'Jesus came to Bethany.'

I have always felt drawn to this bit of St John’s gospel because  it offers an opportunity to pause before we get involved in the drama of the Passion which fills the rest of Holy Week.  We all need such prayer pauses if we are to reflect on the spiritual and theological meaning of our faith.

St Anselm, an eleventh century Archbishop of Canterbury  speaks of the importance of faith seeking understanding. What he is talking about is how we might strengthen and inform our faith in order to know the love of God more clearly and so act in accordance with God’s will.

Stopping to reflect on the meaning of our religious experience is therefore an important part of our Christian life. If we take refuge in too much busyness we could be in danger of what the poet T S Eliot calls having the experience but missing the meaning  - something I have talked about on more than one occasion!  In order to avoid missing the meaning and so hear God’s voice to us we need time to reflect and be still – for the Bible insists that  we hear God best in silence – in reflection and stillness.

We all need our getaway quiet places, even if that is something like our gardens. For Jesus it is Bethany and particularly the home of his friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Here, it seems, he could just be himself and relax and get in touch with his inner self, the soul – the place where we are most in tune with God.  This time, though, it was different and just as, later in the week, another meal with his friends was to be charged with a new meaning, so an incident in Bethany was to  change the atmosphere of the occasion.

The anointing of Jesus by Mary (or in other Gospel accounts, an unnamed woman) has always, rightly, been seen as an expression of sheer undiluted love.  Mary seemed to sense that Jesus was facing up to something that troubled and pre-occupied him. Perhaps he was less at ease than usual and close friends, can sense when things are not entirely OK for us.  She would be aware that Jesus was in conflict with the ruling religious authorities and some foreboding settled upon her.  As when we are up against it, the action of a friend can make things more bearable, so here Mary makes a gesture to show Jesus how much she cared about him, how much she loved him. 

In some ways it was a wildly extravagant gesture.  The perfume she cascaded over him was costly and meant to be used sparingly. We know its worth because Judas protested about the waste and supplied us with the financial value – three hundred denarii.  In the other Gospel accounts it was all the disciples who made this protest but it suits John’s purpose to highlight the treachery of Judas. Only here is he called a thief .

The argument that the poor could benefit is, of course an attractive one. Christianity has always believed that we should fight for justice for the poor and also do as much as we can to alleviate their suffering. The Church has always been at the forefront of social justice and we might take Judas’s side against Mary’s extravagance did we not know about what would follow this interlude in Bethany. 

Jesus himself, helps us towards this understanding because he spoke of Mary having treasured and kept this perfume for his burial and it would not be lost on her (and on the others) that this time was now.  So what we have here is a beautiful act, a lovely gesture by a friend  who simply wanted to do something generously extravagant because she couldn’t think of any other way which would express the depth of her love for him and she sensed that now, more than any other time, he needed an expression of love to carry him through whatever he was facing -  even if, at that time, Mary wasn’t sure what that was.

There we could leave it and draw from it the lesson we often do draw from this incident about the importance of generous love towards God whose own outpouring of generous love has no limitation.  What Mary did we are bidden to imitate in our own approach to God – we are to offer him total generous love in response to his unconditional and absolute love for us – a love we see most clearly in the Cross and Passion of Jesus.  But there is something we might miss and to discover it we have to remember that very rarely in St. John’s Gospel are things exactly as they seem.

The Clue is that John immediately follows the incident at Bethany with our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem – which we commemorated yesterday.  All four gospels tell both of this highly charged procession and the anointing at Bethany but there are differences in the telling. Setting aside that all but John locate the anointing in the house of Simon the Leper, the real differences are that there is no connection between Bethany and the Palm Procession.  In Luke the two events are separated by eleven chapters of other material; Matthew and Mark place the Palm procession before Bethany. This chronology is generally accepted by the Church in that Bethany is often the Gospel read in Holy week after Palm Sunday.  John, however, places the two events next to each other and the Procession of Palms comes immediately after Bethany.

I think there is a good reason for this because both are concerned with Anointing but perhaps not in the way I have been describing it so far.  I believe that as well as making an act of generous love, Mary was making a political statement – even if that was not her own perceived intention.

Anointing has a number of meanings but one that is very strong is that it is an action we do to Kings.  At the very heart of the Coronation Service in Britain is the moment when the Archbishop of Canterbury solemnly consecrates the Sovereign – and in so doing sets her or him apart as Ruler of the people under God. God is invoked as the Archbishop prays that He will bless and sanctify  his chosen servant who is to be anointed with sacred oil and consecrated King or Queen. This is followed by anointing with the oil of Chrism, in the form of a Cross.  This ceremony is what makes the chosen one actually King or Queen and its roots go way back to the consecration and anointing of King David by God’s prophet Samuel.  Anointing then, is about making public the choice of God of one who will rule over the people.  And for Jesus this moment of anointing came in Bethany and at the hands of Mary.

The Procession which follows in John, when Jesus entered Jerusalem in triumph and was hailed as the King of Israel  confirms the Coronation and I believe this was John’s intention in placing the two incidents next to each other.  John is making it quite plain to his readers, both those for whom his Gospel was written, and now for us, that we are to see in Jesus, God’s Chosen One who enters His city as the truly consecrated King.  In this, of course, he throws down a challenge to both the religious and Roman leaders that Jesus is the long-expected Messiah – a challenge they are quick to act upon as the events of Holy Week then quickly unfold.

If that was John’s intention – and it is entirely plausible simply from the Biblical evidence it also puts a different slant on the meaning of Holy week.  We are used to thinking about what people did to Jesus and much of our meditation in this week centres on the chief characters of the Passion drama. We see how Jesus is treated and how his Passion is brought about by political intrigue between two sworn enemies – the ruling Religious party of the High priest and the Roman Governor, Pilate – with a small bit part in Luke’s Gospel for the puppet King Herod Antipas.  But what we must also take account of is that, whilst all the characters of the Passion Drama have their parts to play, the real author of it all is God, himself.

In the end the Passion of Jesus Christ is about who has power and how that power is used. It is about the power of Love to conquer all that is not love in the human heart – in the world.  The real power is not in the hands of those who took part in the Passion Drama but rather in the hands of the One who truly wielded it – God himself – and God had a bigger battle to wage than that against a few misguided Jewish rulers, a fickle crowd and a pathetic Roman Governor who hadn’t got the courage of his convictions. 

The real battle was against what Paul rightly calls (in Ephesians Chapter 6) the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.  The battle was about who could claim the human heart which is the actual battleground on which the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus is fought out.  There is therefore a Divine Plan hatched out between Jesus and His Father which both must fulfil if the battle is to be won and God’s desire for us is fulfilled.   Victory in that battle depends not so much on the machinations of the bit part actors in the Holy Week drama but on whether Jesus was prepared to yield totally to his Father’s Will and make it His own.

At Bethany – in the action of Mary – God was making a clear statement to His Son that the only way now to win the human heart was for him to enter into it as King and as Chosen One. Mary anointed Jesus for this final conflict. We do not always know the full meaning of our actions of love but if we are living close to God he will use us for his bigger purpose and for Mary this was God’s will for her. I believe he prompted her to act in the way she did. 

The means she chose was to be the means by which God triumphed in the end – Love.  The power of Love defeated evil and because of it, love claims our hearts.  And our first Holy week question is:

How much are we prepared to give God the power to love us – enough to claim us as His own - as Mary did?