Sermon April 6: John 12:1-8 Love Three Ways                Rev. Betsy Hogan

So, have you ever delved into the world of fan fiction? It’s a genre that’s pretty much exploded with the arrival of the internet – when people who LOVE the characters in a particular TV show or movie or book, and can’t bear for those characters to be limited by the stories their writers have given them, in the TV show or movie or book –

They just write their own ‘extra’ stories about those characters. Mix things up a bit. Drop them into new situations. Add some vampires, or mysteries to be solved. Or even just extrapolate from what’s already in the original story, imagining extra scenes or ‘what happened before’ or ‘what happened after’ that the original author didn’t include.

It’s hugely popular, fan fiction. The fun part is that it HAS been since ancient times.

Which really isn’t that surprising. All ancient cultures, after all, were oral traditions – storytelling traditions. And although stories would have been learned by rote to be told with accuracy around ancient campfires and on long journeys, creative people have always added their own flourishes. 

In the ancient Hebrew tradition, the tradition of our own Bible, those flourishes were called midrash. Sometimes they really were just flourishes – like the three wise men having actual names and backstories – 

But other times they were whole extra stories about whole new events. Extrapolations, of course, from the core story that was known – but really, entirely new additions. 

Like this one, about Lazarus. 

Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, who’ve invited Jesus for supper the week before Passover in the reading we heard earlier. Lazarus whom Jesus has just previously, in the passage right before today’s reading, raised from the dead. 

Lazarus who was dead and buried three days. Until Jesus arrives on the scene and calls for his grave to be opened and says “Lazarus, come out”. And out he comes. Alive again.

Not alive permanently – he did die properly in due course – but alive again now. Lazarus has been raised from the dead, he’s restored to his sisters Martha and Mary, and in the passage we heard today they’ve invited Jesus over for dinner.

Entirely back to normal. Or was he?

Because apparently, in the early church, when the Early Church Fathers were busily constructing “official Christian doctrine” out of all the various stories and sources, they indulged in producing a bit of fan fiction. An extra little story about Lazarus, based on absolutely nothing at all, that after he was raised from the dead he never smiled or laughed again.

He lived thirty more years, so the Early Church Fathers wrote, but in a state of perfect gravity and solemnity the entire time.

Which, doesn’t it seem like such a waste? To be brought back from the dead in miraculous fashion and live for thirty more years – but never to smile or laugh again? Apparently enjoying nothing at all, when in fact what he’d been given was an actual second chance?

But this wasn’t idle fan fiction for the Early Church Fathers. Because what they were drumming up in this story was that Lazarus – having been dead for three days – had entered the next world and seen the sadness and suffering of those who’d not “made it” into heaven. 

It was pure propaganda, based on nothing. The point for the Early Church Fathers in this tale made up of whole cloth was, of course, to just thoroughly scare people that they’d best fall into line, or else they’d land miserably outside of heaven full of sadness and suffering for all eternity too. 

Unless of course they wanted to purchase their way out of a problematic afterlife. In which case, the Early Church Fathers noted, the church would be happy to help. Don’t want to be sad outside heaven’s gates like the poor souls that Lazarus saw when he died for three days? Buy ten masses and this holy relic, and all will be well. Probably. 

If there are a lot of messes that the Early Church Fathers left behind them, and there are, this story about Lazarus – pure fearmongering propaganda – is only one of them.

Because not only can we not “buy” our way into heaven, into the embrace of Godness beyond this life – we don’t need to. God IS love, and that love is completely unconditional. It just IS. Last week we heard the Parable of the Prodigal Son – God’s love is just grace overflowing. The Early Church Fathers couldn’t have gotten it more wrong, except in fact that I think they knew exactly what they were doing. Because they wanted power and they wanted control: so they created this story that would make people afraid. What if I wind up outside heaven, like the souls that Lazarus saw that made him come back and never smile or laugh again?

It was a dreadful manipulative piece of propaganda, this Lazarus story that got made up. Truly egregious.

But here’s the thing. It’s also kind of interesting. To have that completely-made-up sad and serious come-back-to-life Lazarus sort of in the back of our minds, when we consider the passage we heard this morning, where he and his sisters are having Jesus over for supper.

Not because it’s true – because it literally reflects nothing in the biblical story – but because IF we let sad and serious come-back-to-life Lazarus sort of hover when we hear this passage, what he reminds us of is how what we DO see in the way of someone else’s sadness or suffering or need, it DOES affect us. And we DO carry it. 

