While It Was Still Dark: Easter Hope

John 20:1-18
Easter Sunday 2010

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a hundred times. Alexander Pope wrote it in a poem in 1733, and it has been repeated endlessly ever since: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” “Hope springs eternal.” Of the three great virtues of the Christian life—faith, hope, and love—hope is the one that draws us toward the future.

The prophet Jeremiah captured the essential biblical connection between hope and the future in a letter he wrote to the people of Jerusalem who had been carried away into exile by the Babylonians in 597 B.C.E. Jeremiah wrote, “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). “A future and a hope.” It’s a figure of speech called “hendiadys.” Two words are linked by “and” to express a complex idea. “A future and a hope.” Without hope, there is no future; without a future, there is no hope.

But hope is a slippery virtue. It may spring eternal, as Pope wrote, but what happens when your spring has given way to winter? What happens when your spring has run dry? What happens when the spring has gone out of your step? What of hope then, when your future is cloudy or uncertain, at best, or decidedly in your past? What of hope then?

I’d like to suggest to you this morning that the week of the Christian calendar through which we have just passed—Holy Week, it is called—is an exercise in the practice of the Christian virtue of hope. It begins with a Sunday of outrageous expectation that we call “Palm Sunday.” Hopes were high as Jesus entered Jerusalem to shouts of “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38). But on Thursday evening—Maundy Thursday, we call it—those hopes were dealt a crushing blow when one of his own betrayed him, and he was arrested, tried and convicted. On Friday, the Friday we observe as Good Friday, those hopes were dashed completely when he died on a cross as a common criminal. In the aftermath of Friday’s horror, no one could have blamed the followers of Jesus if they had quoted Ezekiel 37:11: “Our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.” “Our hope is lost.”

So tell me this. What did you do yesterday? How did you spend your Saturday in Holy Week? It was a gorgeous Saturday, wasn’t it? It was everything a spring Saturday in the South is supposed to be. Yesterday was “Holy Saturday” in the liturgical tradition. How did you spend it? I spent Holy Saturday on a pilgrimage . . . to Walmart. Walmart. Bev and I were searching for Skittles and Butterfingers and chocolate eggs and bunny ears and a stuffed yellow duck for this year’s Easter baskets. [Careful! That’s a potential “spoiler”!] I’m ashamed to say it, but in our house the Easter bunny is like Santa Claus in training pants. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. So our Holy Saturday is typically taken up in a mad dash up and down candy aisles. Meanwhile, while I’m distracted by Skittles and Butterfingers and chocolate eggs and bunny ears and a stuffed yellow duck, in the great liturgical tradition of the church in the annual Holy Week exercise of the practice of the Christian virtue of hope, Holy Saturday commemorates “the harrowing of hell.” The harrowing of hell. Come to think of it, maybe my Holy Saturday wasn’t that far removed from the liturgical one.

In the great liturgical tradition of the Christian faith, “Christ’s victory over death was accomplished not only on the cross and by his resurrection, but also on Holy Saturday. Indeed, Holy Saturday may be the most significant of the three days of Easter,” writes Vigen Guroian, an Orthodox theologian and professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. “On Friday, Christ is lifted up on the cross,” he writes. “On Saturday, Christ descends into Hades, knocks down its gates and liberates its captives. . . . On Easter Sunday, Christ rises again into the living world with his resurrected body. The victory over death that commenced on Friday is completed” (The Christian Century, March 23, 2010, p. 27). “Indeed, Holy Saturday may be the most significant of the three days of Easter.”

Just in case you don’t buy that, listen to the story told recently by John M. Buchanan, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, and editor and publisher of The Christian Century. Buchanan wrote,

A year ago a minister I know had to lead her suburban Chicago congregation through an unspeakable tragedy: a member of the congregation shot and killed his wife and her son and then killed himself. The minister had to comfort her congregation and hold it together. She spoke at a memorial service for the mother and son. What is there to say in that situation? She told the congregation crowded into the sanctuary that there was a phrase in the Apostles’ Creed that had always bothered her: the phrase stating that Jesus “descended into hell.” She told how the pastor of the church in which she grew up so disliked that line he went through the hymnals with a large black Magic Marker and crossed it out. “I grew up saying the creed without that line,” the minister said. “Now, this week,” she said, “I understand it. We have descended into hell together and Christ has gone before us, into every corner of it. The good news is that when life takes us there, when we have to go there, [Christ] goes with us” (The Christian Century, March 23, 2010, p. 3).

