Isaiah 42:1-9
The servant of God brings justice
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry out or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it:
I am the LORD; I have called you in righteousness; I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols.
See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.
So I’m inspired to review the daily lectionary for Holy Week. This is actually Monday’s readings, but there’s a theme here, so I want to start with it even though it’s a day late.
What Isaiah describes here is what I call the power of powerlessness. God, in God’s own telling, is supreme:
Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it:
And has a covenant with the children of Abraham:
I am the LORD; I have called you in righteousness; I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations,
That covenant has a purpose, which is not just to make Israel a nation:
to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
To bring, in other words, God’s salvation to the world. The blind, the prisoner; that’s literal, not some metaphorical pseudo-spiritual “miserable sinner that I am”/Amazing Grace” sense. Real blindness; real imprisonment; in the dungeons, where the forgotten languish. If the light doesn’t reach them, what’s the point of it?
And how will this happen? By works of power and physical dominance? No. By powerlessness:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry out or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.
The spirit of God is a cry for justice, but it is not a fight, a clarion call “
Aux armes, les citoyens!” God’s justice comes peacefully, quietly; relentlessly.
He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
Because the spirit of God is faith, is trust, is patience. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” When the fire and the rose 🔥🌹are one? No; in God’s time. Have faith; hold fast to trust; be patient. And you will behold the power of powerlessness.
Psalm 36:5-11
Refuge under the shadow of your wings
Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains; your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O LORD.
How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.
O continue your steadfast love to those who know you and your salvation to the upright of heart!
Do not let the foot of the arrogant tread on me, or the hand of the wicked drive me away.
The psalm is a prayer of faith and trust. It is more for the heart than the mind; although the two are not separate, not apart from each other. But we’ll leave the psalm today as a heartfelt prayer, a cri de couer.
Hebrews 9:11-15
The blood of Christ redeems for eternal life
But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation),
he entered once for all into the holy place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.
For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified,
how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!
For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.
I’m going to start with the second verse there, because I’m more interested in elucidation than exegesis. I just want to point out a few points of interest, places where I think misunderstanding can intrude.
So when scripture uses the metaphor of the tent, it’s a reference to the Exodus, to the years in the desert, to the time before the Temple in Jerusalem. But the real issue is here:
… then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation),
Which might be misread as a dichotomy between Jesus (homoiousias/homoousias) (holy; good) and creation (fallen; bad). That’s a reading from several centuries later. The letter to the Hebrews is merely upholding the understanding that, while God is Creator, what is created is neither homoousias nor homoiousias with God; but Jesus is. Take that from it, and you’ll be fine.
As for the blood…well, connect the idea of fluids to the anointing story from John, the last of four in the gospels; and the only story, besides the crucifixion, that show up in all four gospels (and before you object, no, Mark does not have a resurrection; only an empty tomb. The longer ending is much later than the original ending.)
John 12:1-11
Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.
There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him.
Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus's feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,
"Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"
(He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)
Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.
You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.
So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well,
since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.
This is where things get tedious, because the anointing stories absolutely fascinate me. This is almost the only time a story in the synoptics shows up in John, and owes so much to Luke, the only gospel closer in chronological time, to our time; save John’s. I’ve got the Scholars version at hand, so I’m going to cheat and use that one now:
Six days before Passover Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, the one Jesus had brought back from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him; Martha did the servince and Lazarus was one of those who ate with him. Mary brought a pound of expensive lotion and anointed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair. And the house was filled with the lotion's fragrance. Judas Iscariot, the disciple who was going to turn him in, says, "Why wasn't this lotion sold? It would bring a year's wages, and the proceeds could have been given to the poor. (He didn't say this because he cared about the poor, but becasue he was a thief. He was in charge of hte common purse and now and again wouild pilfer money from it.)
"Let her alone," Jesus said. "Let her keep it for the time I am to be enbalmed. There will always be poor around; but I won't always be around.
--John 12:1-8, SV
So that's it: 8 verses and done. But the scene in John’s gospel is Bethany. Lazarus, a character in a parable in Luke (the only other time the name appears in the gospels), is now the dead brother of Mary (Lazarus dies in the parable, too). Lazarus has been raised from the dead, which is why the chief priests are upset (actually the Romans killed Jesus, but the surest way to be the next on a cross was to hint that execution was in any way unjust. Much safer to blame Judean religious authority.). Now the time is the days before Passover; and Jesus, he does in Mark and Matthew, refers to the act as a foreshadowing of his death. But two very important elements have shifted, perhaps through Luke's lens: now the perfume goes on Jesus' feet, and again, a woman wipes his feet with her hair. Only this time the woman is named, so perhaps now we can tell this story "in remembrance of her," at least in the modern understanding of "remembrance."
It's interesting, the similiarities between this story and the stories in Matthew and Mark. There aren't that many commonalities between John and the Synoptics. John the Baptizer plays an important role in the gospels of Mark and Matthew, a role that reaches its zenith in Luke's gospel, where he begins with the appearance of Gabriel to John's father, Zechariah. In John's gospel the Baptizer appears as a bystander, someone who literally comments on Jesus as Jesus walks by. No one in John's gospel gets to share center stage, however briefly, with Jesus. John's gospel has no Sermon on the Mount (Luke)/Plain (Matthew), and precious few parables. In the synoptics, Jesus' miracles are "acts of power" (dunamis) in the original Greek; in John's version they are "signs" (semeia). So the resurrection of Lazarus is a "sign" of Jesus' authority and power, and it is precisely that sign which leads to the crucifixion:
When the huge crowd of Judeans found out he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, the one he had brought back from the dead. so the ranking priests planned to put Lazarus to death, too, since because of him many of the Judeans were defecting and believing in Jesus.
