A
Woman's Perfume
by the Reverend Dr. Byron E.
Shafer
(Rutgers, April 1, 2001; 5th
Sunday in Lent, Year C)
Isaiah 43:16–21 (OT, p. 746); John
12:1–8 (NT, pp. 109–110)
[extensive use is made throughout of
materials by Barbara Lundblad in The
Abingdon Women’s Preaching Annual, Series 2, Year C, ed. Leonora
Tubbs
Tisdale (Nashville: Abingdon, 2000), pp. 81–83, and of ideas from John
Stendahl
in New Proclamation, Year C, 2000–2001,
Advent through Holy Week, ed.
Marshall D. Johnson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), pp. 196–197]
Some
say our human sense of smell evokes the strongest memories, stronger even than
sound or sight. I don’t know
whether that’s science or personal opinion.
But to me it seems true.
Whenever
I pass the Stella d’Oro plant on Broadway in the Bronx, the sweet scent it
emits brings back childhood memories of Saturdays, when my mother would bake
fresh batches of cookies and their aroma would fill the house.
And
when I smell a woman’s perfume, the oldest memories it brings back—not the
only ones, but the oldest ones!—are of shopping for my mother at Christmas,
when I was just a boy in Chicago. I’d
go to the local drug store, or, when I was a little older, downtown to Marshall
Field’s Department Store. And
there I’d spray every one of the test bottles of perfume into the air, or onto
my wrist, savoring their fragrance, until finally, prompted by the
saleswoman’s increasing impatience, I’d finally plunk down my $5 bill on the
counter and order what I’d known all along I’d be getting—that small
dark-blue bottle of Evening in Paris.
Yes,
certain smells have left an impression deep in my brain cells.
What smells have registered deep in yours?
What smells recall to your mind places and faces and memories of yore?
I
wonder how long the smell of sweet perfume lingered in that home in Bethany, the
home of which we heard in today’s Second Lesson?
I wonder how long the fragrance of nard lasted on Jesus’s feet? How long, in Mary’s hair after she used it to wipe his
feet? Did Jesus remember that
sweetness a few days later as he washed his disciples’ feet at their last meal
together? Did Judas remember it as
he led the soldiers to that certain place in the garden where Jesus was praying?
There’s
something quite remarkable about the perfume in this story.
You see, this fragrance, which filled the whole house, evoked thoughts before the events happened. “Leave
her alone,” Jesus said when Judas complained about Mary’s extravagant
bathing of his feet. “She bought
this perfume so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”
Now,
according to the story, Mary used up that whole liquid pint of nard, imported
from far away Nepal at the cost of one year’s wages, by anointing Jesus’s
feet right then and there. She
didn’t keep any of it back for the day of Jesus’s literal burial.
That occurred six days later, when her nard was all gone, used
up—wasted, according to Judas.
So,
was Jesus saying that Mary’s act was done to evoke thoughts about his death
before it happened?Did Mary think of this anointing as a burial rite?
Did she know that’s what she was doing?
I believe so. Indeed, there
are two other gospel stories—one in Mark (14:3–9),
the other in Matthew (26:6–13)—where
an unnamed woman anoints Jesus with costly perfume. In those stories, after a number of the disciples complain
about her wasting of money, Jesus explicitly commends the woman for her good
service in preparing his body for burial. You
see, in those stories the reference to preparing Jesus for burial is made
explicit.
There’s
also a third story, in Luke’s Gospel (7:36–50).
But it’s not at all about burial; it’s solely about extravagant love.
In Luke’s story a woman, a forgiven sinner, crashes a dinner party.
She bathes Jesus’s feet with tears of joy and dries them with her hair
before anointing his feet with costly perfume.
So,
what do we do with the differences between these stories?
Was there one basic event narrated with considerable variation in each
gospel, or were there two events involving different two women in two different
places? We have no way of knowing
for certain, but I think the latter; and I believe the author of John gathers up
into his story the theme of a woman’s anointing Jesus for burial that’s part
of the event narrated in Matthew and Mark and merges it with the other theme of
a woman’s lovingly wiping Jesus’s feet with her hair, that’s associated
with the event recounted in Luke.
At
any rate, the story of a woman who anoints Jesus with costly perfume is given
quite important place in all four of the gospels!
Such a story was so memorable that the early Christians simply could not
forget it. Its fragrance filled their hearts and minds.
John’s
story n eeds to be heard in all of its fullness and particularity. Yes, this anointing of Jesus by Mary is for burial.
Yet this anointing is also about overcoming her fear in the face of that
coming death and her sense of impending loss, about overcoming them through an
act of extravagant love
Note
that Mary bathes Jesus’s feet with
perfume, then wipes them! In the very next chapter of John, Jesus kneels down and first
washes his disciples’ feet, then wipes
them. And Jesus says, “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have
washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (13:14).
And just a bit later Jesus says, “Just as I have loved you, you also
should love one another” (13:34).
Mary,
it seems, had been the first disciple to model this kind of love.
