CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH
The Rev. Fred Weimert March 21, 2010
“Spiritual Myopia”
I can
remember when the movie Jesus Christ,
Superstar came out.
It was back in the early 70’s.
I was in the Navy in
and at that
time
I was worshiping
in a fairly conservative
congregation…
Some
of the members chose
to
picketed the theater
where the movie was being shown,
but
I went.
I
think the reason given for the protest
was
because Andrew Lloyd Webber
who
wrote the music…
or
the lyricist
was
an agnostic.
But
I always kind of thought
the
protest might have had something to do
with
the song by Mary Magdalene
“I Don’t Know How to Love Him”.
It
had too much sexuality in it.
I
always thought it was interesting
that
the people in that congregation
were
sure they wanted God to be a man,
but
they were equally sure
they
didn’t want Jesus to be sexual.
I think the
way that they solved their problems with Jesus,
as a male of the human species,
was
to imagine him being
not
very attractive.
To reassure themselves that this was
the case
they would quote from Isaiah 53
he
hath no form nor comeliness;
and when we shall see him,
there
is no beauty that we should desire him.
I don’t know
that that was really true about Jesus…
of
his physical appearance.
I don’t know
that he was ugly…
There appear to have been some women
like
Mary Magdalene
who
may have been
quite taken by Jesus.
And
then there were the women
associated
with that whole foot washing thing.
Matthew
and Mark
simply
say a woman brought ointment…
Luke
says
a sinful woman
(who
some say was Mary Magdalene)
washed
with tears.
And
John
identifies
the woman
as Mary of
In Luke’s
gospel
this
same Mary of Bethany
was
so spell bound by Jesus’ teaching
that
she just sat at his feet
and
listens to him teach,
forgetting,
of course,
to
help her sister Martha
with the meal preparation.
She sounds a
little taken by Jesus,
and
in today’s reading from John’s Gospel
We
see Mary of Bethany,
again
at Jesus’ feet,
but
this time she is anointing,
not
washing,
Jesus’
feet,
and
she is using
some very costly perfume.
This
perfume could have been
part of the spices
she
and Martha had gathered
to
prepare their brother Lazarus’ body
when
he died a chapter earlier.
Of course, when he was raised…
those
spices could have gone unused.
So
now Mary is pictured
sitting
at Jesus’ feet
in
adoration anointing with precious oil
this
one who raised her brother…
Preparing
him for his death.
John
12: 1-8
Six days before the Passover
Jesus came to
the
home of Lazarus,
whom
he had raised from the dead.
There they gave a dinner for him.
Martha
served,
and Lazarus was one
of those at the table with him.
Mary
took a pound of costly perfume
made
of pure nard,
anointed
Jesus' feet,
and wiped them with
her hair.
The
house was filled
with
the fragrance of the perfume.
But Judas Iscariot,
one of his disciples
(the
one who was about to betray him),
said,
"Why
was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii
and
the money given to the poor?"
(He said this
not
because he cared about the poor,
but
because he was a thief;
he kept the common purse
and
used to steal what was put into it.)
Jesus said,
"Leave her alone.
She
bought it so that she might keep it
for
the day of my burial.
You always have the poor with you,
but
you do not always have me."
Here ends the reading.
In this
passage
there are two parenthetical
statements.
Both of the statements
are made about Judas,
and I don’t
know that either would be admissible in court,
because
neither of the statement
was
really, at that moment, backed up by evidence.
In John’s gospel, while Judas is the
betrayer,
Judas doesn’t go to the
priests after this extravagant event
to sell
Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.
That
happened in the synoptic gospels…
Judas
does bring the guards to the garden,
but
there is no evidence that this “thief” took money
for the betrayal…
In
fact John doesn’t even allow Judas
to
kiss Jesus in the garden.
Jesus
handed himself over.
And then there is the second remark
about Judas not caring for the poor,
and being a
thief
who
stole from the common purse.
To make this stick in
court
you would need some evidence…
If
only Jesus or one of the other disciples
had confronted Judas at some earlier
moment
about
these thefts.
but
that never happened.
We really can’t be sure
that Judas was a thief.
He may have really
cared about the poor…
In
fact the poor may well have been his main concern.
