It’s early in the morning on a somewhat balmy day for November in Pennsylvania. After reading both of today’s chapters I have just settled into my chair to write, with a steaming cup of coffee and the aroma of pumpkin spice creamer wafting through the air. It doesn’t seem like Easter, but that’s where we are in the text.
Maybe it’s just me, but my thoughts are on fall activities right now, not Easter. Easter is spring, new life, renewed hope and looking forward. Fall is celebrating what has happened over the summer, looking back, being satisfied and content. I love the seasons…don’t you? I would miss them if I lived somewhere that didn’t have them. Then again, I could be okay with that if it were somewhere balmy…
Okay,…. I don’t think I’m off to a very good start here.. Let me try and refocus…or focus…
The triumphant entry: since it is an Easter text, we hear this passage several times a year. Let me jot a few things I remember about it in “rapid fire”: The colt was a fulfillment of prophecy, the palm branches and coats on the ground were a sign that the people believed Jesus to be royalty. The Pharisees were right to be worried…if the Romans suspected that a man was proposing that he was a “king” they would immediately dispatch soldiers from the garrison to kill him. The mood was celebratory, people were excited and filled with hope…yet John says that they still didn’t really believe in Him. I suppose that became evident when He was crucified. Only those who truly believed would stick around after that. The people understood correctly that the Messiah would never die…they just didn’t have the capacity to understand what that looked like. They thought that Jesus would never die as a human. ..that would have been a tragedy, because then no one could ever have entered heaven. What the people wanted and what they needed were two completely different things.
In John’s recollection we find the account of Mary pouring nard perfume on Jesus’ feet. I’m not sure what nard smells like, but it doesn’t sound very attractive. But it was extremely fragrant, and very costly…in that way it resembles our service to Christ. Our sacrifice should be costly…it should be offering something of value, right? King David said “I will not offer to the Lord that which costs me nothing” (2 Samuel 24). And several times in Scripture we are told to offer the first fruits of our crops and resources, not what is “left over” but the very best. Mary is doing exactly that. She is offering up far more than perfume..she is sacrificing her burial spices…without them I’m not sure what the alternative would be for preparing a body for burial. Perhaps she is sacrificing the preparation for burial as well. In any case, it goes far beyond the perfume. And then there’s the wiping of the feet with her hair. She uses her body in a way that most of us would find demeaning today. I guess in one way it almost seems sensual, because she is being so selfless and intimate in what she is doing. I suspect that Mary was “in love” with Jesus, and I don’t mean just on a spiritual plane, I mean that she loved Him physically and spiritually. I am sure that she didn’t envision marrying Him and carrying His children, but she loved Him nonetheless. In a sense, we all must share that depth of love for Christ. The physical love isn’t possible for us, as we have no physical manifestation of Christ on earth, but the spiritual love is surely a requirement.
We aren’t all good with intimacy. Some people become extremely uncomfortable as soon as the conversation becomes personal or intimate. I wonder why that is? I wonder what prayer life looks like when you don’t want to get “personal” with someone? I wonder what Mary’s prayer life was like. She had seen and talked to Jesus personally. She had the images of her hair, drenched with perfume being caressed across the feet of Christ. Her conversations with God must have been very different from what I pray. I’m not sure they have to be, but I’ll bet they aren’t very similar.
One of the difficult things to reconcile about Jesus is the way He answered questions. Sometimes he answered with another question, like He did when the Pharisees asked Him under what authority He was clearing the temple and teaching . Other times, he seems to ignore the questions altogether, like He did when Philip and Andrew approached Him to ask if He would meet with a couple of their Greek friends. As I read it Jesus doesn’t answer their question, but starts talking about how he will soon be put to death. If I were Philip or Andrew I think I would have offered up a puzzled look and then said “sooo…..is that a yes…..or no? I’m thinking no…..it’s probably not a good time….” And then I would have left, wondering what started that conversation.
I would have been wishing that Jesus would be a little more focused, which is really funny, because He was “laser focused”…just not on what we wanted Him to be focused on. You can’t focus on two things at once…one will always be out of focus.
We need to learn to find the key thing that God is doing and focus on that. And then, ignore all the comments and complaints from people who feel they aren’t getting what they need from us because we aren’t being attentive to them….or focusing on them. That sounds rude somehow, but if it’s done in a loving way, with Christ at the center of the impulse, I’m sure it can be a rewarding situation for everyone.
Well…..I know that I didn’t plow any new ground in my thoughts today, but I guess we have days like that. I think I like French Vanilla better than Pumpkin Spice. Will there be coffee in heaven?
Faithfully,
PR