Do you see why “Holy Saturday” just might be “the most significant of the three days of Easter,” and especially so in the exercise of the Christian virtue of hope? When life takes us into hell, living or otherwise, Christ has already gone before us into every corner of it; and when we have to go there, Christ goes with us.

The essence of Christian hope is not in the avoidance of pain or suffering or grief or death or even hell. The essence of Christian hope is that Christ goes with us to see us through. Don’t miss the fact that the Easter story in this morning’s gospel lesson begins “while it was still dark.” Hope begins in darkness. Hope is born in darkness. Hope springs in darkness. Hope begins in the confusion and chaos of Mary Magdalene’s fear and loss. It was bad enough that Jesus had “suffered and was buried,” but now there is no body. Mary runs to the disciples to tell them, and then she returns to the empty tomb—not to believe or to celebrate but to weep. And in her weeping and in her grief and in her sorrow, she becomes aware of a presence with her, the presence of the very One she mourned and sought.

Right there is the key to unlocking hope. It is not that Mary ran away from the darkness and the emptiness and never came back. There is no hope in running away. It is not that Mary left to fill her life with other teachers and other aspirations and distractions from her pain and grief and loss. There is no hope in running away. Hope can only be found in the place where you have lost it—in the place of emptiness and grief and pain. The great Spanish reformer and mystic John of the Cross would tell us that the reason we so often can’t find hope is precisely because we run away from that place as quickly as we can. But Mary returned; and even after the others left, she stayed there in the empty place. She stayed there long enough to discover the presence of the One who had harrowed hell there with her.

When you find yourself in a living hell, don’t run. Wait! “Wait for the Lord” (Isaiah 40:31). If you will wait long enough, you will discover the presence of the risen Christ there with you bringing hope, birthing hope, springing hope while it is still dark because Christ knocks down hell’s gates and liberates its captives. In his latest book titled The Naked Now: Learning to See As the Mystics See, Richard Rohr insists on what he calls “the sacrament of the present moment”—that’s the “naked now.” All of “our experiences, whether good, bad, or ugly,” Rohr says, have the power to transform us through our encounter with “Real Presence” in that moment (p. 12). Rohr suggests that the reason we do not experience “Real Presence,” the presence of the risen and living Christ in our lives, is that more often than not, we are not present in the moment. We run from the moment; we avoid the moment; we self-medicate in the moment. It is not that Christ is not present in the moment. It is that we are not present, and therefore we do not encounter the Real Presence that is there, even in a living hell. But Mary did. She stayed there in the “naked now” long enough to be present and to experience Presence. Don’t run. Wait. “Wait for the Lord.”

In the meantime, while you are waiting, hope can be hard work. Hope can be hard work, and especially so when your spring has given way to winter, when your spring has run dry, when the spring has gone out of your step, when your future is cloudy or uncertain or decidedly in your past. Whatever your age or station, your Facebook status or marital relation, whatever the condition of your body, mind, heart, or soul, here is what you must do. It’s called “kedging.” K-e-d-g-i-n-g. Kedging. The boaters among us are familiar with it. Kedging is what you do when your boat runs aground.

The book of Hebrews calls hope a “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Hebrews 6:19). That’s another hendiadys, by the way, two words joined by “and” to express a complex idea: a “sure and steadfast” anchor. Here’s how you use your anchor in kedging. You carry your anchor as far from your boat as its chain or rope will reach, drop it, and return to your boat. And then you pull your boat to your anchor by the chain or the rope. And then you do it again. You carry your anchor as far from your boat as its rope or chain will reach, drop it, and return to your boat to pull your boat to your anchor. And then you do it again and again, as many times as it takes until your boat floats free once again. That’s kedging, and it’s what you do when your boat runs aground. When you’ve run aground, you don’t abandon ship; you don’t run away. You stay right there and kedge.

