Reflections on Renewal 5. Preparing for Renewal

John 12:1-8, Isaiah 43:16-21

How are you preparing for Easter this year? Have you bought the colourful candy eggs for the children in your life – sons and daughters, or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews, or young friends? When I was growing up, my mother would hard-boil eggs and then we would use dye to colour them ourselves. Have some of you thought about how you are going to stage your annual Easter egg hunt this year? That was something we often did in our house. First thing Sunday morning, our children would search the house to find the hidden eggs and sometimes little gifts. Have you bought any yummy chocolate bunnies or chocolate eggs yet? It used to be that women would buy a new Easter bonnet and the family would all be decked out in new Easter clothes. And extended families would get together for Easter dinner. How are you all preparing to celebrate Easter this year? How extravagant will you be?

Our story about Jesus in today’s Gospel of John is about preparing for Easter too. There are some similarities in Jesus’ story to the way many in our culture prepare for Easter but there are also major differences. There was a fine dinner prepared by a meticulous host. There were invited guests with a guest of honour. The guest of honour: Jesus himself! Some time before this dinner, Jesus had restored Lazarus to life. He had been dead for four days but Jesus brought him back to life again (John 11:1-44). So his sisters, Mary and Martha, would obviously be overjoyed, exuberant, ecstatic, over the moon – you pick the words – about Lazarus being with them again. So Martha honoured Jesus her way with good food she lovingly prepared and served. And Mary honoured Jesus her way by pouring very expensive perfume all over Jesus’ feet.

Martha’s way was sensible. (Every one of us here can appreciates Martha.) Mary’s way, however, was provocative, exaggerated, reckless, excessive and extravagant. For Judas the keeper of the purse in Jesus’ band of disciples, what Mary did was a total waste of money. You see, Mary should have used water to wash Jesus’ feet. And she should have dried his feet with a towel of course. She could have used the best towels they had if she wanted to show her respect and appreciation for Jesus – but not her long hair untied, let down like a woman of the street. What Mary did was lovingly intimate in this story. And Jesus accepted her gift of love willingly because he accepted her devotion. He also knew the deeper meaning her actions would have in about a week. (But I don’t think it is much easier for us today to appreciate Mary’s way than it was for those in Jesus’ day!)

Judas was also part of the story. He looked at Mary and saw an excessive waste of good money-making perfume. Oh certainly not for himself but for those who were poor, he said. Judas knew that everyone present, especially Jesus, would understand that. Can’t you imagine Judas looking at the other disciples, at Jesus himself and pointing his finger at Mary and asking: “What’s wrong with this picture?” They all knew the perfume cost a year’s wages for the average worker in their culture. Mary’s action could rightly be called extravagant and even wasteful in light of the biblical priority of caring for those who are poor. We can appreciate Judas’s surface concern for the poor so we wonder what Jesus meant when he said: “You will always have poor people with you, but you will not always have me.”)

What do we do with Mary’s “pouring out” extravagance? 

Mary seemed to take the dinner party by surprise. She came into the room with a jar of very expensive perfume or aromatic oils. She poured it all out (like an anointing) on Jesus’ feet. She did not calculate or analyze or scrutinize what she did or else, I wonder, if she had would she have acted that way? But out of her full heart of love and gratitude to Jesus, she forgot herself, poured the perfume on Jesus’ feet and then dried his feet with her hair.

Do you feel an awkwardness with Mary’s action? I do. I think one reason we may feel this way is that her response to Jesus was so very personal. Another reason may be that we are encouraged to work hard and save our money and calculate carefully before we spend. A former Bank of Canada governor was in the news this week encouraging Canadians -- starting at the age of 30 -- to save 10 to 20 per cent of their before-tax earnings for their retirement. One Internet bank’s popular slogan is “Save your money!” We may also feel a discomfort with such extravagance because many of us were either raised by parents who went through the Depression or we are post-war parents ourselves. We were taught money was to be saved for a rainy day or for level-headed purposes. We have been encouraged to play it safe. So I suspect more than a few of us might wonder what Mary’s extravagance could mean for us today.

