We are often so self-righteous about our behavior and our thinking that we need a 'spiritual' slap across the face to get ourselves in a better position to listen to God. How many times in life have you thought you had the right answer to a particular situation or problem only to discover later that you were completely off base and not really focused on the truth of the situation? Suddenly something someone else says or does opens you up to a brand new revelation and you have an "Ahh-ha!" moment as your thinking and feeling is readjusted to a new point. I like to call that a "Spiritual Tune-up."
This week's Gospel Reading comes from John 12:1-8 and tells the story of Jesus returning to the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha not long after he has raised Lazarus from the dead. Jesus and Lazarus are under threat for their lives from the ruling priests and other religious leaders. Many people are now following Jesus and they fear that Jesus and his followers will upset the way things are and that the foreign Roman government ruling over them will dismiss them from their own positions of power.
Here in the home of this very unconventional family: a single man and his two single sisters...a Queer Family if you will...Jesus, also a single man, returns to his chosen family for rest and renewal. Some scholars even believe that Lazarus is the "Beloved Disciple" that the gospel writer refers to in the book of John. We know that Jesus is intimately connected to this family and has chosen their home as his base of operation when he is in the Jerusalem area. Those of us in the LGBT community can fully understand the importance of our "Chosen Family," those friends we have developed as part of our experience and life in Queerdom. Often our Chosen Family is more important to us than our family of birth, especially if that birth family has rejected us or harrassed and condemned us for being sexually oriented differently than they desire for us to be.
Can you imagine the emotions that must be at play as Jesus returns to this home? Here sitting with them again is the one who brought their brother back from the dead. Here is the man who did the impossible. Here is the Messiah, come from God, and he's eating and talking witht them. Mary, moved with what I can only describe as passionate thanksgiving and supreme adoration, takes a bottle of very expensive perfume...worth a year's wages, probably her 'trust fund' in case something did ever happen to Lazarus and she had no one else to support her...and pours it out onto Jesus' feet, massaging his feet and wiping the oil from his feet with her long hair, an extremely intimate and almost erotic kind of action. There are very deep emotions flowing here.
Some who were present that evening are offended by Mary's behavior and criticize her wastefulness of the costly perfume in such a disturbing...to them...demonstration of love for Jesus. Why we could have used it to feed the poor...or built a new chapel...or paid the pastor's salary...or sent a missionary to Africa. There is always something that needs to be done, there is no doubt about that. But Mary ignored all that kind of so-called important thinking and truly spent a very emotionally necessary moment adoring her Savior, for he literally was the one who saved her from what would have happened to her if her brother had remained dead. Jesus meant all the world to her at this moment and she took the time to focus her attention on him, and only on him.
What was Jesus' response to her actions? He accepted her adoration and claimed that generations throughout history would remember what she had done for him before he died. She annointed his body with oils prior to his death, which was coming soon. He was loving and kind in his acceptance of her sacrificial gift to him.
How much time have you spent this week truly focusing your thinking and feeling on Jesus? What sacrifice have you made in your own life to demonstrate that God is supreme in your life? Have you spent time with God in prayer, in Bible study, in reflection finding the peace within yourself that only God in Christ can give to you?
I encourage you this week to be extravagant in your praise and adoration of God in Christ Jesus. Don't worry about what anyone else thinks about what you are doing. Lose yourself in praising God. Remember: Like Jeus was to Mary, God wants to be just as accepting, and extravagant in love toward you...even more so. It's at least something to think about.
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