The first pastoral crisis to which I was called as a young pastor was late at night to the home of a grieving mother whose son had just been killed in a one-car automobile accident. She was lying in her bed in her darkened bedroom, unconsoled and unconsolable. “What am I going to do?” she wailed over and over again to no one in particular and to everyone within earshot. “What am I going to do?” It had been going on for an hour or more until someone whispered to her daughter Jewel, “Call the preacher.” Like that was likely to help! When I arrived, I sat down in a chair beside her bed and held her hand while she continued to wail at the ceiling for another twenty or thirty minutes, until suddenly she turned her head and wailed it directly at me for the first time: “What am I going to do?” I leaned toward her. “Do you see this clock, Mary?” I asked her as I tapped the alarm clock glowing with red numbers on her nightstand. She nodded slightly, sniffling. “What time does it say?” I asked. “12:15,” she answered through a sob. “Right. So what you’re going to do now is watch this clock until it says 12:30. And when you’ve made it to 12:30, what you are going to do is watch it until you have made it to 1:00. Got it?” She nodded again. “What do I do then?” she asked. “You watch this clock until you make it to 2:00.” “What if I fall asleep?” she asked. “Then when you wake up, look at the clock and start over again. Make it for fifteen minutes, and then for thirty minutes, and then for an hour. And if at any time you feel like you can’t make it, go back and start all over again with fifteen minutes. Can you do that?” I asked. “I’ll try,” she said. And I held her hand while she sobbed and watched the clock and drifted off to sleep. It’s called kedging: hauling yourself through hell by the sure and steadfast anchor of your soul.

When life takes you there, when you have to go there, you will finally understand why, indeed, Holy Saturday may be the most significant of the three days of Easter. Because Christ harrows hell—knocks down its gates and liberates its captives, because Christ is risen and present in the place of our loss and grief and pain and weeping wherever and whenever that may be, Easter hope does indeed spring eternal. May this be the day of your resurrection to Easter hope! “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” Amen.


This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

If These Were Silent, the Stones Would Shout

Luke 19:28-40
Palm Sunday 2010

“I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out,” Jesus said (Luke 19:40). Every so often, at least, it is good to be reminded that we are not the center of the universe. I am not the center of the universe. You are not the center of the universe. My family is not the center of the universe, and your family is not the center of the universe. Human beings are not the center of the universe, and the planet we inhabit is not the center of the universe. All those centers are fallacies: egocentric, ethnocentric, anthropocentric, geocentric. Jesus’ words to the Pharisees in this morning’s Gospel lesson are a reminder that none of us is the center of the universe: “If these were silent, the stones would shout.”

Now, if the idea of stones shouting strikes you as off center, I would remind you of the biblical testimony that all creation is sentient and responsive to the glory and the grace of God. Job 38:7 speaks of the joy of all creation at the very beginning “when the morning stars sang together.” Psalm 19 begins, “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the vault of heaven proclaims God’s handiwork.” Isaiah 55:12 says, “The mountains and the hills . . . burst forth into singing, and all of the trees of the field . . . clap their hands.” Romans 1:20 insists, “Ever since the creation of the world, God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made.” So God has never been without a witness to God’s glory and grace. And God never will be without a witness to God’s glory and grace: “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout.”

That was Jesus’ answer to those Pharisees who objected to the exuberance and the enthusiasm of the crowd around Jesus. For good religious people who had placed their trust in orderliness and rule-following, this crowd was out of order and breaking the rules. Orderliness and rule-following required that the grace of God be meted out a small portion at a time and only to those who deserved it—those who had earned it by abiding by the order and following the rules. That’s why Jesus butted heads with the Pharisees so often in the Gospels. Not because Jesus was against order and against rules. In fact, in many ways, Jesus’ order and Jesus’ rules were far more demanding than those of the Pharisees.

For example, the Pharisees taught, “You shall not kill,” and “whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.” But Jesus said, “If you are angry with your brother or sister, you are liable to judgment. And if you insult a brother or sister, you are liable to the council. And if you so much as say ‘You fool!’ to someone, you will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matthew 5:22). Wow! I’ll take “Thou shall not kill,” thank you very much. The Pharisees’ rule is easier. The Pharisees taught, “You shall not commit adultery,” but Jesus said, “every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Oh good Lord! Not committing adultery—hard as it may be for some of us—is a lot easier than that. Sign me up to be a Pharisee, please. Jesus’ way is way too hard.