I am captured by two thoughts here. One is that Mary poured out her gift of love for Jesus because her family had been helped by Jesus. Their brother who had died was now alive again! That incredible gift was reason enough for her to express her love to the One who had given Lazarus back his life and had given Lazarus back to his family. So ponder with me: is it not the case that only when we have experienced God or been helped by God in some deeply personal way that we begin to understand how to live extravagantly in honouring Jesus? Here is an illustration that I believe is appropriate.

Larry Stewart was a successful businessman in Missouri. For 26 years (from 1980 through 2006) Stewart had been anonymously giving out $100 bills to anyone in need at Christmas. Then it was discovered who he was and why he began doing this.

In the winter of 1971, Stewart was working as a door-to-door salesman. When the company he was working for went out of business, he quickly ran out of money. Stewart hadn’t eaten in two days when he went to the Dixie Diner and ordered a breakfast he eventually admitted he couldn’t pay for. Ted Horn, the restaurant owner, sympathized with Stewart. He acted as though he found a $20 bill on the floor underneath of Stewart’s chair. “Son, you must have dropped this,” Horn said.

“It was like a fortune to me,” Stewart reflected. “I said, ‘Thank you, Lord.’ Right then, I made a promise. I said, ‘Lord, if you ever put me in a position to help other people, I will do it.’”

Over the years, Stewart has given away about $1.3 million. He says he has been amply rewarded in return. “I see the smiles and looks of hopelessness turn to looks of hope in an instant,” he says. “After all, isn’t that what we’re put here on Earth for -- to help one another?” [Nanci Hellmich, “Santa Shares His Secret,” USA Today (12-22-06)]

Another story:

A recovering alcoholic described his journey of following Christ. For him, it was not an intellectual or social pursuit. “Oh no,” he says. “I had to find something that would give me a reason not to commit suicide at the end of every day.” That is how he knew he had been helped by God. When Jesus becomes the reason for our very existence, we have a different response to him than someone who has yet to be captured by [God’s] grace and love.

It is intriguing that the name “Lazarus” is the Greek version of the Hebrew name “Eleazar,” which means “God is my help” and “Bethany” in Greek means “house of affliction.” In Jesus, God came to help this household when they were experiencing great suffering over Lazarus’s fatal illness. And Mary and Martha discovered then that nothing was too much to offer in praise of God after Jesus had restored their brother and their lives to them. So I wonder, after we read in John’s Gospel about Martha and Mary’s ways of honouring Jesus, does that cause us to reflect on what we do to honour Jesus? And do we have hearts full of love and go all out in our own ways to honour Jesus as Martha and Mary did?

The second thought that captures me is found in Jesus’ words to Judas and the others who were bothered by Mary’s extravagance. We heard verse 8 read in the Good News Bible: “Leave her alone! Let her keep what she has [done] for the day of my burial.” The Message Bible gets at the meaning more helpfully for our understanding this way: “Let her alone. She is anticipating and honoring the day of my burial.” Mary began pouring this fragrant ointment not on Jesus’ head -- where people then wore perfume at dinner parties and kings in those days were anointed at their coronations -- but she poured it on his feet where the preparation of a body for burial would start. Jesus knew – even if Mary didn’t -- that this pouring out was a foreshadowing of his coming death that would happen in a matter of days. That is why Jesus told Judas and the others to leave Mary alone. We are not told if Mary or Judas or any of the others fully understood what Jesus meant at the time. However Jesus clearly understood what was to come.

It’s important to see the context of this story. It is bookended by death -- Jesus’ approaching crucifixion and a plot to kill Lazarus. Just before Jesus arrived in Bethany for dinner, the end of chapter 11 says the religious leaders were looking for Jesus to arrest him as part of their plan to put him to death. Then immediately after the dinner, John 12:9-11 says the religious leaders were also out to kill Lazarus because many people had stopped listening to them and were instead listening to Jesus and believing in him because they had seen Lazarus raised from death to life.

For Jesus, at this point in his ministry, preparing for the joy of Easter also meant preparing for the sorrow and suffering of his own terrible death on Good Friday.

