Year C Fifth Sunday in Lent 17 March 2013
Isaiah 43: 16-21 Psalm 126 Philippians 3: 4b-14 John 12: 1-8
The ways of God often seem so unpredictable. Do you feel comfortable in your faith? Then it is possible you’ve fallen into the same ways as so many before and beware, because you are about to have that comfort challenged.
How much are the average annual wages for a labourer? Answer: Full-time earnings in Australia averaged $69,992 a year in the first quarter of 2012. (Seasonally adjusted wages – Bureau of Statistics.) Keep that in mind as we explore this week’s readings.
Isaiah 43:18- 21 “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.”
How strange that God would declare to his people to NOT remember the former things. So strange, that we would be foolish not to explore further and discover what God was really doing.
In the former days God had made a path through the sea and had fed his people with bread from heaven and had given them water in the desert. It is obvious that before God asks them to NOT remember, that he does intend to remind them. These people are reminded of the great things that God has done, but now he says to them, “Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old….”
To put ourselves in the shoes of these people, we need to realize that these are a religious people. They had the holy festivals that told the story of the Passover and they had every ritual of life that tied in with the law of God where sacrifices were given for sin and first fruits were offered to God and the first born was consecrated to God and needed to be redeemed according to the law of God.
These rituals and stories were a comfort and assurance of God’s love and favour. In much the same way, we have our own rituals and stories. We have our church services which tell the story of God and within the service we have confession and absolution and we have communion as both remembrance and reconciliation and unity with God. How delightful and comfortable our faith is!! It is just like that same faith of the people of God so long ago and just like the faith that St. Paul was brought up in – that of the Pharisees.
Uh-Oh! Have I hit a nerve yet?
We like to think that we have nothing in common with the Pharisees who were so hypocritical, but we need to understand that these were people who were brought up in the ways of God, knowing the stories and the rituals – much like us. Because they knew the stories and rituals so well, they didn’t understand what was happening when Jesus came – and they rejected him – not all of them, but certainly on the whole and as a group, they did not recognize God among them, and the reason was that they thought that they knew God and His ways. When Jesus did things that didn’t seem in line with what they thought and had known about God through their religion and traditions, and when they began to feel uncomfortable in their faith, they concluded that Jesus was a sinner who must be put to death.
It is certainly not a bad thing to have the rituals and the stories….. otherwise God would not have commanded them in the first place. The rituals and the stories should teach us and lead us ultimately to a personal and intimately close relationship with God. Praying to God should be as natural and as often as breathing.
If we look back to our first reading we will note that God does remind the people of the things that were done in the former days, but he then commands them to no longer remember them and no longer consider them because he is about to do something new. The implication is that he is about to do something that is so far exceeding the former things that there will be no need to remember them, and also that to move forward there is a need to let go of the past.
What is it that we are holding on to that God would have us let go of?
I’m reminded of the story of a little girl whose father often travelled away for work. He gave the little girl a gift of a toy pearl necklace. The little girls treasured the pearls for a very long time, but then she was faced with a problem: The father asked the little girl if she loved him. She replied that she did, and the father then asked her to give him her pearls. She refused for a long time, but eventually she gave them to her father, deciding that she loved him more than the pearls. The father then presented her with the gift of a genuine pearl necklace.
Our Gospel story is much like this. God has given us something amazing and good. In the Old Testament and for the Israelite people this was the stories, the rituals and the precious law of God. It set the people apart as sacred to God and confirmed God’s favour. BUT God, after bringing these things to mind then commands them to not remember or consider these things because he had something new to do in the future that would so pale the former things by comparison. Could the Israelites, the people of Jesus time, accept that they needed to see that what they had in their stories, rituals, traditions and law was only a shadow of what he had in store for their future?
The rituals and the stories were such a comfort…… the pearls were a comfort…… The important question is, which do we love more; the stories, the rituals, the law and the traditions, or God who gave them? And can we give them up to allow God to do something greater?
St. Paul came face to face with this reality when he declared things about himself in his letter to the Philippians.
Philippians3: 4-6 “even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh.
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”
St. Paul goes on to explain that he considers all that he accomplished in the flesh as rubbish. He explains that all his efforts were loss in Christ because he would rather have a righteousness that was from his standing in Christ. He declares that his former Self-righteousness only served to keep him separated from acknowledging his need for a righteousness that is in Christ – and separated from God.
In the time of Jesus there were many sinners who had accepted Christ. These people knew that they needed a miracle for God to love and accept them because they were aware of their failure – their sin. St. Paul is completely different from most people who came to Christ. His conversion was a dramatic miracle and it needed to be, because St. Paul thought that he was alright with God. He was even so zealous for God that he was striving to snuff out the young Christian church who he considered to be heretics.
Without the intense light of God’s truth, St. Paul may never have been able to see his spiritual blindness. Is it possible that we too need the miracle of God’s intense light to see the things that we are holding on to in God’s name, are things that we have made so synonymous with God that we love them more than God himself. Are we willing to put a personal and intimate relationship with God above all our traditions and rituals and prior understandings?
While I leave you to ponder that thought, I ask you to call to mind again the average years wage in Australia - $69,992. Can you now call to mind something that would cost about that much?
In the time of Jesus, a year’s wage was about three hundred denarii.
John 12:1-8 “Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, 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?’”
Hopefully the understanding of the incredible expense of that perfume now sheds new light on this reading….
I believe it would not have been only Judas who was thinking that this was a huge misappropriation of funds, but I bring this to your attention as a challenge to see that God has a heart that is firstly and foremost concerned about us placing him as number one in our lives. All our understandings about how we should do things in church, what is appropriate and what isn’t, etc…. these things will constantly be challenged and constantly be breaking God’s heart unless we so intimately connect with him.
The Pharisees constantly were at odds with Jesus and yet they thought they were doing God’s will. It seems possible that it wasn’t until this incident with the perfume that Judas decided he would betray Jesus…. It is more than likely that Jesus did not fit in with Judas’s idea of God – otherwise he would not have betrayed him.
Surely it seems completely sinful to spend so much on perfume….. we can all see that now, can’t we? It was a whole year’s wage and there are poor and starving people…..
What seems abundantly clear to me is that God must be number one in our lives and in our churches. Unless we are so connected with God and indwelt by his Holy Spirit we will never be any more pleasing to God than a Pharisee, and we may even be Judas……