Extravagant Love

My grandfather was a frugal man.  Careful with his resources.  He and my grandmother were children of the Depression.  He remembered how his parents had to start over after the national economy crashed, how they had to build the family business from scratch.

But as a grandfather, when it came to dispensing stories and snacks, my grandfather was anything but frugal. My favorites were those chocolate-covered graham crackers.  In the wonderful mathematics of grandparenting, if two cookies were good, then four were even better.  And if you played your cards right, you could persuade him to put another two (or four) on your napkin when you were done.  Those cookies taste like love to me.

The scene that we witness in today’s gospel is also about an abundant kind of love.  We find Jesus with some of his closest friends, among them Lazarus, whom he has brought back from the dead not that long ago.  That astounding moment has made many people angry.  And so the animosity toward Jesus is building.  The authorities are plotting to have Jesus arrested – because, after all, someone who can raise the dead is a bigger threat than they had even imagined.

We find Jesus having a dinner party with close friends – Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary, some other disciples.  Mary does a strange thing.  She takes this expensive perfume, pours it over Jesus’ feet, and wipes his feet with her hair.  It is lavish and intimate.  I wonder if Mary remembers the last time she knelt at Jesus’ feet, just after her brother died, when she hurled accusations at Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Our tempers grow short when we are grieving.  We sometimes say things that we later regret.

I believe that Mary fully understands where this moment sits.  It’s not just any dinner party.  She knows that her brother’s return to life has caused trouble.  And she suspects, I feel sure, that Jesus is about to die.  So, with death behind her and death in front of her, she can be forgiven for doing something strange.  Jesus says as much when he says that she has anticipated his burial, the time when a body would have typically been anointed with perfumes.

In the face of death there is a temptation to intellectualize things.  We ask questions –hard questions.  Why did God let this happen?  Why wouldn’t God stop it?  Why won’t God take away this pain?  Those questions are important, and we have to sit with them, however difficult it can be.  But there’s also a part of grief that is visceral, embodied.

When Mary kneels to anoint Jesus’ feet, she is embodying both the love she feels now and the grief she will soon come to know.  She knows death is looming, and yet she loves extravagantly, with her whole self.  She pours a pound of perfume over Jesus’ feet.  She wipes his feet with her very own hair.  The fragrance fills the room.  Nothing held back.  Her love seeps into every corner of that space, and it makes people like Judas uncomfortable.

We are people who live in the midst of death too.  Yesterday we laid to rest our friend Jim, whose last years have been difficult in a way that is profoundly unfair.  This week the Chatham community has been shaken by the death of a 51-year-old father of four, Michael Pacchia, in a car accident just up the street.  It is impossible to understand how this happened, how a family is left to grieve so deeply.

Many of our young people know the Pacchia family and are really hurting for their friends and classmates who have lost their father.  When we gathered for confirmation on Tuesday, we wrestled with the questions we have for God in impossibly hard moments.  I suspect their questions reflect some of your own.  They said:

• Our world is a beautiful place. Why can’t everyone enjoy it?
• Why do people hurt [us] without knowing?
• Why do families fight?
• Why do people become sick?
• Why do I make bad decisions?
• If you always have a plan for us, why do you let tragedies happen?
• Why do terrible things happen to innocent people?  How will they recover?
• Is there anything I can do to help?  How do I help them move forward?
• Why does grief hit at certain times?

There are no easy answers to the questions of why, but I believe that Mary teaches us one way to respond in the midst of grief.  When we live with death behind us and death in front of us, when we realize that in reality every single person we encounter is in the process of dying, then what can we do but love extravagantly?  Pour out our care and compassion for one another as lavishly as we can so that each of us is sure that, no matter what happens, we are held and we are loved.  Mary is anointing Jesus, whose death and resurrection mean that the tragedies of this life do not ultimately win, but Mary knows all too well that they are painful in the meantime.  She knows that pain.  She knows that grief.  And yet she still pours out all that perfume.

We’ve also been learning about prayer in confirmation, about what it means to talk to God about anything, whether or not we have the exact right words for what we’re trying to say.  We have practiced naming our own concerns to God, and we’ve also been practicing what the church calls intercessory prayer – praying on behalf of other people.  Intercessory prayer is powerful in many ways, including the way it pushes us to consider other people’s needs, to hold those needs in our hearts even as we lift them up to God.

I want to close this morning’s sermon with a prayer in the words of the confirmands.  May their words and their longings as they speak to God open the way for our own prayers this day.  May they help us love each other extravagantly even in the midst of death.

Let us pray.

Loving God,

Thank you for hearing our questions.

I ask for your forgiveness and ask you to help others who have been affected by my own decisions and the decisions of others.

I ask you to help the homeless people in the world and help them to get back on their feet.

Protect President Zelensky and make sure he is safe.

Be with my friend C.  Take her mind off the negatives and help her focus on the good memories.

Help my friend M. with his family life.

Be with my friend’s grandparents.  Make sure they can recover from their sickness and continue to live happily.

Be with my grandpa on the trip he is taking.  Be by his side and keep him safe.

Make sure I don’t hold myself back from doing what I love.

Help the Pacchia family.  Give them your prayers while mourning the loss of their loved one; help them throughout their grief and bring some sort of joy to them; help them get settled in their new life.

God, you have a huge role in people’s lives, so do the best you can to send prayers toward all of us.  Guide me and others to make good choices and be compassionate.

Help me, O God, when I face things I do not understand:

• To spread love to the people I know
• To stay strong and trustworthy
• To give hugs when they’re needed
• To write and share memories of people who have died.
• To help people through these tough times
• To stay strong for people who need it
• To let people know I’m there for them
• To listen better and just be there for people
• To forgive myself and others

Hear our prayers, in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

S.D.G. – The Rev. Dr. Christa M. Compton, Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Chatham, NJ