Transformed by Love

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, April 3, 2022
John 12:1-8

    Do any of you remember the old Mastercard commercials?  “There are some things money can’t buy, for everything else, there’s Mastercard.”  I feel like this is the message Judas (and a lot of us) need to hear from today’s gospel:  Dinner with friends $200.  A pound of pure nard, $75,000. Time spent with Jesus before his death and resurrection? Priceless.  Our relationship with Jesus is priceless!  And yet, how many times do we try to quantify or put a price tag on God’s love?
    If I am honest, I identify more than I’d like to with Judas in this story.  We live in a society that loves to be efficient, cost-effective, and measure things.  It’s parent-teacher conference time which means angsting about our kids’ report cards.  How many of us in our workplaces have been asked to identify measurable goals for annual performance reviews?  We go to the doctor and are asked to rate our pain on a scale of one to ten.  Even in the church, I have had people ask me how much they owe for their child’s baptism.  We count worship attendance numbers and often anxiously look at the red and black numbers on our monthly treasurer’s report.  We live in a world where sometimes the default message is if it can’t be counted or measured, it’s the opposite of priceless – it doesn’t count for anything.  Living by a budget, and being aware of the cost of things helps us live within our means and meet our financial goals, to be sure.  So what’s so bad about questioning an unnecessarily extravagant expense, we might wonder?  I mean, really, did Mary have to dump out a whole POUND of expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet?  The house must have been sickeningly, overwhelmingly full of the fragrance, making it almost hard to breathe! I hope someone opened a window!  I can understand Judas’s complaining.  The money WOULD have been better used to help the poor.
    But also, if we’re honest, how much do we spend on ourselves that also would be better used to help the poor?  Who are we to criticize Mary’s excess spending?  We live in a society that excels not only at measuring things, but also at hyper-consumerism.  Psychologists have identified that many of us suffer from “affluenza,” having so much money to spend on things we don’t really need that we wonder why we don’t feel better.  On the other hand, over half of Americans are living in debt because they regularly overspend.  If there might be a way to buy happiness, we sure try to find it!  Most things aren’t “priceless” from our perspective.  It’s easy to look down our noses at our neighbors’ new car, home renovation, birthday party blow-out or expensive vacation while justifying our own excess spending, which is exactly what Judas does. Even worse, John tells us Judas doesn’t really care about giving the money to the poor, he’s looking to steal some of that money and use it on himself.  And we know that Judas thinks he CAN put a price on his relationship with Jesus:  he will betray him for thirty pieces of silver, to be exact, a decision he later deeply regrets.  Like Judas, we have a hard time refraining from counting the cost and putting a price mark on things that should be priceless, including our relationship with Jesus and the church.
    In contrast to Judas, we have Mary.  There’s a lot of Marys in the New Testament, so it can get confusing exactly which Mary Jesus is talking to here!  There’s Mary the mother of Jesus of course, Mary Magdalene, and several Marys who witness Jesus’ crucifixion and come the tomb.  It’s possible this Mary was among those Marys witnessing Jesus’ death and resurrection, we’re not sure. But for our gospel for today, we know this is Mary, Martha and Lazarus’s sister, and her brother Lazarus has just been raised from the dead.  In chapter 11 of John, she is angry with Jesus and heartbroken over her brother’s death and Jesus’ delay to help. She doesn’t understand as readily as her sister Marth does about Jesus’ power over death, saying only, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  But probably from this amazing eyewitness experience of seeing Jesus raise her brother from the dead, today we see that she gets it when Judas and at least some of the other disciples do not.  Mary understands who Jesus is and that he is on a mission to save us all, just as he saved her beloved brother Lazarus.  She knows Jesus has power to raise the dead.  She knows Jesus is preparing for his own death. She knows resurrection will be on the other side of his death, too, and so money is the last thing on her mind.  She is not worried about spending a year’s worth of wages to help Jesus prepare for the most loving, saving act of all time: his death, burial, and resurrection.  Mary knows you can’t put a price on God’s love through Jesus Christ.  Jesus is with them now, that’s what’s most important for that moment.  And in this excessive, extravagant demonstration of love for Jesus, she becomes one of the first disciples, male or female, to help US know what we can do as modern-day disciples, followers of Jesus, today.  Mary is laser-focused on serving Jesus.
    Last week, we heard the powerful story of God’s extravagant, wasteful love for us in the story of the prodigal father’s love for both his older and younger sons.  God doesn’t count the cost or measure out his love for us.  There’s enough of God’s love for everyone – God’s love can’t run out, we were reminded.  And God will go to any length to save us, giving us the gift of his own Son.  Today, we hear the powerful story of extravagant, wasteful love in action through Mary, a disciple of Jesus.  As we conclude our Lenten stewardship series on being transformed by God’s grace, faith, and love, we might wonder how we can serve Christ and each other, the church, the body of Christ more like Mary rather than Judas.  How can we spend time with Jesus, without worrying about the time and our busy schedules?  This includes the time we give in volunteering at church and in the community as well as time we set aside for personal spiritual growth in prayer, Bible study and worship.  This time is priceless!  How can we give generously without worrying that it might be WASTEFUL, because we aren’t spending it on ourselves but giving it for the sake of others, for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ?  Traditionally in the church we talk about striving to tithe or give 10% of our income to the church and to charitable causes, but for some of us giving just 10% isn’t really much of a sacrifice!  And for others of us stretching from 1-2% is a lot!  Mary’s generosity causes us to question why it is so easy to spend thousands of dollars on ourselves but like Judas we count every penny that we dole out for the sake of others.  Rather, like Mary, may we be transformed by the knowledge of how great Jesus’ love is for us that we WANT to give generously so that others also know of his love, so that we WANT to spend time with Jesus, so that we even take time to serve others when it’s not so convenient, when it requires some kind of sacrifice, no matter how small.
    This Lent, we’ve heard throughout our scriptures that God’s grace and love is over-abundant - it cannot run out.  We’ve been reminded that despite our faithlessness, God is faithful, waiting to welcome us home with open arms.  And now today, Jesus calls us to serve and share with the same, generous abundance he gives to us.  As we have prayerfully considered our commitment to Christ and his church, we offer up our lives to God knowing that God can use whatever we give to bring the good news of Jesus to a world in need, to the glory of God.  May God continue to draw us closer to him, knowing that while there’s plenty in this world you can put a pricetag on, our relationship with Christ is priceless.  Amen.