The Love of the Cross (a Sunday talk)

I was reading an article in my paper yesterday about HMS Belfast, the battle cruiser that’s moored on the Thames not far from Tower Bridge.  It caught my eye mainly because a couple of years ago when my wife and I were visiting our son who lives and works in London, we decided we’d visit HMS Belfast.  I’d walked past it so often when I was doing a job that required me to visit London regularly, and I’d always wondered what it was actually like on board. Anyway, the first thing I discovered about being on board was that it was going to cost us ten quid apiece to get there. Ten quid, I thought, just to go and look round a boat.  What a waste!

That’s what I felt at the time, but of course, we’d agreed that’s what we were doing, so we did it.  And I have to admit that once on board I really enjoyed it: there was so much to see that we were there nearly all day, so our ten quid, somewhat to my surprise, turned out to be pretty good value in the end.

The reading I’ve just used today tells of something that was claimed to be a waste of money.  A bottle of really expensive oil had been just poured over the feet of Jesus! Surely something much cheaper would have done just as well, if something like that had to be done at all.  And surely better things could have been done with all the money it cost. This is a story that turns up in different forms in the various Gospels.  Perhaps Jesus was anointed on more than one occasion;  or perhaps what we have are different recollections of the same event, which the different Gospel writers each use in their own particular way?  But let me reflect for a while on this particular story - both on the event itself, and on the reason why the story has been told in this way.

For one thing, there’s a whiff of scandal about the story. It’s quite an intimate thing to do, to anoint someone’s feet.  And for a woman to liberally anoint the feet of a man, and to dry them with her hair, which therefore must have been flowing down and not respectably up - this was behaviour rather shocking and somewhat out of the ordinary, even before you start to consider what the ointment actually cost and whether it was a waste of money.  A woman would not normally ever loosen her hair and let it down in mixed company.  This was a rather reckless and immodest act.

And therefore the first message I want to take from this reading is that it has to do with the risk and the extravagance of love.  To be in love is to be totally caught up in the other person, so however far apart you may be there's a closeness heart to heart, and a sense that one is incomplete without the other.  People in love do rash and foolhardy things, which other people can then write books or make films about. Actually on the quiet I'm a bit of a fan of rom coms, and I was watching ‘Love Actually’ on the box the other night;  it’s easy I find to get caught up in all the angst and the misunderstandings and the confusion - the twists and turns in the story that precede what you hope is going to be a “happy ever after” ending.

Today’s Gospel is hardly the script for a rom com, but it is about love.  Mary's love for Jesus has led her to behave in a foolhardy way, and as she does what she does she doesn’t care what anyone else might think. But this isn’t the passion of romantic love, but something quite different.  What we see here is the love of a penitent for the means of her salvation: the same love we find in the apostle Paul when he writes that he "counts everything as sheer loss, compared to the gain of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord."  Jesus revealed himself to Mary as "the resurrection and the life", and for her too nothing else matters.  Her Lord is everything to her.

Her anointing of his feet is a sign of penitence. Anointing can be a sign that honour is being conferred, for example, when the head is anointed at a coronation.  That sort of anointing is performed by a superior - at a coronation it’s the archbishop who acts in this way to the blessing of God on the newly crowned king or queen.

But this is an anointing act that springs out of sheer helplessness.  Mary has come to her Lord in total humility, and the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment, for she didn't ration it out, she used the lot, she held nothing back.  For me the force of that fragrance filling the whole house says something important about the way in which a loving and generous act can have an impact beyond itself:  what happens is that others are affected and drawn in to what is happening.  In the marriage service the minister may pray that the love between the two people standing before him or her will be a force for good beyond their own household, that love will flow into the community in which the couple will make their home.  And on so many occasions I’ve seen wonderful examples of how that can happen, though I’d have to say that I’ve also seen the reverse - that bad relationships also can have an impact - a bad impact - beyond themselves.  The Presbyterian Bible scholar William Barclay wrote that loving and generous deeds can become the possession of the whole world.  The Gospel is far better preached through generosity, through giving and sharing, through the practical outworking of love, risky though that can be, than through the most brilliant words, or the most superbly organised campaigns and rallies.

Having said that, as we read the story not everyone was moved positively by the fragrance.  What a waste of money, Judas said.  Maybe others too said, echoing my thoughts at the ticket booth for HMS Belfast.  And it’s understandable.  It does seem like a waste of money.

There are some important lessons I draw out of the words Jesus used in his reply.  "The poor are with you always, but you will not always have me," is what Jesus says, more or less.  The first thing I draw out of this is that charity toward the poor shouldn't be an occasional grand gesture, nor something we do only when we decide we can afford it - it should be our constant commitment.  The poor are always with you - so you should always be aware and concerned and compassionate. It’s important to say this, because you could use those words as an excuse to put off till tomorrow the care that we should be offering today, and I’m quite sure in my own mind that that isn’t what Jesus is meaning here.

But what he is meaning I think is this, the second lesson I take from these words: while acts of charity need to be built in to our programme, and this is something best done in an organised and disciplined way, there are also opportune times in life that you just have to grab there and then, or they will slip away.  How easy it is not to stop and marvel at a sunrise or a sunset, since you know there'll be another one tomorrow;  how easy it is to put off our prayers, or our greetings, or maybe our apologies, rather than seizing the moment and just doing it.  There are moments in human life when the penny drops, when something becomes clear, when a problem is solved or when something is recognized as valuable or lovely, there are times when we just feel uplifted and want to raise our hands and our voices in praise.  Don’t let those moments slip away: now is the time - for action, for decision, for commitment, for worship, for praise.

So the actions of Mary that day, as I read them in this story, challenge me when I’m tempted to be too cautious, and when I seek to measure and ration my generosity or my goodwill. No single person can do everything, but in every life there are times when we mustn’t hold back, and that's how it was then for Mary: now was the time to give all she could, and Mary held nothing back: her Lord was worth all she’d got, and more.

That’s the message I want to leave you with on this Sunday often called Passion Sunday, a fortnight before Easter Day.  Our focus over the next couple of weeks is bound to be the cross.  On Good Friday we may perhaps be thinking of the tragedy of the cross, the pain of the cross, even the guilt of the cross, the weight of sin this dying man bears, our sin and not his, but borne freely.

He gives his all for us, and he does so while we are yet sinners. Every year I am caught up again in the wonder of such a sacrifice.  Every year I am freshly moved by the words of the hymn, “Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all.”  Mary, I think - even before that first Good Friday - she understood this, very deeply.  Today we reflect on the love of the cross, of the cross as the place where the true meaning of love is expressed and displayed and acted out more fully than it could ever be again.  And yet that same love is all around us, we are affirmed by it, convicted by it, called by it.

What should it mean for a church to be cross-shaped?  Some ancient churches are literally cross-shaped, but all churches should be in a spiritual sense - motivated and challenged by the love of the cross to be sacrificial ourselves in our mission, in our service, in our outreach, and in our praise.  And nothing that is a heartfelt response to the loving heart of our Lord could ever be a waste of money, or a waste of time, or a waste of self.