Now Judas understood none of this. So he criticized Mary’s extravagance and talked about those who were poor – a significant issue, a motherhood issue. I mean, who can argue with helping those who are poor? Let’s not forget, however, that Judas was both a betrayer and, now we are informed, a thief as well. Apparently, he often had his hand in the till. Nevertheless,

what do we do with this statement of Jesus that we will always have those who are poor with us?

Now we know from other stories in the Gospels that Jesus was always concerned about those who were poor and considered outcasts. He ate with them, spent a lot of time with them, healed them, taught them, loved them and literally focused his ministry for them. So to say he was insensitive toward those who were poor doesn’t hold any weight. But in this particular instance, something else was clearly more important for Jesus.

Let me approach Jesus’ famous phrase this way: there is a sense in which Jesus is being both completely accurate in what he says about those who are poor and also somewhat ironic at the same time. When we look at the history of the world, it is true there have always been those who are poor and, when we look at conditions in the world today, it is easy to conclude there always will be the poor among us. Even in Israel, there were always those who were poor across the centuries up to Jesus’ time. I say “even” because, in Israel of all places, that should not have been the case.

God had structured Israel in such a way as to provide protection for those who became poor for some reason and for Israel to seek ways to help and re-establish those who were poor. God knew people would fall into poverty in a selfish, greedy and power-seeking world. So God provided the laws and the means governing the treatment and the restoration of those in poverty. Here is the point: had Israel followed God’s injunctions in the Old Testament regarding gleaner laws (farmers were supposed to leave the leftover grain in the fields so those in need could gather it for themselves) and had Israel followed the laws protecting the poor from exploitation and the Year of the Jubilee when all debts were to be forgiven, there would have been fewer people who were poor and relatively few people who would be impoverished from one generation to the next – as we often find today in our own social system.

But Israel did not keep God’s laws. We only have to scan the book of Amos, for example, to see that Israel did not carry out God’s laws of justice and compassion. So it is not surprising the number of people who were poor increased. Cycles of poverty continued from generation to generation. What made matters worse was the abuse caused by unjust systems of business and unscrupulous merchants intent on padding their own pockets by trampling on those who could ill afford their goods.

So Jesus was right: we will always have the poor with us. But here is the irony: the likelihood of having poor among us will remain and even increase as long as we have people like Judas among us. As long as we have sinners among us. As long as there are people like us among us!

This story of Jesus and Martha and Mary and Lazarus and Judas is all about extravagance – extravagance that is generous beyond calculation. Mary felt her love and gratitude to Jesus so deeply she had to express this to him with all her heart -- extravagantly and lavishly. And Jesus knew the only hope this tired and perpetually impoverished world has lies precisely in the area of exuberant extravagance and radical self-giving. We are a people who tend to leave God at a distance rather that getting up close and personal and even emotional with God. We are a people who tend to calculate and hoard life’s treasures rather than pouring ourselves out in love for God and for others. We are a people who need to be captured again by the grace and love of God -- for each of us and for the whole world.

We have been reflecting on renewal in our worship services during Lent. Have your reflections told you that, maybe, change is possible – that maybe our hearts and our actions can be renewed and even enlarged? Maybe the secret to life really is, as Jesus said, losing it for the sake of the kingdom of God. In fact, maybe the renewal of all things begins at the moment when no less than the very Son of God – Jesus Christ -- stretches out his arms on the cross and quite literally wastes his life extravagantly so that we might be forgiven and also discover life now more abundant and real than we ever thought possible and the new life to come in God’s kingdom more than we could ever have imagined.

May this be so for you and for me. Amen.


Rev. Chris Miller
Lent 5
March 21, 2010

Reflections on Renewal - 4. Responses to Renewal

MEDITATIONS FROM ORIOLE–YORK MILLS UNITED CHURCH [website]

Lent 4 - Sunday March 14, 2010
(Based on the Parable of the Prodigal Son)

Luke 15:1-3, 11b -32, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Where do you call home? Is home connected to a specific address or to family and friends or to both? Our First Nations people would no doubt feel connected to the land. I personally enjoy travelling but I always appreciate returning home – to the physical place where I live and to the significant people in my life: my friends and my family.