The reason Jesus and the Pharisees butted heads is that the Pharisees had placed the center of their faith and practice in rule-following and order-keeping, while Jesus taught that you cannot earn the grace of God by following the rules and keeping the order. The grace of God is freely and extravagantly given to those who deserve it and even to those who do not. There’s the difference. You cannot control the glory and grace of God in a holy place or a holy people or a holy nation or a holy book. The glory and grace of God are out and about and accessible to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear. The morning stars sing it together; the heavens tell it; the mountains and hills break forth into song, and the trees clap their hands; and the crowd was shouting as Jesus made his way into Jerusalem. If the crowd were silent, the stones would have shouted because God never has been and never will be without a witness to God’s glory and God’s grace.

But the Pharisees aren’t the only characters in this morning’s gospel lesson who have misplaced the center. The crowd has missed the mark as well. If as the gospels suggest, Jesus entered Jerusalem directly from the Mount of Olives and the Kidron Valley to the east of Jerusalem, then he passed through what is called the “Golden Gate,” a massive double gate that is the only east-facing portal on the entire eastern wall of old Jerusalem. The Golden Gate is of legendary and mythic proportion among Jews and Christians and Muslims alike. In the Jewish tradition, the Golden Gate is the gate through which Messiah will enter. In the Christian tradition, the Golden Gate is the gate of Jesus’ triumphal entry. In some Muslim traditions, the Golden Gate is the place of Allah’s last judgment. It is so holy a place for Muslims that a zealously protected Muslim cemetery rises up the western bank of the Kidron Valley up against the wall and right up to the gate. So auspicious was the gate in antiquity and so associated without exuberant and outrageous claims such as “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” that in the year 810, the gate was sealed by Jerusalem’s Muslim keepers, and it is has never been opened since. In fact, it is cordoned off and guarded, literally, to keep tourists and rabble rousers, Jewish, Christian and Muslim alike, away from it.

The last time I was in Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount, my teacher and mentor and friend John Durham with whom I was travelling walked me to the path that led down to the Golden Gate and bribed the guard standing there to allow me to pass over the chains and down the walk, down the steps toward the Golden Gate. I walked until the guard called me back, either because I had reached the limit of his permission or Durham hadn’t given him enough cash to let me go farther. The Golden Gate is off-limits because it has long been associated with inflammatory claims like “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven!”

You see, the announcement that a king was approaching through the Golden Gate would not have been welcome news to either the Roman authorities or the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. The upcoming Passover festival when throngs of pilgrims filled the city every year was a tense and frequently violent time in the old city, and like so many crowds before them and since, the crowd at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem that day was caught up in more than the glory and the grace of God. In spite of the fact that Jesus had told them repeatedly that he was going to Jerusalem to die, there were still those even among Jesus’ closest followers who believed that now was the time he was going to restore the kingdom of Israel as the king of the line of David who would throw off Roman rule and bring back the kingdom at last. The king the crowd welcomed that day was a king of their own expectation, not the king whom Jesus was born to become.

The earliest Christian commentators on this passage were fascinated by the correlation between the angels’ song on the eve of Jesus’ birth and the shouts of the crowd at the triumphal entry. The angels in Bethlehem sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace!” (Luke 2:14). The crowd in Jerusalem shouted, “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” (Luke 19:38). There’s a difference, you see. The crowd in Jerusalem that day was not hoping for peace on earth; they were hoping for vindication on earth: political vindication, religious vindication, cultural vindication. And whenever and wherever crowds gather seeking vindication of any sort instead of peace on earth, they must be reminded that they are not the center of the universe. I am not the center of the universe. You are not the center of the universe. My family is not the center of the universe, and your family is not the center of the universe. We human beings are not the center of the universe, and the planet we inhabit is not the center of the universe. We are reminded that all of those centers are fallacies by Jesus’ words, “If these were silent, the stones would shout.”

Jesus did not need the crowd. The stones of the ground and the stones of the road and the stones of the wall and the stones of the gate would have done just as well. Because the rest of the crowd had it just as wrong as the Pharisees among them did. You know it well. Before the week was over, those who were shouting, “Blessed is the king!” hollered, “Crucify him!” Jesus did not come to Jerusalem for a coronation. He came for a crucifixion. Jesus did not come to Jerusalem for vindication, his or anyone else’s. He came for reconciliation—of the world with God and God with the world. And that is why to this day it is not a Golden Gate or a golden crown or golden throne but a wooden cross that is at the center of all genuinely Christian, Jesus-following faith and practice. A wooden cross. “The still turning point of the world,” T. S. Eliot called it. If you are looking for a center—and even if you’re not—there it is. There it is. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We did not earn it or deserve it, nor can we. It confounds our expectations and it belies our vindication. It is the centerpiece of the grace and the glory of God; and I tell you, even if these are silent, the stones will shout. Amen.