Right now we might be feeling like we’re carrying quite a lot of it. And it’s a heavy load. 
Knowing others’ suffering or sadness or fear or need – it moves us. There’s powerlessness. We feel compassion. We might identify with the other person’s grief, or even feel it so much too that it makes us afraid. Or anxious or angry or outraged. 

Lazarus dead for three days seeing sad souls in torment outside heaven’s gates is manifestly ridiculous and completely made up – but that feeling of being deeply moved by another person’s suffering, almost sharing that suffering, carrying it ourselves – it’s entirely real. 

And in the context of that supper scene we see in this morning’s passage, that’s actually quite meaningful. 

Because in effect what we’re presented with in this reading is three different ways of reacting out of that sense of connection with, compassion for, that sense of carrying someone else’s hurting.

As it happens, ironically, none of these three different ways of reacting has anything to do with Lazarus! Who’s pretty much just in the room when the whole scene is going down. As is his sister Martha, poor thing, who’s as usual looking after all the cooking and cleaning and serving.

But here’s the thing. I think that’s actually how Martha copes, how she reacts to the heaviness of carrying the suffering she’s seeing. Because she IS seeing suffering. Jesus IS at this point, knowing his time is almost at an end, and the message he’s brought to God’s people hasn’t reached far enough -- he’s already feeling that grief when he arrives at their house for supper. He’s hurting.

And so Martha’s instinct is to find something she can DO. How can she help, she can make food. She can put on the kettle. Whatever else is going, he has to eat. How Martha copes with carrying sadness is she finds something she can DO. 

I have to admit, I have some appreciation for that default – and maybe you do too.

But Mary, the other sister, Mary of Bethany – her instinct is completely different. She sees Jesus’ sadness, she feels the heaviness of the suffering he’s feeling in her own bones, and her instinct is to lean in. She brings out to the table a bottle of expensive perfumed oil, the kind that was used at that time to anoint a body after death, and in an act of simple lovingkindness and care and compassion and devotion, she pours it out on Jesus’ feet and then wipes them with her hair.

Weird to our sensibilities, perhaps, but in that context a deeply heartfelt and intimate act of compassion toward someone she senses is hurting. As Jesus IS at this point.

And Mary sees that. She sees that hurting and she’s carrying it and she reacts. She leans in. With all the compassion, all the love, all the care, to the point of ridiculous, a whole bottle of expensive perfume, pouring it all out, the scent of it fillling the whole house.

At which point, of course, we get Judas’ reaction. Judas, who’s one of Jesus twelve disciples, who’s been with him from the start – and there’s no doubt that just like Peter and James and John and all the rest of them, Judas can also see what Mary sees, that Jesus is hurting, that he’s already grieving –

And Judas is carrying that too. He has loved Jesus as his teacher, and Jesus’ hurting hurts HIM. And it’s unbearable. Martha copes by doing, and Mary copes by loving, but Judas?

Judas copes by deflecting. Jesus’ hurting is unbearable, and Judas can’t deal. He can’t look at it, he can’t feel it. So he deflects. He “whatabouts”. 

We do it all the time, as a human family. Yes, this person’s in need, but what about THAT person’s need. Yes, this wrongness is a problem, but what about THAT wrongness. 

That’s what Judas is doing here. He’s whatabouting. Sure, Jesus is sad and your perfume makes him feel better, but what about all the poor people that could have been helped, if instead that perfume had been sold and the money given to charity?

The thing is, he’s not wrong. Because notwithstanding the commentary from the author of John’s gospel, I don’t think that it’s a matter of Martha and Mary’s impulses are correct and Judas’ impulse is dreadful. They’re just three different reactions to feeling, to being affected by, to carrying, other people’s need or sadness or suffering. Mary’s reaction is she sees sadness and she moves in, to minister to it. Martha’s reaction is she’s sadness and she moves in to minister around it. Judas’ reaction is that he sees sadness and he can’t bear it – so he deflects to the bigger picture, to the broader advocacy of whatabout and whatabout and whatabout.

I think this is a gift to us, at a time when we’re carrying a lot, holding a lot, of other people’s sadness and fear and hurting. Is it the point that the gospel of John is trying to make? It very much isn’t. The gospel of John is all about lifting up Mary, and her instinctive devotion and care and love.

But there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of fan fiction. It’s hard to carry what we’re carrying. And we’re not all Mary, all the time. 

I think Jesus understood, they were doing what they could. I think God understands, that we do what we can. Martha’s right, whatever else is going on, Jesus has got to eat. Judas is right, “you will always have the poor with you.” And Mary’s right, loving matters. 

All kinds of loving matters. Thanks be to God, with whom we do what we can. Amen.