I had never heard of the British rock band called Bloc Party until my research for today’s message [www.cardus.ca/comment/article/1514/]. They wrote an album called A Weekend in the City that reflects their experience of touring the world and returning periodically to London, England, only to be frustrated and disillusioned about the city they had called home. Their song titled "Where Is Home?" concludes with these lines:

I just sit, and I just sigh
And I pretend
That there's nothing wrong
The teeth of this world
Tear me in half
And every day I must ask myself>
Where is it?
Where is home?

To ask ourselves this question – Where is home? -- can be troubling. It may sometimes cause us to doubt and to rethink our sense of belonging, our sense of self and our very purpose for living.

This morning we heard Norm read a familiar story for many of us about a father and his two sons. Jesus always had a reason for the stories he told. He told this one because some of the religious leaders and religion scholars were not at all pleased with the company he was keeping and they grumbled about it. There were a lot of men and women with “doubtful reputations” who enjoyed listening to Jesus. They felt “at home” with Jesus -- like they were in the company of a good friend. Jesus knew that many of the Pharisees and religious teachers who heard him did not feel at home with him or his teachings. So he was speaking to them when he told his story.

The Departure of the Prodigal Son by Jan Molenaer, 1630

Underlying this story of the father with two sons is the question the rock band asked: Where is home? Another underlying question in this story is: Who belongs in this home? There was the younger son who didn’t think much of his home or his father and so he left. There was the elder son who stayed at home but as we know from the end of the story, he didn’t really know what being at home with his father truly meant. And there was the father who longed for both of his sons to come home. In fact, the story really revolves around the father whose sons – both of them -- were oblivious of the joy and the passionate love their father had for them.

Every so often we read about a younger son or daughter living in some far off country. Corey Haim was a 1980s teen heart-throb whose life tumbled downwards instead of progressing upwards. His struggle with drugs is well-documented. He died this week in his apartment in California and has been featured in the news. While it’s not clear what directly caused his death, he was taking various prescription drugs, his heart was enlarged and he suffered from pulmonary congestion with water on his lungs. So his body would have been under great stress. Apparently, his cancer-stricken mother is trying to get enough money together for a funeral here in Toronto because this was his home. But as one website noted: “Now we'll see whether his onetime fellow Hollywood stars, some of whom have battled their own demons, some of whom are still rockin' the good life, will do more than Twitter their regrets.” To Twitter, by the way, is Internet jargon that essentially means to write a brief note in 140 characters or less. [ca.eonline.com/uberblog/b171605_week_in_review_goodbye_teen_idol_corey.html]

And then I came across this article called “Postcard: Tojinbo Cliffs” from the June 22, 2009, issue of Time magazine. [Coco Masters, Postcard: Tojinbo Cliffs," Time (6-22-09), p. 6] The author of the article revealed a startling statistic: one in five Japanese men and women have seriously considered taking their lives. And each year over the past decade, more than 30,000 people have killed themselves in that country. Canada’s rates are not that high but they are significant, especially among young people and especially among First Nations youth. While the Time article talked about such troubling numbers, the author also included the remarkable story of Yukio Shige. It is because of Shige that at least 188 Japanese men and women have chosen life over death.

Every day since 2004, Shige, a retired detective, has roamed the Tojinbo Cliffs, a popular site for suicide attempts along the coast of the Sea of Japan. He looks for people who are considering jumping. If he spots someone in need, he slowly approaches them, offers a gentle "Hello" and does his best to engage them in conversation. At some point he will offer a light touch on the shoulder – a gesture that almost always causes the person to burst into tears. Shige will then softly say, "You've had a hard time up until now, haven't you?"

Shige will often take the person back to his office (which he rents for $800 a month). The author wrote:

There's no rush in Shige's office. He offers those who go there oroshi-mochi, a dish of pounded sticky rice served with grated relish. Traditionally the food is prepared to celebrate the New Year, with each family taking its own rice to be mixed with that of its neighbours. ‘When people come here and eat mochi, they remember their childhood -- father, mother, siblings, hometown. They remember they're not alone,’ Shige says.