This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Extravagant and Lavish Devotion

John 12:1-8
Fifth Sunday in Lent 2010


The entire house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. No one at the dinner party thrown in Jesus’ honor could possibly have missed Mary’s extravagant and lavish act of devotion to Jesus. It was, to be sure, an extravagant act. The text says that the perfume that she poured out on Jesus’ feet could have been sold for 300 denarii, roughly the equivalent of a year’s wages for a laborer in first-century Palestine.

If we wanted to translate that price into twenty-first century South Carolina, it would go something like this. Someone who worked full-time for 50 weeks in a year for minimum wage, which in this state is $7.25, would earn $14,500. Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, poured $14,500 onto Jesus’ feet at a dinner party. That’s the kind of excess that offends us in Hollywood and on Wall Street. $14,500! Mary how could you?

Do you know how much good that amount of money would do at A Child’s Haven? Or Serenity Place? Or A Shepherd’s Gate? Or Project Host? Or Loaves and Fishes? Or Triune Mercy Center? Count me with Judas on this one. $14,500 would pay for nearly an entire year’s college education—tuition, fees, room and board—for a deserving student at South Carolina State University. Almost an entire year. It would pay for two weeks at Furman. Just kidding. It would pay for nine weeks at Furman. $14,500 would have been the twentieth largest gift last year to the First Baptist Greenville Mission and Ministry Plan—for the entire year. It would more than fund our Children’s Ministry for a year. It would put back into our budget for this year the cuts from our Youth Ministry we’ve taken. It would fund what we want to give to United Ministries and to scholarships but right now we’re projecting that we cannot. It would totally fund the commitment we had been making several years ago to the Alliance of Baptists but didn’t make last year and don’t project to make this year. What we could do with $14,500! Mary, how could you?

And yet, when the propriety of Mary’s extravagant act of devotion is questioned, look at what Jesus says: “Leave her alone.” “Leave her alone.” The inimitable Bill Hull, in his commentary on this passage, says there are always volunteers ready to offer their opinion on how other people’s money should be given. There were volunteers then, and there are volunteers now. But don’t count Jesus among that number, because Jesus says to Judas and to Jeff and to anyone else who criticizes an extravagant and lavish act of devotion directed to Christ, “Leave her alone!” What Jesus sees and understands is that an act of devotion is not measured by how much it costs—or by how little. An act of devotion to Christ stands alone on its own terms. Every act of devotion to Christ is price-less, whether it is Mary’s expensive perfume or the widow’s two copper coins (Mark 12:42).

By the way, while we are looking at this passage, I’d like to suggest to you that it is one of many passages in the Gospels that contradict what I would call a sloppy liberalism among some scholars and preachers who make out as though all the followers of Jesus were poor and that Jesus only loved poor people. You’ll hear it taught and preached that way. There is no question that there are hard words about wealth and hard words for wealthy people in the gospels. But unless you’ve sold out to class warfare inside the church or through the church, then you should not be blind to the fact that here is Mary of Mary and Martha fame, Mary the sister of Lazarus, one of the most devoted and beloved followers of Jesus, who can afford perfume costing $14,500. This woman is not poor by any standard. And she loved Jesus, and Jesus loved her. And Jesus said, “Leave her alone!” to those who were critical of how she chose to use her wealth in devotion to Jesus.

Don’t make the mistake of falling into the class-warfare trap. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that in the gospel of John in that famous third chapter, verse 16, it says, “God so loved the poor that he gave his only Son, so that whosoever among the poor believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” That’s not what John 3:16 says. It says that God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever—rich and poor, black and white and Asian and Hispanic, male and female, homosexual and homophobe, socialist and capitalist, Republican and Democrat and Independent—whosoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Don’t get caught up in the class warfare or the culture wars. Get caught up in the gospel instead.

