Psalm 126

1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
3 The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.
4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
5 May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.

John 12:1-8

12 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’s feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 6 (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.) 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

The Fragrance of Costly Perfume

The story from John 12 is a story about grief. Mary knows that Jesus will die soon, and so she is grieving this loss. This is anticipatory grief, the experience of grief before the actual loss. As New Testament scholar Gail O’Day summarizes it: “Mary recognizes the limited time that Jesus will remain with them.”
We don’t want loss.
No one wants to lose anything or anyone. It is a feature of being human. Human beings hate to lose anything. Human beings hate to part with anything. And this can lead to some humorous behavior. Take, for example, the thing called, “New England Frugality.” We know that New Englanders are famous for being frugal, that is, for not wanting to part with their money.
This tendency shows up especially during yard sales. Maybe you have noticed. At a yard sale, no matter how low an item is priced, it’s predictable that someone will make an offer that takes your breath away. “You’re asking fifty cents for this antique lamp? Would you take a nickel?”
This kind of thing could happen anywhere in New England, so an interesting question might be, “What is New England’s most frugal state?” According to the editors of Yankee Magazine, the winner is New Hampshire.
As the story goes, “two Berlin New Hampshire men are discussing the hard financial times. One asks the other how in the world he has managed to feed his large family on such a low income.
“I’ll tell you,” he says. “I find out what they don’t like and then I give ’em plenty of it.”
Another story describes how Old Ned went to a New Hampshire church supper. It seems that for dessert, the church ladies were serving fresh-baked biscuits loaded with fresh strawberries, smothered in whipped cream. And next to the lady guarding the cash box, was a sign that read:
“Strawberry Shortcake: First Plate: Fifty Cents. All You Want: One Dollar.” So as old Ned prepared to pay his bill, the lady asked him whether he wanted more strawberry shortcake before he left. Ned said no, he’d enjoyed his first plate very much but had all he wanted.
“That will be one dollar,” the lady said firmly.

We don’t want to lose anything.
We don’t want to lose anything. We don’t want to lose our money. We don’t want to lose our property. We don’t want to lose our health. And we certainly don’t want to lose the people we love.
And yet, it is inevitable that we will experience loss. So knowing this, when faced with this reality, the grief already begins. The sadness and the sorrow already begin. This is anticipatory grief.

John Chapter 12.
This is what is happening in John Chapter 12. Our lectionary readings take us away from Luke this morning, and we take a look at John’s Gospel for this story about Jesus and Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus.
Jesus is on the way back to Jerusalem for Passover, and he stops at Mary, Martha and Lazarus’s home in Bethany, just east of Jerusalem. It’s from this little village of Bethany that he will enter Jerusalem the following week.
Mary, Martha and Lazarus are siblings, and they are like family to Jesus. So he goes to their house, and they make dinner for him. He is safe there. He is loved there. He is with his family. But Mary feels that something is going to happen to him.

My Bible
Before I go any further, I wanted to show you my study Bible. This is my favorite Bible, the one I used in seminary, called the New Interpreter’s Study Bible. For me, this is like a family Bible because one of the editor’s was my New Testament Professor and I was blessed to sit in his classroom for an entire year. I feel so fortunate to have this Bible because there is so much excellent commentary. Each book is prefaced by a different Bible scholar’s commentary. And because I am not a Bible scholar, I rely heavily on the scholarship here. And as much as I would like to earn advanced degrees, this probably won’t happen because I’m getting too old. So this Bible is part of my ongoing education.

Time is not unlimited.
The commentary and notes on John’s Gospel is by a scholar named Gail O’Day. Professor O’Day wrote a note that jumped out at me because she summarizes so well what is going on in this story. She writes that Mary anoints Jesus with costly perfume because “She recognizes the limited time that Jesus will remain with them.”
Our time is not unlimited. This is a recurring theme in Scripture. And we feel this every day. It’s because our time is not unlimited that we sometimes feel rushed and in a hurry. We are trying to get everything done in a limited amount of time. And as we get older, we realize that we will never accomplish all the things that we can dream about doing. So we have to make decisions about how to use our time.

Mary anoints Jesus.
Mary anoints Jesus with a very expensive perfume. The jar of perfume Mary emptied on Jesus was worth an entire year’s wages. And yet, this was her selfless expression of grief, love, devotion, and respect. It’s like building Arlington Cemetery and putting wreaths all around it, it’s like putting up a flagpole and flying the flag, it’s like ringing the church bell, it’s like buying heat pumps for Curtis Hall, it’s an act of love and devotion and an expression of the heart. Remember, Christianity is a heart-opening path.
With Mary’s gift to Jesus, we are reminded of the teaching in Matthew 6, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Christ asks the disciples to consider what is most important, and Mary lives out this teaching because “She recognizes the limited time that Jesus will remain with them.” And yet, there is a naysayer in the crowd. Judas blurts out, “This is nothing but a waste of good money.” But is it really? Is it a waste of good money? Here we are, 2000 years later, still reading and thinking about Mary’s costly perfume.

A moving comment.
The commentator in my Bible, Gail O’Day, wrote such a moving comment that I wanted to read more about her. After earning advanced degrees from Harvard Divinity and Emory University, Gail O’Day taught at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta and then moved on to become Dean of Wake Forest’s School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Her focus was the Gospel of John, and she was loved and respected by her students and colleagues.
But what struck me most was that Professor O’Day died from brain cancer in 2018 at age 63. Her obituary from Wake Forest reminded me yet again of how our lives are all connected. It said that one of Gail’s formative experiences during her early life was the time she spent at summer camp in Maine, not far from where I used to live in Norway. For several summers as a young girl, Gail went to “Camp Wyonegonic in Denmark, Maine. There she formed friendships that grew even deeper over time, resulting in dozens of cards, photos and notes from camp friends sent during her illness. She died with a Camp Wyonegonic pillow on her bed and a photo of Moose Pond and Pleasant Mountain next to her on a bedside table.”

Conclusion.
This morning we are reminded that Mary recognized the limited time that Jesus would remain with them. And so, she gave this gift of costly perfume to him in a heart-opening act of devotion. May we, too, remember that our time is precious, and the time we have with each other is precious and fleeting.
Amen? Amen.