Useless Love: Bethany and Leningrad
Realistic. Practical. Sensible. Those are words we all like to use to describe ourselves and our churches.
We are Christians who believe in an amazing story of death and resurrection, but in the end we have to come back down to earth and live in the real world.
Someone has to make sure the budget balances.
This is exactly the attitude of Judas in our gospel story today, the attitude Jesus condemns.
We don’t normally think of ourselves in the same category with Judas.
And a great deal of the time, those practical considerations do need to guide our behavior as individuals and communities.
But Jesus profoundly values Mary and her gesture in this gospel.
He finds her pouring of fragrant oil over his feet and wiping them with her hair deeply meaningful, and he will not allow this beautiful, intimate moment to be ruined by the mean-spirited practicality of Judas.
What makes Judas even more blameworthy—and even more of a warning to us!—is that he overlays his criticism of Mary with a virtuous moral justification.
“We could have used that money to serve the poor!” he laments with outward heartfelt piety and inward smug self-righteousness.
Have you ever seen this happen at church?
Someone takes the moral high ground, not out of love but because it places him or her in a position to score points on someone else.
“I’m more Christian than you are,” is a game that has no winners.
Jesus saw this and Jesus cuts right through Judas’ posturing.
In this moment, Mary and her gesture mean more than Judas and his proposed action.
That’s hard for us action-oriented Americans to take!
All the beautiful gestures in the world won’t get the pledge campaign launched or the nave vacuumed or the food pantry stocked.
Or will they? Continue reading