How much are we willing to give?
Just a week ago today I might have said that I had given it all I had. That’s because last weekend I had the privilege of serving the almost 60 high schoolers who took part in our annual diocese wide “Happening” retreat. For those of you who don’t yet know about Happening, I want you to, because its one of the many great ministries that your contribution to the diocese makes possible.
Happening is a weekend retreat for teenagers, which resembles Cursillo, if any of you have had that experience. During two days and nights, participants learn about Christian faith, pray and play and worship and offer testimonies. It’s a life changing experience for them, and—because this is the 33rd year in which the diocese has sponsored Happening—I know that it’s an experience that’s sticky. Our most active young adult Episcopalians, not to mention many of our young clergy, have been formed through Happening.
But because the participants are high schoolers, they’re capable of not only of having powerful spiritual experiences, but also of eating a lot. Which is where I came in. My role in the retreat was a backstage one, in large part because my younger son—once a Happener himself and now a youth minister in the diocese—was among the young adult staff for the retreat. And I didn’t want to get in the way of his ministry. So instead of being a spiritual director, like clergy usually do, I headed up the team that cooked the Saturday night dinner. Which was an intentionally extravagant affair—served plated in three courses—because it’s supposed to be a symbol of God’s hospitality. Resembling, for example, the feast the father threw when his wayward son returned, as we heard in last week’s Gospel.
So I cooked a fancy dinner for 60 kids. How much are we willing to give? Well, we certainly gave them a mountain of food, enough to make a dent in Costco. But because I also wanted the dinner to have some flair, I made a special rice dish that I had learned to cook while my husband and I were serving as missionaries in Jamaica. It takes all day to make it, because Caribbean people grate and milk coconuts to cook the rice in. But since I was pretty sure I couldn’t pull that off for sixty servings, I used a North American shortcut. I bought a beautiful big jar of coconut oil, and poured it over the rice just before it was ready to serve.
You know where I’m going with this, right?
Rudyard Kipling’s evocative poem Lichtenberg, about wartime memories from South Africa, begins “Smells are surer than sights or sounds/ to make your heartstrings crack.” Which was never truer for me than in the moment when I lifted the lid of the rice cooker; I nearly fainted from the aroma of warm coconut. It brought back immediate memories of living in the Caribbean, and all that went with that time of life: the birth and toddlerhood of my children, the lilting speech of the local people we shared ministry with, even the less pleasant smells of a poor place, like uncollected garbage. These dense sensory memories flooded into my consciousness right alongside the scent of the coconut oil, which indeed filled the house with its fragrance.
Does it seem curious to you that we are proclaiming Gospel stories such great extravagance in the midst of Lent? Consider just this week and the last, when we’ve remembered the prodigal son and his big party, and now we meet Mary and her oh-so-expensive anointing of Jesus. It seems to me that—as we approach the passion of our Lord—our lectionary wants us to notice that the stakes are getting higher, in both extravagance of love and magnitude of loss.
My own memories of life in Jamaica, broken open by a jar of coconut oil, included some stench as well as perfume. And in like manner, this extravagant encounter between Mary and Jesus took place in the home of Lazarus. Whom we last encountered just a few verses previously in John’s Gospel, emerging from his tomb wrapped in stinking bandages. Did Mary’s perfume overcome any lingering smell of death in the house, or—as is so often the case with memory—did the two scents and the two memories comingle?
“She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.” When Jesus spoke, he pointed to the connection between Mary’s extravagant gift and his own impending death, which his disciples were otherwise doing their best to deny. And to the extent that John recorded this story for us, I think we’re also invited to bravely inhale the scent of all that is beautiful, and fear not if we find that it contains the scent of fear, or loss, or death.
Because our human journey is like that. Death is part of our mortal nature; the possibility of betrayal and loss are as near to us as Judas Iscariot was to Jesus. But this is not a reason to live in fear, or—as Jesus reminded his betrayer— to give less than everything when love demands it.
How much are we willing to give? You tell me. How much love should we give to teenagers, hungry for meaning while they grow up in a world rent by anxiety and suspicion? How much heartfelt Christian testimony should a teenager give when their culture dismisses Christianity and tells them to play it cool? How much faith should we put in our fellow humans when the media is constantly telling us whom to be afraid of? And the question that perhaps underlies all of them, how much of God’s own power and sovereignty should Jesus Christ give up for our salvation?
I invite you to take these questions into your prayers as we approach the extravagant gift that is the passion of our Lord during Holy Week. Without judging yourself, consider when you’ve loved and served without counting the cost, and when you’ve felt like you had to hold back. What was going on for you in each instance? And in like manner, consider how much you are willing to receive from God. While it is always God’s property to give more than we can ask or imagine, I know that I am able to receive more blessing when I test—and confess—the boundaries of my own willingness to love. When I crack open the jar of my heart a little wider—so to speak—and risk pouring out a little more love.
“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” The prophet Isaiah, whom we heard in our first lesson, was speaking to a people longing to return home from their long Babylonian captivity. So we know that God was not actually promising a brand new thing; the memory of their Exodus from Egypt was still very present, and the Israelites knew that God was in the business of liberation. Likewise for we who follow Jesus, everything in our story reminds us that God is in the business of giving life even in the presence of death. How much faith are we willing to give to this story? Set your faces towards Bethany, sisters and brothers, and learn from the example of Mary. Set your faces towards Jerusalem, and receive the extravagant gift of Jesus Christ.