The gospels show us followers of Jesus of all kinds of conditions and convictions and propensities. Even tax collectors. The gospel of Matthew says they flocked to Jesus. They were wealthy, and they got their wealth off of people like you and me. Tax collectors, centurions, women of means, and men and women of no means. The diversity of the folks who followed Jesus and were close to him and he to them is mind-boggling, and it’s something we should never forget. We should never fall prey to the perpetrators of class warfare and the culture wars who try to make it out otherwise. Mary’s story in John 12 is a perfect example. It was an extravagant gift offered as an act of devotion to Jesus by a woman with wealth.

It was also a lavish gift. I pick the word “lavish” because it’s derived from the Latin lavare, “to wash.” It’s the same root word from which we get our word “lavatory,” wash room. Lavish: it’s a gift that overflows. Mary’s act of devotion overflowed on Jesus’ feet, so much so that she wiped the excess with her hair, according to verse 3. Jesus’ feet and Mary’s hair. Remember that when we’re talking about the ancient world, the most common form of transportation was walking. Walking barefooted and sandaled, not shod. Jesus’ feet would have been dusty and dirty, calloused and cracked, having walked through the countryside and towns and cities where I would remind you there were no sanitation systems. Sorry for the image, but in the very next chapter of John’s gospel, John 13, Jesus says that a person who has bathed does not need to wash—except for their feet. Jesus’ feet, his foul feet, and Mary’s hair.

In 1 Corinthians 11:15, the apostle Paul reflects a first-century perspective on a woman’s hair. Paul says that a woman’s hair is her “glory.” “Her glory,” he says, doxa, the same word that the New Testament uses for the glory of God. Her hair is her glory. Now, we may feel like that’s an antiquated view of women, and that we are far more enlightened and liberated than that; but I would remind you that there are still places where what men call a “barber shop,” women call a “beauty parlor”—as though her “beauty” were all in her hair. I hope not. But in the first century context, what Mary did was wipe Jesus’ foulest with her very best. She gave her very best to Jesus’ worst. And it wouldn’t matter if there wasn’t a penny’s worth of perfume involved. It wouldn’t matter if it had been nothing but her tears or nothing but water, the wiping of Jesus’ feet with her hair would have been a lavish act of devotion to Jesus, even if she couldn’t have afforded a single ounce of that expensive perfume. An act of devotion is not measured by how much it costs or by how little. An act of devotion to Christ stands alone on its own terms. Every act of devotion to Christ is price-less, extravagant and lavish.

It was lavish in another way that I don’t want you to miss. The next meal that John’s gospel talks about, the first meal after the dinner party in Jesus’ honor in John 12, comes in John 13, the very next chapter. It corresponds to the meal that is conventionally called the Last Supper. Now, if you’ve read ahead into John 13, you know that the gospel of John doesn’t mention bread and wine at the table. What John 13 talks about instead is that after supper Jesus took a basin, filled it with water, wrapped himself in a towel and knelt down to wash the disciples’ feet and wipe them with a towel. And the very same verb that was used to describe Mary’s wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair is used to describe Jesus’ wiping the disciples’ feet with his towel. Before Jesus ever did it, Mary got it. That lavish act of humility and devotion that Jesus exhibited in relation to his disciples—and that Jesus called on his disciples to emulate in their relations with one another—Mary had already done for Jesus in her extravagant and lavish act of devotion.

And so, you see, there is a direct line from the dinner party in Bethany at which Mary wiped Jesus’ feet to the Last Supper at which Jesus wiped the disciples’ feet to the meal we share today that calls us to remembrance of the most extravagant and lavish gift of them all: that God so loved the world—the world, I remind you—that Christ gave his all. The gift of Christ’s all, like Mary’s gift, was given in grace to be received in grace. Perhaps the most amazing thing of all in that dinner-party incident was how much grace Jesus showed when he received so extravagant and lavish a gift.

As we come to this time when we share in this bread and in this cup, it reminds us of the One whose act of devotion not only to God but also to you is so large that it cannot be calculated. It’s priceless. And it was given for you and to you in grace; receive it now in grace. Let us pray.

O God, we lift up our words of thanksgiving in this moment, and we trust that when no words of our own will come, your Spirit will move in such a way that you will know our gratitude for the extravagant and lavish gift you have given us in Jesus Christ. Forgive us for when we have held that which we have been given and all that we are and all that we have so closely that we have been neither extravagant nor lavish toward you or toward others. But consecrate us now, nourished by this bread and sustained by this cup, that we may move from this place to the world where we may live lives of extravagant and lavish service in your name, in which we pray. Amen.


This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be reached at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.