Whiff of Easter

It’s hard to keep Lent going in Tallahassee. The minor chords, the somber mood, the emphasis on discipline – all this seems out of sync with the world outside, which is bursting with the exuberance of spring. Lent is easier to pull off in latitudes where spring comes late. Down here, the weather cries "Easter! Easter!" while we’re still intoning "Lent! Lent!" (We try not to let anyone know that "Lent" is in fact an old Anglo-Saxon word for "Spring.")

Still, we in the liturgical police do our best. The color for the season remains a somber purple. Michael keeps the "alleluias" locked up tight in the organ and sleeps with the key around his neck. (Despite his best efforts, one "alleluia" did sneak into the liturgy last week, but we apprehended the suspect it just in time.)

But surely you noticed. Today’s Gospel reading doesn’t smell very Lenten. For one thing, there’s the aroma of the meal which poor old Martha is once again serving without her sister Mary’s help. And then there’s the aroma of something else.

Several years ago at the Montreat Worship and Music Conference a huge room was prepared for the children – just for the children. A prayer labyrinth took up half the room. The rest of the space was filled with the most elaborate learning centers I’ve ever seen - fountains, art, crafts, sewing – and in one corner a baking center.

When you walked in the room you were immediately welcomed by the alluring aroma of baking bread. How better to incorporate learning about the Lord’s Supper? The only problem was, adults kept coming to the room to share the children’s experience. They said they were coming to pick up tips for worship education. I think they came because they smelled the bread.

Mixed with the smell of bread in this story is the smell of something else. To me, this story smells like funeral homes. Do you know that smell? Cut flowers, women’s cologne, and men’s aftershave. Suits fresh from the cleaners. No other place smells quite the same. That must be what nard smells like.

Mary takes this hugely expensive container of nard, worth a year’s wages, and squanders it all by pouring it on Jesus’ feet. Then, in a gesture so sensual it borders on the erotic, she lets down her long hair and wipes Jesus’ feet with her tresses. Can you see the crimson cheeks of the disciples and the astonished look on Lazarus’ face as his sister makes a spectacle of herself in front of all those men?

The traditional reading of this story is that Mary is grateful – extravagantly grateful – that Jesus has raised her brother Lazarus from the dead. And, of course, she is. As is the case with so many of the stories in John’s Gospel, however, things are happening on at least two levels at the same time. This is about Mary’s gratitude for what has happened; it’s also about what is soon to happen.

Jesus himself explains. Mary has anointed Jesus with the perfume of burial. "She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial," he says, and for some reason, she has chosen this moment to change her plan -- while he’s still in her house, while she can still touch him, before he enters Jerusalem (John 12:7).

Mary’s prodigality prefigures Jesus’ death on the cross. The hair she so scandalously lets down in the presence of men will soon be covered again with the cloth of mourning. Mary seems to sense this. Maybe it’s because she has a tiny portion of the foresight that the Jesus of John’s Gospel has in such abundance. Or maybe it’s because she has sniffed the inside of Lazarus’ grave, and smells something like it on Jesus.

Judas raises a point that would be valid in another context. "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (John 12:6). But now is not the time for such objections. Unlike our own church treasurer, Judas knows the cost of many things, but the value of few.

What’s the value, for instance, of a Messiah who can raise his friend Lazarus from the dead, but won’t lift a finger to save himself from a cruel, humiliating death? What’s the true worth of a God who has every right to stand aloof from the mess you and I have made of our lives, but instead freely enters into our brokenness, our grief, our worry, and our hope?

What’s worth more – a bottle of fancy perfume – or the knowledge that God is most present when we feel God most absent? When bread tastes like ashes and wine like vinegar?

It doesn’t add up. I know it doesn’t. It doesn’t make good sense, any more than it makes good sense to pour several thousand dollars’ worth of perfume on one man’s feet and make a fool of yourself mopping it up with your hair. You and I know it makes no sense, just as sure as Judas knows it.

But Mary knows something Judas does not know, something you can only discover by standing by your loved one’s grave, or even by your own grave, and smelling both the bread and the nard: the good news of Jesus Christ doesn’t make sense; it makes life. It takes us from our graves because they cannot hold us forever. It turns our tear-stained faces toward the day when God will wipe away every tear from every eye. The good news of Jesus Christ makes life ex nihilo -- out of nothing -- out of precisely the void that death leaves in its wake.

Is Mary grateful because Lazarus is alive, or because Jesus is about to change forever our way of looking at death? Jesus is about to rob death of its ultimate power over us. He is about to rob the grave of its sting, of its final victory. The oil of burial Mary so generously shares will become the scent of resurrection.

We got a sniff of that last Thursday morning when we gathered round the grave of our sister Isabel Rogers. "All of us go down to the dust," we prayed, "but even at the grave we make our song, "Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!"

It’s not just oil Mary has in that bottle. It’s grace. But you have to pour grace out and rub it in, without counting the cost, else you’re missing the whole point.

John has yet to tell us that part of the story. That comes later, after Jerusalem, after the Mount of Olives, after the trial in a kangaroo court, after Golgatha. That’s the Easter story. It’s not time for that yet. First comes Holy Week with its shouts of "Hosanna!" and "Crucify!" First comes Good Friday, when the sweet scent of Mary’s perfume is mixed with the stench of blood, sweat, and sour wine.

Lent lasts for forty days. This year it seems to me to be much longer. So much pain. So many cries for help. So much longing for light from the bottom of the pit.

But even in Lent, the choir rehearses for Easter. Speaking for myself, I need those emerging alleluias to keep me going through Lent. Without the hint of those alleluias, I might be joining Judas in his effort to keep grace bottled up, to hold back on embracing this world with all it hurts and ambiguities, for fear there will not be enough grace to go around.

But Mary has it right. Hold back, and you miss the point. It is possible to mourn and to rejoice at the same time. The perfume of resurrection and the stench of the grave are poured from the same vessel.

What did you smell when you came through these doors this morning? A hint of lilies? The lingering odor of death? A whiff of baking bread? Soon, very soon, all of this will smell like Easter. Even now, it’s in the air.