As an intriguing aside, the ring tone for Shige's cellphone is the melody of the hymn "Amazing Grace." How significant is that! Shige sums up his mission this way:

"I want Tojinbo to be the most challenging place, not where life ends, but where it begins."

The Prodigal Son by Jan Sanders van Hemessen, 1556

The younger son in Jesus’ story found his Tojinbo Cliffs a challenging place indeed. He squandered every cent of his inheritance. Then his so-called friends left him to fend for himself. And he had to work at a very offensive job. However he slowly realized what he was doing with his life. As Jesus put it, “At last he came to his senses.” One thing he began to understand was his former home was never like this far off country – where, as the rock song put it: “The teeth of this world tear me in half.” Even his father’s servants lived very well with more than enough to meet their needs. So he decided to return to home. And as he slopped out food for the pigs and thought back to life with his father, he had to believe -- at least a little bit -- that his father would respond favourably to him. He looked at his father from a different perspective now.

The Prodigal Son, Auguste Rodin, 1894-1899

And then there was the elder son who did not leave home -- physically. But he wasn’t really at home with his father, was he? He didn’t seem to have much affection for his father but probably figured life was better at home than going elsewhere. He felt he was both obedient and a hard worker. So where was the celebration for him? Can’t you hear him: Don’t I deserve something more than him? The elder brother seemed to be emotionally absent from his father without ever leaving the farm. It makes me wonder if we can be emotionally and spiritually absent from our Father in Heaven – absent from God – without ever leaving the church.

What was going on with the older son? Simply, his heart was out of sync with his father’s compassionate and loving heart. In fact, he was sorry his little brother had come home. “Good riddance” he probably thought when the young rebel left. To his father’s face, he called him “this son of yours,” not “my brother.” Why? Was he upset his father didn’t recognize his own good performance? Did his father not see how worthy he was of a celebration that clearly his self-indulgent brother was not? After all, his no-good brother had wasted his entire inheritance on “reckless living” and now he was home again -- on the take again? The elder son did work hard but he had no idea how to enjoy a loving relationship with his father that his father obviously wanted with him. He seemed to care only about himself and the property his father had given him.

Brothers and sisters can sometimes be toxic. I can envision the older son in Jesus’ story thinking: “Instead of throwing a party for him, would it not be better if he were taught a lesson he would never forget?” Imagine what might have happened if he had met his returning brother first.

“So you’ve come back, have you? Things didn’t work out like you thought, did they? Tough! Listen, you aren’t welcome here. You broke your poor father’s heart. You’ve disgraced us all. You’ve only come back because your money has run out. If you still had some cash, you’d still be gone. At least have enough self-respect to come back when you have a job and get yourself cleaned up.”

Poet Rudyard Kipling [The Prodigal Son (see annex A)] imagined such a meeting between the two brothers. As he was leaving the encounter with his brother, the younger one says:

“I never was very refined, you see?
(And it weighs on my brother’s mind, you see)
But there’s no reproach among swine, d’you see,
For being a bit of a swine.”

Have you ever wondered how brothers and sisters get this way? I wonder if -- as time passes – they begin to imagine they are “good” compared to their siblings even as some people regard themselves as “good” compared to some other people because they have avoided the more obvious, even lethal sins. They do not regard their jealousy, pride, selfishness and judgmentalism as sins -- though they might call them faults or shortcomings. So the older brother in Jesus’ story – like the religious leaders and scholars to whom Jesus directed this story-- became critical, judgmental, unloving and unforgiving of others. Their hearts were out of sync with their Heavenly Father’s responsive heart of compassionate love. They worked hard at home keeping all the rules but failed to enjoy the joy and love of living with God. They grumbled about God who celebrates the return home of his lost children whom he loves so passionately. Jesus was saying that the religious leaders failed to understand they too were lost to experiencing the joy and love of God – just like the elder brother.

Jesus’ story is also about the father as well as his two sons. Actually, when Jesus opened his story by saying “There was a man who had two sons,” he made the father’s relationship to each of the sons the key factor to the story. This is not two stories; that is, a story of a younger son and another story of an older son. It is fundamentally one story about a father who had two children.