A whole chapter before Jesus does it himself and commands it of others
Mary does it already, bathing Jesus’s feet, with a pint of liquid nard, and
wiping them with her hairas the fragrance of that perfume of hers filled the
house. “Leave her alone,” Jesus
said when Judas complained about Mary’s extravagant bathing of Jesus’s feet.
“You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
At
a critical point in the novel Final
Payments (New York: Ballantine, 1979)by
the contemporary American author Mary Gordon, a memory of the Gospel of John’s
story about Mary of Bethany is triggered for the novel’s protagonist, Isabel
Moore (pp. 298–299). Isabel suddenly comes to understand this biblical story much
differently from the way she had before, and her new understanding illumines for
her the path she now needs to take in her own life.
Listen as Isabel narratesthe insight that comes to her from remembering
John’s story of Mary and Jesus and Judas.
“It
is one of the marvels of a Catholic education that the impulse of a few words
can bring whole narratives to light with an immediacy and a clarity that are
utterly absorbing. ‘The poor you
have always with you.’ I knew
where Christ had said that: at the house of Martha and Mary.
Mary had opened a jar of ointment over Christ’s feet.
[N]ard, I remembered. And
she wiped his feet with her hair. Judas
had rebuked her; he had said that the ointment ought to be sold for the poor.
But, St. John had noted, Judas had said that only because he kept the
purse and was a thief. And Christ had said to Judas, Mary at his feet, her hair
spread out around him, ‘The poor you have always with you: but me you have not
always.’
“And
until that moment, climbing the dark stairs in a rage to my ugly room, it was a
passage I had not understood. It
seemed to justify to me the excesses of centuries of fat, tyrannical bankers.
But now I understood. What
Christ was saying, what he meant, was that the pleasures of that hair, that
ointment, must be taken. Because
the accidents of death would deprive us soon enough. We must not deprive ourselves, our loved ones, of the luxury
of our extravagant affections. We
must not try to second-guess death by refusing to love the ones we loved in
favor of the anonymous poor.
“And
it came to me, fumbling in the hallway for the light, that I had been a thief.
Like Judas, I had wanted to hide [the] gold [of my love], to count it in
the dead of night, to parlay it into some safe and murderous investment.…
So that never again would I be found weeping, like [that other] Mary, at
the tombstone at the break of dawn.… I
had wanted to give up all I loved so that I would never lose it.
I had tried to kill all that had brought me pleasure so that I would not
be susceptible [to loss].… I knew
now I must open the jar of ointment. I
must open my life.”—to loving and to overcoming the fear of loss, loving
those whose love brings me pleasure.
The
story of Mary of Bethany, the story of one who showed us how pouring out love can overcome the fear of coming death, of
imminent loss. She bathed Jesus in
an act of extravagant affection, and as she did so, she was anointing him in
preparation for burial. And the fragrance of her perfume and her love filled the
house.
I
like to imagine that later that fragrance of her perfume and her love must have
also filled the tomb where they lay Jesus’s broken body, and that when the
stone was rolled away that first Easter morning, that fragrance simply could not
be contained. It came forth from
the tomb to fill the whole world, as the contemporary American poet Lucille
Clifton writes in one of her early poems, entitled “spring song” (Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir
1969–1980 [BOA Editions, 1987], p. 106):
the green of Jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet
smell of delicious Jesus
is opening the house and
the dance of Jesus music
has hold of the air and
the world is turning
in the body of Jesus and
the future is possible
We
have come here this Sunday to break open this ancient story and to bathe each
other in the promise of Christ’s love and peace.
Some will tell us it is pointless—extravagant—in the face of the
world’s needs to indulge ourselves here, providing for this magnificent house
of worship and its costly services. There
will be days when we will do other things: we will do what we can to shelter the
homeless, to open our doors to the children of this community, to defend the
poor, and cry out for justice. God
knows Rutgers Church opens its doors daily to bind up the brokenhearted and to
lift up the lowly.
But
today we will let the fragrance of our love for Jesus fill this house. We will listen to each other, and touch each other, and
remember that Jesus has risen and is with us still.
Then,
when we leave this place and go out into the streets, when we read of terrible
tragedies which make us hold our children close, when we grow tired and this
world threatens to wear us down, perhaps we'll hear again the music of a hymn or
an anthem sung this morning, or we’ll remember the words of a prayer recited,
or we’ll experience again the sharing of the peace.
And
hopefully, we’ll also be caught off guard by a whiff of sweetness in the air. “What’s that?” we’ll ask.
Ah, then we’ll remember the woman’s perfume that filled the house and
continues to fill the world—the extravagant love of Mary for Jesus and the
extravagant love of God for us extravagant affections that can overcome all
sense of impending loss, all fear of coming death.
Yes,
the stone of the empty tomb has been rolled away, and the fragrance of Mary’s
perfume and love has filled the earth, to remind us that we can overcome our
fear of loss and death by offering extravagant affection to God and to all of
humankind.
Let
us pray:
O God,
we, like Mary, are fearful of coming death and of the impending loss of those
whose love brings us pleasure. It
is tempting to bury the gold of our love lest we lose it.
But move us, O God, like Mary, to overcome our fears with deeds of
extravagant love, so that the fragrance of our perfume may fill the world.
In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.
Return to Sermon Archive