Is.43:16-21 Ps.126
Phil.3:8-14 Luke 20:9-19
Lectionary Link
The three adult siblings of Bethany, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, apparently live together in the same home. We have no information about any of them being married, though it would be perhaps unusual for us to think of three older unmarried siblings living together. But that's our problem and lack of full information.
What do the Gospels tell us about the Bethany siblings? Well Lazarus is not mentioned in Matthew, Mark, or Luke, and only in John.
Mary and Martha show up in the Gospel of Luke, where Mary is presented as the contemplative sitting in awe at the feet of Jesus. And Martha is the huffy hostess who wishes that Mary would not space out on Jesus so much and come and help with the food preparation.
And then we have the shocking and embarrassing PDA, Public display of affection. Mary appears to be acting out, out of control, overwhelmed with devotion. She enters the room where Jesus is with his disciples being served a meal by Martha. What did she do? She did Maundy Thursday for Jesus before Holy Week had even happened. Did Jesus get his foot-washing idea from Mary of Bethany, and the other women who washed his feet? Though Jesus just used water, not tears and perfume on his disciples.
Mary, not only anointed feet of Jesus with expensive perfume, she wiped them with her hair, symbolically her crown of glory. She was putting the very top of her being, at the lowest part of the physical presence of Jesus, expressing reverence and a sense of unworthiness.
All of this would have been embarrassing in a culture where men and women were segregated, and in any public meetings the women would be veiled. Yes, the disciples probably did not understand, and Judas addressed the awkwardness by saying, "Why did you waste such expensive perfume for this? Such money could have been spent on the poor."
So, I've tried to get us to intuit the feelings as if we were there is such an actual situation.
But what is the textual situation for the writer of John's Gospel about the reality of the Jesus Movement? No other Gospel has this event or the return to life of Lazarus. (rather memorable don't you think to be left out of the other three Gospels which were written long before John's Gospel? Quite scoop missed wouldn't you say?)
Can we appreciate that the Gospels were written quite a few years after the first writings of St. Paul. St. Paul was the mystic who characterized the life of the followers of Jesus as those who lived in a mystical identity with the death and the resurrection of Christ. And even though they lived on this earth, they had been mystically raised to be seated with Christ in heavenly places. Paul as a mystic believe he was a citizen of heaven even as he lived on earth. Paul believed that he lived resurrection life before he had died.
But how did this early mysticism of Paul get put in a narrative form in the later Gospels? The mystical identity of Christ became encoded in the presentation of a physical life of Jesus, as a parable, and the mystics of the church were the ones who knew the meanings behind the presentations of the physical life of Jesus.
And what is the mystical meaning of the presentation of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in the Gospel of John?
John was written after the Gospel of Luke, and Luke does contain a man name Lazarus in a parable of Jesus. Lazarus was a leper who begged at the doorstep of a rich man. They both died; Lazarus went to be with Abraham and the rich man went to Hades, but he could speak with Abraham. He ask Abraham to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers who were still alive. And Abraham said if they don't believe Moses and the prophets, they won't believe Lazarus if he were to return from the dead.
And what does the writer of John Gospel do? He tells a parable about Lazarus and Jesus. Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead, and the religious people knew this but they sought to kill Jesus because of this.
It is an amazing literary interaction; a parable told by Jesus is instantiated in a parable about Jesus and Lazarus. And the declaration of Abraham in the parable is confirmed. People won't believe even if someone returns from the dead.
This was descriptive of many people who did not believe after the witness of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus.
But what happened to the people who encountered the Risen Lord? St. Paul encountered the Risen Lord, and he came to believe that he had been resurrected from the life of sin and come under the life and law of the Spirit.
Can we see how the Mary, Martha, Lazarus and Jesus parable in John's Gospel encapsulates this mystical reality which St. Paul wrote about.
Lazarus represents the receiving of resurrection life even though he knew would die again, and stay dead. The excessive devotion of Mary for Jesus is expressive of a profoundly, irrational devotion to this experience of receiving resurrection life from our sins before we die. Mary is devoted to the Christ who makes resurrection life possible even when we know that like Lazarus we are going to physically die.
Can we appreciate how this parable so wonderfully encapsulates the mystical unity with Christ, with his death, and his resurrection as proclaimed by Paul.
What is the Gospel here? Take our best perfume and anoint the very best thing in life, namely the source who gives us resurrection life before we die. And wash it with the hair on your head, (if you had any), but symbolically allowing our heads to be the resting place for Christ means we live under the highest and best experience of our lives. And we do it in all that we experience, yes even when the poor and hungry aren't yet all feed and taken care of. Yes, even in the middle of a terrible war going on. In good times and bad times as we whistle ourselves towards death, we whistles, but I have life, resurrected life even now.
Like Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, we are all siblings of the resurrected life of Christ because we know it by the power of the Holy Spirit.
So let us smell up our lives with the resurrection perfume of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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