April 3, 2022 – Fifth Sunday in Lent

Taking stock of the place the Jesus, the Christ, holds in my life – so that I can receive the love of God so painfully and perfectly given on the cross.

Let us pray.  Gracious God, we give you thanks for the gift of your presence in this time and place, and within each one of us. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day, and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

I mentioned at the beginning of the service that this is the fifth Sunday in Lent.  So most of our Lenten journey is already behind us.  The climax of Good Friday and Easter is two weeks or less away.  So if we think of this time period of Lent as a kind of ‘basic training’ in the Christian faith to prepare us for the great celebration of Easter, it’s a little bit like ‘basic training’ in the military. Now we’re into week five – we’re almost done, and it’s a good time for each of us to take stock of our progress to the desired goal.

Today, I want to invite all of us – myself included – to do just that – to look inside ourselves. Next Sunday it will be too late. We’ll already be diving into processions and palm branches and the Passion Gospel and right into Holy Week.  Today, we need to go inside ourselves – a kind of deeper introspection about this person that we know named Jesus, the Christ.

How do you see him personally? Where is he in your life? What will this upcoming commemoration of his death and resurrection, and Good Friday and Easter mean to you? I think it’s easy to keep our focus outward at times like this. It’s easy to get kind of “caught up in the crowd” of people around us – even if that crowd is rejoicing in him as we are here this morning – just like it’s easy to get caught up in the cheering of the Winnipeg Jets when you’re at a home game with them in the Canada Life Centre downtown.

But I want each of us to look inside ourselves personally – on our own – and become aware of the place of Jesus Christ in your day-to-day lives – in relation to who we are not just as religious people but as real people – living in southern Manitoba in 2022.  And today’s Scripture readings are particularly helpful for our introspection because we are given the privilege of seeing into the lives of two fellow disciples from long ago, in the Gospel Reading and in the Second Reading.

In the Gospel Reading we read about Mary of Bethany. She is a sister to Martha and Lazarus – the man that Jesus brought back to life. The setting of this story also takes place only a short while after that miracle of Jesus’. The scene in today’s reading appears to us like a kind of ‘thanksgiving dinner party’ that’s been given in Jesus’ honour. Mary demonstrates the place that Jesus occupies in her life by her symbolic actions at that party – her love and dedication for Jesus without words – through the anointing of his feet. It seems to almost foreshadow Jesus’ impending death, as a person might be anointed prior to their burial. John says that the house was “filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” Everyone gathered at that party was blessed by the expression of Mary’s love for Jesus. Now, in our day, at an event like this some people might crack open a very expensive bottle of wine or champagne to celebrate this monumental occasion. But in this scene, the disapproving Judas says to Mary about the anointing perfume – “Why wasn’t this sold for 300 denarii?”, which was a unit of money in his day.  Do you know what that would mean today? That perfume was worth $40,000! Now you and I might be a little critical of the extravagance of Mary’s expression of love, but clearly John wanted us to see just how important Jesus was to Mary. And even on a human level, Jesus’ public miracle of raising Lazarus is, in a sense, the beginning of the end for Jesus – at least his physical life – because in the section of John’s Gospel just before the reading you heard this morning, the religious and civil authorities have reached their limit. They react! All of this ‘signs and wonders’ by Jesus is too much!  This man must die. And Mary is likely conscious of that rising hostility – of the price that Jesus will pay for raising her brother. Even with no words being spoken, this disciple, Mary, demonstrates the place that Jesus holds in her life, and not just her so-called religious life – in her whole day-to-day life.

The second example we have is from the Apostle Paul in our Second Reading from his Letter to the Church in Philippi. In the first part of that reading he is kind of “flashing his religious credentials.” In a sense he’s kind of bragging about how religious he has been and all the various steps that he’s taken. But then he states now what really matters to him – what’s really important. And so he says these words, “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” All of his religious achievements mean nothing compared to having come into relationship with Jesus. And like Mary of Bethany he states the priority of Jesus to him emphatically – but with words instead of expensive gifts. He says, “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him …” Now you need to know that the Bible translators have kind of cleaned up Saint Paul’s language a bit. What they translate as ‘rubbish’, in the Greek is actually ‘excrement.’ So Paul is saying “I regard all these prior things as excrement.” And the word some of us might use for that begins with an “s” and ends with a “t”, all so Paul may gain Christ and be found in him. And even then, Paul is not satisfied. The place of Jesus Christ in his life is continually being deepened. He says, “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, … forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal.” Paul states, about as emphatically as one could, the place of Jesus Christ in his life. So we have two lives, two disciples – Mary of Bethany and Paul the Apostle, explaining what Jesus means to them in their lives.

In today’s Collect Prayer at the beginaning of the service, we prayed these words, “May the power of his victorious cross transform those who turn in faith to him.” Clearly Mary’s and Paul’s lives were transformed by their relationship with Jesus and his ultimate expression of love by enduring the cross. Often, I think, when we enter into Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter, we think ‘collectively’. We’re conscious of, and appreciative of, Jesus sacrificing himself on the cross, reconciling us to God, removing the sin that separates us from God – and that’s all good to be conscious of and thankful for. But equally important, if not more important, is to receive the love from the cross for you – to let the love of Jesus Christ sink deeply into you – to accept the victorious cross in your life – not just your religious life – your whole life – to the point where your life continues to be transformed.

The final verse of today’s Gradual hymn, that we just sang before the reading of the Gospel – A Spendthrift Love is the Lord, says it well. “How shall we love this heart-strong God who gives us everything, whose ways to us are strange and odd; what can we give or bring?

Acceptance of the matchless gift is gift enough to give. The very act will shake and shift the way we love and live.”

As you walk through Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter, be conscious of our sin, our need to repent, of the painful sacrifice of Christ on the cross. But most importantly, accept the love of Christ that it all represents for you, and join Mary of Bethany and Paul the Apostle in expressing your love – your life transformed by this victorious cross.

Amen.