In Jesus’ story, being at home with the father meant being at home with God who waits and watches for all his children to realize they are lost – even if they don’t yet realize it. The younger son in the story did have a sense of being almost dead as well as being lost from his father. But we don’t know if the elder son ever did realize he too was lost to his father’s joy and love for him.

In Jesus’ story, being with the father meant forgiveness even in the face of great insult and disrespect. And being with the father meant a wonderfully unexpected and joyful welcome home – a celebration! One writer said that being with the father was the place where “grace explodes in our faces” as we watch the loving reunion of father and son.

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Jacques Joseph Tissot

In Jesus’ story, the younger son’s restored relationship with his father was not based on the son’s bargaining but purely on the grace shown by the father. In Jesus’ story, the younger brother sinned deliberately and knowingly yet he was welcomed home with grace and forgiveness. The older son claimed to have “slaved” for his father and he sinned against him with disrespect without leaving home. But the grace of the father was extended to both sons – for the father went out to look for his elder son too and pleaded with him to join the party.

Sometimes people say: “Where does God fit into the story of my life?” That is the not the best question to ask. This story about the father with two sons gives us the more accurate question to consider: “Where does my life fit into God’s great story?” That is the real question.

So we ask: Where is our home? Whether we are like the younger brother or the elder brother, our home, my friends, is with God. With God where there is forgiveness, great joy and much celebration. With God where people who were once lost are now found. But God allows his sons and daughters freedom to leave home and discover for themselves -- sometimes very painfully -- that there is no real life outside of being home with God. And home is with God who wants us to realize there are people who are desperately lost and unknowing that God loves them and wants them back home with God too.

It is significant that Jesus did not finish his story of the gracious, waiting, compassionate father. The story is left hanging. We are not told how the elder brother responded. We are not told any more about the younger son. Do you think it might be because God desires more sons and more daughters from anywhere and everywhere on the Earth to come home and be forgiven? And Jesus says God celebrates when anyone – when each one of us too! – comes home to God.

So who belongs at home with God? Your family and friends do and so do mine. Your neighbours do and so do mine. All humanity does. You do. And so do I.

May this be so for you and for me. Amen.

Rev. Chris T. Miller
March 14, 2010

Annex A

The Prodigal Son

by Rudyard Kipling

Here come I to my own again,

Fed, forgiven and known again,

Claimed by bone of my bone again

And cheered by flesh of my flesh.

The fatted calf is dressed for me,

But the husks have greater zest for me,

I think my pigs will be best for me,

So I'm off to the Yards afresh.

I never was very refined, you see,

(And it weighs on my brother's mind, you see)

But there's no reproach among swine, d'you see,

For being a bit of a swine.

So I'm off with wallet and staff to eat

The bread that is three parts chaff to wheat,

But glory be! - there's a laugh to it,

Which isn't the case when we dine.

My father glooms and advises me,

My brother sulks and despises me,

And Mother catechises me

Till I want to go out and swear.

And, in spite of the butler's gravity,

I know that the servants have it I

Am a monster of moral depravity,

And I'm damned if I think it's fair!

I wasted my substance, I know I did,

On riotous living, so I did,

But there's nothing on record to show I did

Worse than my betters have done.

They talk of the money I spent out there -

They hint at the pace that I went out there -

But they all forget I was sent out there

Alone as a rich man's son.

The Prodigal Son by Edouard Dubufe, 1865

So I was a mark for plunder at once,

And lost my cash (can you wonder?) at once,

But I didn't give up and knock under at once,

I worked in the Yards, for a spell,

Where I spent my nights and my days with hogs.

And shared their milk and maize with hogs,

Till, I guess, I have learned what pays with hogs

And - I have that knowledge to sell!

So back I go to my job again,

Not so easy to rob again,

Or quite so ready to sob again

On any neck that's around.

I'm leaving, Pater. Good-bye to you!

God bless you, Mater! I'll write to you!

I wouldn't be impolite to you,

But, Brother, you are a hound!

This is one in a series of selected sermons and speeches given at Oriole – York Mills United Church. It is offered as a public service in the spirit of sharing and strengthening our Christian faith. We hope readers benefit from these meditations and the insights they provide.