Extravagance (sermon, March 21, 2010)

It wouldn’t be a stretch to call John’s gospel the gospel of extravagance. Jesus’ first miracle? Turning water to wine at a wedding. Not just any wine: fine wine. Not just a little bit, either: 180 gallons -- way more than was needed for all the guests at the wedding. How about when Jesus fed five thousand people? He not only ensured that every man, woman, and child was well-fed; there were twelve baskets of food left over!. Then there is the fishing miracle. After the disciples have fished all night with nothing to show for it, Jesus tells Simon Peter to cast his net on the other side of his boat. As soon as he does, more than a hundred and fifty fish literally start leaping into the net, threatening to break it.

But perhaps no miracle in John’s gospel is more extravagant than the one that precedes the passage we just read. A man named Lazarus, who apparently was a beloved friend of Jesus, falls ill and dies, even though Lazarus’ sisters send word to Jesus, begging him to come and heal their brother. Instead Jesus shows up four long days after Lazarus’ death, four days during which the stench from Lazarus’ corpse has already begun to permeate the air around his tomb. When he arrives, Jesus discovered a family and a community consumed with grief. And in his most remarkable, unbelievable, extravagant miracle yet, Jesus defies the laws of science and nature and brings Lazarus back to life. Theologians like to call what happened “revivication” to distinguish it from Jesus’ own resurrection, but whatever you call it, for Jesus to enable a man four days dead to walk out of his tomb and resume his life is an act of astounding extravagance.

So with that in mind, maybe the act of extravagance we heard about in today’s passage shouldn’t shock us. But this time something is different. This time Jesus is not the one performing an act of extravagance, he is on the receiving end.

Mary and Martha, whose grief at their brother’s untimely death has transformed to overwhelming gratitude toward the man who restored Lazarus to life, host Jesus for a meal. While he sits at the table with Lazarus, Mary takes a large flask of perfume and pours the whole thing over Jesus’ feet. The rich scent of the perfume permeates the air in the house, broadcasting to everyone there the utter extravagance of her act. In less than a minute she uses up perfume that cost a year’s worth of wages...and then she uses, not a towel, but her own hair to gently dry Jesus’ feet. Mary’s actions proclaim a depth of gratitude and love for Jesus that words alone simply cannot express.

Years ago, the great stage actress Dorothy Maguire was appearing on Broadway. Just before the curtain rose, the theater was filled with the sound of a woman shouting, “Start the show! Start the show! I want to see Dorothy Maguire!” Obviously, this woman was disturbed, but it didn’t take long before a couple of people in the shocked audience turned on her. “Get out of here!” someone shouted. And from another: “Throw her out and start the show!”
The theater manager approached the woman and tried to talk to her, but she pulled away. “All I want is to see Dorothy Maguire!” she shrieked. “Then I’ll leave.”
And then, suddenly, the curtains parted and Dorothy Maguire appeared. She walked across the stage, came down into the audience and walked over to the disturbed woman. She spoke to her quietly and hugged this woman who had recoiled when anyone else tried to touch her. The woman stood up from her seat, drew close to Miss Maguire, and walked with her toward the exit.
Before they left the theater, Dorothy Maguire paused, turned to the audience, and spoke. “I’d like to introduce to you another fellow human being.” (1)

Just as Dorothy Maguire’s actions toward the disturbed woman and her words to the audience made everyone in the theater uncomfortable, surely everyone who witnessed Mary’s extravagant act of gratitude toward Jesus also experienced discomfort. After all, this was no normal expression of gratitude and love from one human being to another. It was intimate, personal, over the top -- extravagant! Just as the smell of Lazarus’ death had proved to everyone how truly dead Lazarus was before Jesus worked a miracle, so the smell of the perfume in that house proved to everyone present that this was no ordinary act of thanksgiving.

Judas is so uncomfortable with Mary’s extravagance that he can’t help but speak up. “This perfume could have been sold for a lot of money and given to the poor!” And the fact is, in most contexts, Judas is right. We can even imagine those words coming out of Jesus’ mouth if he had seen someone wasting valuable resources when the needs of the poor were so obvious and urgent. But in this context, Judas is wrong. Mary has been on the receiving end of an act of extravagant love and generosity from Jesus -- the return to life of her beloved brother -- and in response, she expresses her love and gratitude toward Jesus in the most extravagant way she can.

