Jesus was
unmanly for allowing it to happen.
I think to understand this story is to move
beyond the fact of any original event and understand how the writer of John was
writing for his community with the sense of the anticipatory present tense,
meaning how can stories in the life of Jesus be told to represent our own experience
with the risen Christ?
And this preacher preaches with the same
anticipatory present tense: How can I
relate to us the meaning of this wildly, exotic and foreign story the relevance
of it in our understanding of the risen Christ in our lives today?
Obviously, the act of Mary could be
understood as her profound gratitude for Jesus bringing her brother Lazarus
back to life. (A story found in the chapter before). The book of Signs is a document incorporated
into John’s Gospel, and the bringing of Lazarus back to life was the last
Sign. The early church writers were
trying to teach their members how to live their lives knowing that Jesus was
the Resurrection and Life.
Their conclusion: The life of the Risen
Christ invited the expression of excess.
This act of Mary was an act of excess that defied social custom and the
logic of the priority in the use of assets.
Acts of excess co-exists with lots of poverty and human need. One sees examples of this everywhere: Why do Cathedrals and Temples get built with
the beauty of architecture and gold, silver and ornamentation in the midst of
people of poverty. Doesn’t it seem ludicrous
that Cathedrals and Temples exists in place of such poverty and yet people will
shuffle on bloody knees as an act of thankful devotion, penance or act of
anticipation for something good to happen to them?
Like the infamous Judas Iscariot in the story
we might point out the contradiction of excess and poverty in this life.
And the words of Jesus tell us to leave her
alone in her excess. The event of excess
has to be permitted. In fact, one of the
secrets of life might be finding where we can commit events of excess.
I would like to make the case for a theology
of excess. I think that deep within each
human being is life force and this life force comes to have many names depending upon
how we experience it or categorize it.
This life force is so profound that it represents the capacity for
excess that is at the center of all of us.
This life force is known as it radiates through us and focuses upon all
of the objects in our outer world. All
of the objects and the people of our outer world provide for our excessive life
force the occasions of attraction and repulsion. If our life force can be spread out in in
even ways on general objects it is sublimated or diluted in its intensity and
it can provide the general pleasure and enjoyment that is necessary for
sustaining hopeful lives. The truth of
the excess of our life force is that some of it gets fixated or more intensely
focused upon some items or people or activities more than other. Why do people fall in love with one person
and not another? Why do people like
baseball but not cricket? Why do some
people like knitting but not football?
The rhyme and reason of how our life force gets focused is not always
known.
When our life force gets too fixated it
leaves us in the state of addiction.
Some addictions are more acceptable than others; some addictions allow
us to remain more functional in our overall life. I would say that lots of the problems in life
have to do with not understanding the profundity of our life force, not knowing
how our live force is meant to be expressed as the energy of our charismatic
personalities and gifts to interact with others, not knowing what to do when depression
does not allow us to enjoy the flow of our life energy, and not knowing that the purpose of our life
energy is not to create an environment that adores us as our narcissistic
reflection.
The theology of excess is what I believe that
Jesus allowed from Mary and what the writer of John’s Gospel was encouraging of
the people who came to worship together.
It is known in the famous phrase of the once very worldly and passionate
St. Augustine, when he wrote, “The heart is endlessly restless until it finds its
rest in God.”
The profundity of our life force is that it
seeks more than life can visibly give us.
It seeks Christ beyond his life and death and in his resurrection. And when our hearts know that they cannot be
satisfied completely with anything that we can know in this life but can have
this beyond life touch of the sublime, then we can find the occasion of excess,
the excess of worship. This is the
ecstasy of the prophet Isaiah hearing the Holy, Holy, Holy, in his heavenly
vision. It is the joy of finding love of
love and love in love. It makes one
profoundly grateful and when one is profoundly grateful excess happens;
Cathedrals get built, people get fed, ministry gets done. Excess is the natural response of gratitude. Neither spiritual gratitude nor spiritual excess is found where
people live thinking God has been stingy, inaccessible and parsimonious with
them.
The Gospel is read today with the message of
hope that people will have the occasions of excess and gratitude from having
the experience of knowing that God has done something special for them. And I pray for the serendipity of such excess
and gratitude today. Amen.
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