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| Image by Alcidesota |
Holy Week Wednesday
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A Greeting
I am like a green olive tree in the house of God.
I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.
(Psalm 52:8)
A Reading
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’
(John 12:1-6;8)
Music
Meditative Verse
They laid him on a bier that had been filled with various
kinds of spices prepared by the perfumer's art.
(2 Chronicles 16:14)
A Reflection
No gentle friend would be allowed to tend him when he was pinned to the cross; no loving hand would be able to soothe him when he was close to the end. But tender forethought had led Mary to prepare for the approach of that day, and to provide for its bitter trial by this ministry of love. Are we willing to offer him the outpoured love of our inmost soul?
- from Mary of Bethany by Marcus L. Loane
Verse for the Day
‘As spices were burned for your ancestors,
the earlier kings who preceded you,
so they shall burn spices for you and lament for you,
saying, "Alas, lord!”’
(Jeremiah 34:5)
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| Image by Alcidesota |
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During the past three days, we have seen how Jesus, in the last days of his life, is encouraging those around him to turn their thoughts from material ways of experiencing faith, to focus on Jesus himself. First we hear that he will replace the temple, then he says that he replaces the living water of the pools. Now with Mary’s anointing, he draws focus to his coming death and what it will mean. The dinner offered by the family at Bethany likely unfolded either just before Palm Sunday or during the week of events that led to Jesus’ arrest. What does Mary know? In a few days, her friends, some of the other women disciples, will anxiously bring spices to anoint Jesus’ body when he is laid out in the tomb. They will do so only a day after he has washed their feet and the feet of all the disciples. Mary’s spontaneous action at the dinner is a gift of gratitude that as Marcus Loane suggests, challenges us all to consider how much we are willing to give our faith and love to him. Having seen the complex reaction of the mobs surrounding Jesus in Jerusalem, perhaps she has a foreknowledge of how this all is going to end. Jesus tells us that she has anointed him as one does in a burial. She has taken what has been saved for such a blessing and washed Jesus’ feet while he is with her, instead of after he is gone. “What wondrous love is this?” refers to Jesus’ great sacrifice for us. But it can also describe the deepest love of one who has faith. Right now all of us are being called to demonstrate wondrous love for each other by sacrificing our normal lives for the sake of the safety of people we dont know. Maimonides, a twelfth-century Jewish philosopher and Torah scholar, once categorized the kinds of ‘alms giving’ in a hierarchical list of eight. At the very bottom, is when one feels burdened to do any kind of giving at all and gives only grudgingly. It moves up through steps of knowing the one being given to or not knowing them, to arrive at number one, the utmost form of ‘tzedekah’, which is doing whatever is necessary for the wellbeing of those we don’t know. Right now, all of us by staying home from our Holy Week activities are actually demonstrating the highest form of giving alms, by making sacrifices to ensure the health of those we don’t know. As we continue into the remaining days of Holy Week, how can we redirect our increasing sorrow at the loss of our traditional ways of expressing our faith to focus entirely on Jesus? How can we can lavish our love on him by helping to ensure that those we don't know, indeed everyone, has a better chance to thrive and be well?
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LC† Reimagining Justice is a project of
Lutherans Connect / Lutheran Campus Ministry Toronto,
supported by the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.
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