Lent V Year C |
St James’, Peace River |
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If I'd said to you at the start of Lent that Lent is about love, you would have thought I was crazy. We have this perception of Lent as a season of negativity, defined either by the absence of good things where we give up stuff we like, or by a focus on bad things where we concentrate on our sin and our incapacity to get it right. And I guess that is where we start: we begin Lent by acknowledging our separation, our distance, from God and all the things we do that contribute to it. But somewhere in the middle of these six weeks, the picture starts to change. If we're listening to what the story of the Bible tells us, if we're paying attention to the way God meets us here week by week in bread and wine, we come to realize that the focus on negativity might not be the point. At least it's not the point for its own sake – we're not here to wallow in self-pity or self-hatred. Rather, we're here to be healed from the self-pity and self-hatred that we unconsciously inflict on ourselves through all those patterns of indulgent and wilful behavior that we have begun to identify. And that healing comes from the central message of Lent, which is God's great love for us. Last week we heard, in the parable of the prodigal son, that it doesn't matter how far away we've gone or what awful things we've done, God never stops loving us. We are also coming closer and closer to the final proof, the ultimate evidence, of how true that is: the crucifixion – God's own gift of life to us in the death of Jesus his Son. Today's first reading from Isaiah seems to be getting us ready to hear about that over the next two weeks – we are being asked to pay attention, to watch carefully, because God is “about to do a new thing” – about to put love into action in a way that we could never imagine, in a way which totally changes the world and our lives. For today, though, we're in a slightly different space. We have turned the corner on Lent, we have come to the point where we know it's not about our petty negativities but about God's inexhaustible healing and forgiving love – and we are ready to hear the story of God's total self-giving as it comes to us over the next two weeks. We know where we are and we see what's coming. But before we get there we have one last question to ask of ourselves. It's posed in different ways by St Paul writing to the Philippians, and by Mary of Bethany pouring out her heart (and her perfume) at Jesus' feet. The question is: Knowing how much God loves us, what do we want to do about it? It puts me in mind of the two different responses I notice in myself when I see someone doing something extraordinary. Sometimes, say when it's an athlete winning a race or a dancer performing some act of great agility, I think “I'm glad there's somebody who can do that.” My admiration takes the form of appreciation – it's good to know what human beings are capable of. But just occasionally, perhaps when a curler makes a great shot or a pianist brings the house down with a concerto, I think “I wish I could do that.” It's still admiration, but it takes the form of inspiration. I may never be able to attain their standard, and I know it – but I'm inspired to try even so. Our response to God's love takes both those forms, and both are important. When we see what God has done for us in Jesus, or when we take the viewpoint of people in the gospel story like Mary who see what he is about to do – it's good that we are simply amazed. The new thing that God does in dying for us, opens up heights and depths to human life that we would never know were there otherwise. But we also see people in the New Testament going beyond awe and amazement. They can't just leave God's love on the bookshelf; they can't just say “I'm glad someone can do that.” Their response is “I wish I could do that”... I wish I could love that deeply; I wish I could give myself that freely. And it doesn't matter that Jesus' death on the cross is a once-for-all unrepeatable demonstration of what love really means. Just because we can never attain to the standard doesn't mean it's not worth trying. For Mary that response seems to be instinctive. She knows in her heart what Jesus is going to do, and she is inspired to do something that echoes in advance his extravagant and total self-giving. She takes her most valuable possession – 300 denarii would translate into many thousands of dollars by today's standards – and she pours it out over Jesus' feet. Not just a single spoonful; not even just a heaping handful. The whole thing. It's a waste – that's what Judas said, and probably what everyone else was thinking – but is it? What is perfume for, after all? Is it for keeping on a shelf? Is it meant to be treated as an investment, a commodity to be sold for whatever you can get? Of course not. It's meant to be used; it's meant to say something. And what Mary says to Jesus, by pouring it out and then by pouring herself out as she wipes his feet with her hair, is “You are everything to me. I want to be able to see and touch and smell this moment for my whole life.” What her action buys is something 300 denarii could never buy: a memory that has lasted almost 2000 years. So when we're talking about how God's love shapes us, how it draws us into wanting to do Something that will show how important it is to us – maybe we can trust our instincts like Mary did. These are responses that come from the gut level, that go deeper than what's in our heart and that our head may be saying, “Come on, that's crazy.” Sure, letting God's love inspire us is crazy – but it's profoundly right. And if we're looking for a clue to some kind of dramatic, extravagant action that we can take in our own way, maybe it's in the last line of the gospel reading, where Jesus says “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” Mary had Jesus standing right in front of her. We don't, but we don't have to look far to find people we could pour ourselves out for. There will always be someone. Being the kind of people we are, we probably need that gut-level crazy-sounding extravagant response to allow us to see what we are really capable of when it comes to loving God in return by loving others. But there is more to being inspired by the cross than one single dramatic re-action. St Paul, in today's epistle reading, talks to us about what it means to let your whole life be shaped by the impact of God's love for you, and by your own capacity to respond to it. Paul's focus is not on one symbolic gesture that communicates your desire to give yourself in return – he's talking about how to turn the symbolic gesture into a lifelong reality. Paul's ambition, his goal, is to have his whole life reflect what Christ has done for him. And he's honest enough to say, “not that I have already obtained this” - but then he says the key thing, “But I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” That's the inescapable reality; that's the amazing love of God right there. We could all say the same thing. “Christ Jesus has made me his own.” No matter who we've been or what we've done, the life and death and resurrection of Jesus shows us that God is greater than all of it, that God is about to do a new thing not only in Christ but in us, that God wants us as his own, that we have someone who loves us and who sees the good that we're capable of even when we don't. I'm not saying that we ought to be like Paul or Mary. There is no ought or should here. I'm saying that if we watch, if we pay attention, if we see through to the heart of the story, if we let Jesus speak to us or even just look at us on his way to the cross – we WILL feel like Paul or Mary. We will want to do something amazing to show what he means to us. We will want to begin new lives, to throw everything else away in order that real love may be the only thing that grows in us. We may still be grasping for how that can actually happen in your life or mine – so was Saint Paul! - but the one thing you can know for sure is that it is really happening. As you look at the story of our life, what you are really seeing, from now on, is the story of what happens when God loves you and gives himself for you, and nothing else matters. * |
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