In Judas’
mind
the coming of the messiah
may
have been a more Isaiah 25 kind of messianic vision
“On this mountain the LORD of
hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of
well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow,
of well-aged wines strained clear.”
That could
have been how Judas pictured
the
coming of the messiah…
a
big feast for everybody…
all
the time.
The
feeding of the 5,000
may
have been
what attracted him to Jesus
But this perfumed
feet episode,
This
wasteful act
in
the face of such pressing need…
may
have been too much.
I might be
able to able to understand Judas’ anger…
We
all probably have heard about
ministers in our city driving
Bentleys.
I
recently heard of one getting a Massaroti
for
his 60th birthday.
what
wasteful extravagance,
but
I need to be careful,
because
you all gave me $2,000
to
go play golf in
for
my 60th birthday.
Which
has an air of extravagance
especially
in today’s economic times.
Maybe for Judas the
messiah
was to be about the work of caring
for the poor.
And maybe he believed
that such care
would be a
full time job…
Not
just a big meal once and a while,
people
need food every day.
That statement attributed
to Jesus…
You
always have the poor with you,
but
you do not always have me."
could sound
quite arrogant,
and
could have been the last straw.
Judas
could have been similar to
the proponents of the Social Gospel,
popular in the early 1900’s.
or maybe someone less thoughty
and more radical…
I reread the section in
Winthrop Hudson’s History of Religion
in America
that dealt
with the post Civil War period in
I
had forgotten that there was
a Gospel of Wealth back then
much
as there is now a “Prosperity Gospel”…
Steel
baron Andrew Carnegie wrote of
“the sacredness of private property,
free
competition,
and
the accumulation of wealth”
Ministers
like Russell Conwell preached his
Acers
of Diamonds sermon
and
spoke of the “duty to get rich”
praised
Carnegie’s essay on “Wealth”
But
then in the late 1800’s came major worker strikes
against
steel, railroads, coal mines, mills.
In
Cardinal Gibbon’s favor
He
did side with the Knights of Labor
in striking.
But the Church
always struggles with who to side with…
whom to anoint…
Judas
may well have fallen in
with more radical people like
like
the later Catholic Workers movement.
I
am not saying that to be critical of Dorothy Day
I
am moved by her embracing of the poor:
Let me read
you a little from her writings:
Every morning about four hundred men
come to
One
felt more like taking their hands and saying, “Forgive us—let us forgive each
other! All of us who are more
comfortable, who have a place to sleep, three meals a day, work to do—we are
responsible for your condition. We are
guilty of each other’s sins. We must
bear each other’s burdens. Forgive us
and may God forgive us all!” (1937) p.
80 The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day, ed.
Robert Ellsberg
The Church
This congregation…
I/we have to
sort out the same feelings Dorothy had
We have to figure out
how to work/do ministry
in a
community
with people like ourselves,
who hate to see lines of poor people…
forming up in their neighborhood.
And at the same time we
have to care for
our brothers
and sisters who are poor.
Lots of people…
Well intentioned people,
like Judas may have contracted,
a
kind of spiritual myopia…
a
loss of the spiritual bigger picture..
They feel God can only
work in one way…
Such
people may have given up on organized religion…
“Their buildings should be torn down
and
the money given to the poor.”
The last thing they want
to hear is Jesus saying:
You
always have the poor with you,
but
you do not always have me."
Especially in light of
the fact
that we
claim to have Jesus with us always.
God is
always doing new things…
and Judas never could have understood
how his act of betrayal
would lead
to the cross
which would bring so many people
captivated
by sin
new
hope of forgiveness.
That mysterious renewing working of
God…
while confusing to us is
still miraculously good news.
It frees us all
from the torment
of
the bonds of sin…
But it does
not free us from the dilemma
of
the freedom of our life made new…
in
the face of the poor who are with us…
What
are we to do.
I don’t
have simple answers to this dilemma…
I live with it just as
you do…
for those
who have
and those
who have not.
I wrestle every day with a thought
which was summed up in a
simple saying
by a rabbi
who died 10 years before Jesus was born…
Hillel,
who said:
If I am not for myself,
who
will be for me?
If
I am only for myself,
what
am I?
And
if not now,
when?
Pirke Aboth (chapter of the
Fathers1:14)
May we never give up on our faith
and our search to be
faithful. Amen.