A group of pastors recently gathered at a stewardship conference for a session on generosity. The speaker that day spoke about the importance of giving directly to God. It was right after lunch, the room was warm and the speaker wasn’t really saying anything new. But then he did something totally unexpected. He pulled a $100 bill from his wallet, put it in an ashtray, lit it on fire, and prayed: “Lord, I offer this gift to you, and you alone.”
Suddenly, everyone in the room was wide awake. The clergy exchanged shocked glances and fidgeted in their seats. One whispered that it was illegal to burn currency. Another commented that he’d gladly take any more bills the speaker wanted to part with. Gradually, the bill turned to ashes, and finally the speaker said, “Do you not understand? I’m offering this money to God, and that means it is going to cease to be useful for the rest of us.” (2)

Extravagance makes us uncomfortable. The perfume Mary poured all over Jesus’ feet was worth an average year’s wages. In Summit County, that would be the equivalent of $42,000. Now that’s a lot of money to burn, money that could do a lot of good. But if we think about it, every week when we worship, we offer to God resources that cease to be useful to us or to anyone else.
The choir practices an anthem for hours, only to sing it in worship for three minutes.
We pay money each week for flowers to brighten and beautify our sanctuary, and within days those same flowers will wilt and die.
People spend hours preparing food for a funeral reception or one of our church dinners and in thirty minutes, meals are consumed and then forgotten.

These acts may not seem extravagant by themselves, but when we add them all up, the reality is they represent a lot of resources that could be given to others who need them more than God. That was Judas’ objection to Mary’s gift, was it not? Couldn’t that equivalent of $42,000 have been spent on the poor?

In one sense, Judas was absolutely right, just as we could argue that there are surely ways we could use all our resources in service to the poor and needy. But in the context of that particular meal shared among Jesus, his disciples, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, Judas was dead wrong. There are times when we are called to give, even to give extravagantly, to God alone. We know that not just because of what Jesus says, but also because we have the benefit of knowing the whole story, and we can see that this dinner party is the hinge between two crucial events: Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life and Jesus giving up his life on a cross.

John’s gospel says that the miracle of Lazarus led many Jews to believe in Jesus. This in turn made the authorities even more determined to stop him by any means necessary, even death. Jesus dies in part because Lazarus lives.

Mary doesn’t know this yet, of course. But this story of Mary’s extravagant anointing of Jesus sets up God’s ultimate act of extravagant love toward all the world...an act symbolized by the empty cross, an act through which God promises, once and for all, that death will not have the last word, not just for Lazarus, not just for Jesus, but for us all. It is this extravagant act of salvation for all that inspires us to extravagant acts of worship -- offering our time, talent, and treasure to God in such a way that they cease to be useful to anyone else.

Yet it is also God’s sacrifice of his only son on a cross that calls us be extravagant, not just toward God, but also in service to others, remembering that on the cross God stretches out God’s arms to embrace the whole world. This is why, in the world’s eyes at least, we Christians are actually really bad stewards of our resources. Instead of making the best financial decisions, we spend what we could save, we give away what we could hoard, we live more simply so that we can imitate God by giving extravagantly both to God and to others.

In the story Babette’s Feast by Isak Denison, Babette, a gifted Parisian chef, is banished from her native Paris in a time of political turmoil. She washes ashore in a small Danish fishing village, where she discovers a fractured and divided religious community.
The once tight-knit band of believers has been bickering with one another, nursing grudges and exchanging petty insults, much to the dismay of the two spinster sisters who head up the community. The sisters hire Babette to be their cook, but they ask her to prepare only the blandest foods, which is what they are used to eating.
One day, Babette learns that she has won the lottery in Paris. She has a new lease on life, an opportunity to start anew. But first, she offers to cook a true feast for the community. The villagers are treated to rare delicacies, the best wine, and some of the most delicious gourmet fare in the world. It is truly an extravagant meal.
Although these religious folks have no idea the true value of Babette’s gift to them, during the meal, their community is restored. Past insults are forgiven, grudges are dropped, and when the evening is finished, they join hands and sing the Doxology under the stars, praising God for the extravagant gifts of creation and salvation.
It is only after the meal that the sisters discover the truly extravagant nature of Babette’s feast: she had spent ALL the money she won to prepare the meal, not just a portion of it as they had thought. In doing so, she gave up the opportunity to restore her life. She could not return to Paris and become a chef in one of the world’s best restaurants, in spite of her great talent. She had wasted everything on this small, fractious community. And her so-called “waste” brought new life to everyone who experienced her extravagant feast. (3)

When Mary received Jesus’ extravagant gift of returning her brother to life, she responded with an extravagant act of gratitude and love. When you receive God’s extravagant, costly gift...when you look at that cross and realize that it represents God’s extravagant love for you, a love that spills over the edges, that is given far too freely, too easily, that is available not just to you, but to everyone at any time...well, the only appropriate response to such a gift is extravagance...to love God and others with the same kind of reckless abandon with which God loves us. It might look like waste, it might make those who witness it uncomfortable, but according to God, it is only when we sacrifice extravagantly for the sake of love that we truly give -- and receive -- new life. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. from the sermon “Extravagant,” by the Rev. Mark Ramsey, preached at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, October 4, 2009. Used wth permission.
2. William G. Carter in his commentary on the passage in Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 2, WJK Press, 2009, p. 142.
3. Scott Hoezee, Center for Excellence in Preaching website, read it here.