John 12:9-11, SV
The "sign" of Lazarus was costing the priests their power; at least in John's narrative. I’ve mentioned before that the cleansing of the Temple seems to have been the historical impetus for the crucifixion. That occurs just before Passover, a time of tension in Roman occupied Jerusalem. John includes that story, in a few verses in chapter 2, almost immediately after the first "sign" at the wedding in Cana:
It was almost time for the Jewish Passover celebration, so Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple precincts he came upon people selling oxen and sheep and doves, and bankers were doing business there too. He made a whip out of rope and drove them all out of the temple area, sheep, goats, oxen, and all; then he knocked over the bankers' tables, and set their coin flying. And to the dove merchants he said, "Get these birds out of here! How dare you use my Father's house as apublic market."(His disciples were reminded of the words of scripture: "Zeal for your house is eating me alive.")
John 2:13-17, SV
It's worth pointing out here, as a side bar, that merchants in the temple weren't necessarily evil. Temple sacrifice was the point of coming to the Temple during Passover, and most travelers couldn't bring animals with them for the ritual. They bought animals as they were able to afford: from doves to ox. Coins given to the Temple also couldn't bear the image of Caesar, both because humans are made in the image of God (and no images of God can be created), and because Caesar declared himself a "son of God," or divine in his rule over the empire. So the coins of Rome had to be exchanged at Temple for coins acceptable in the Temple. The problem with both practices, from Jesus' point of view, is that they exploited the poor (like Jesus). The cost of a dove was already a sacrifice for the poor traveler to Jerusalem coming to the Temple to worship the God of Abraham who taught Israel to think first of the care of the poor. The exchange rate on Temple coins made money for the banker, and cost the poor, especially, a great deal. Jesus' objection, in other words, is not pious; he objects to the economic exploitation of people like him, the very people the God of Abraham professes to identify with. So you can see why he's pissed off. You can also see why Pilate was worried. We don’t countenance these kinds of complaints today: especially if they are made in the name of Jesus.
Pilate's palace overlooked the Temple. I mean, directly overlooked. From the walls of the governor’s palace, Pilate could look down into the open areas of the Temple. Turmoil in the Temple during Passover, the high holiday of the Judeans (Jews is a bit of an anachronism during the time of Pilate), the "first of months" for the children of Abraham , is not conducive to the Pax Romana. It's a time of high political tension for Rome, which tolerated diverse religious beliefs, but not diverse political beliefs. And Passover was as political as it was religious, so....
Back to Jesus: the cost of the perfume Mary uses doesn't bother him. There's no contradiction here; just a contrast. And a consistency that keeps this version of the anointing at Bethany in line with those of Matthew and Mark. Luke's is still the outlier (no perfume; only the woman’s tears; an outrageously erotic presentation in Luke’s day); but that outlier finds echoes in John's version.
First, note that the disciples appear in the story in Mark and Matthew, but not in Luke. And John, who likes to tell more concrete stories (the better to ground his long, abstract discourses by Jesus. As one of my professors in seminary pointed out, John's Jesus sucks all the air out of the upper room. Chapter 13 of John begins that event, with Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. Chapter 18 begins with Jesus finally going to the garden, although he's barely there before Judas shows up to betray him. The chapters in between are almost all a monologue by Jesus.), replaces Simon the leper/Pharisee with Lazarus (the better to connect the resurrection of Lazarus in chapter 11 to the plot against Jesus in chapter 12) and "the disciples" with Judas Iscariot. John's character of Judas is the one we all think of as the betrayer, the Iago to Jesus' Othello (except Jesus is not nearly so naive about Judas, especially in John's gospel), the Judas familiar to us from "JCS" (except, again, John's Judas doesn't really have any redeeming virtues). So Judas is clearly the antagonist in this little story; he is even a hypocrite, because he doesn't care about the poor or whether the mony would go to them. He's just, in modern parlance, a "troll."
And Jesus' response is equally blunt. It also lends itself most easily to the dismissal of concern for the poor I've heard from too many professed Christians: that the poor will always be with us. It's usually said as if that's not only a fact of life, but the desire of God that some be poor. As punishment; as part of God's "plan"? The reason scarcely matters. The excuse for ignoring them and denying any responsibility for them, is all that matters.
In some ways the Johannine version of this story is the most attenuated, and it suffers from that loss of detail. John is less concerned with this story than with incorporating it into his narrative because, like the crucifixion, it is a part of the story of the Nazarene that cannot be excluded. Curiously, it is John's gospel that gives us the long discourse between Pilate and Jesus, the back and forth between the Governor of Judea and a peasant rabble-rouser (which makes it, historically, a highly unlikely event. Imagine your governor bandying words in public, before TV cameras, with a condemned prisoner just before his execution.) We owe a lot of what we think about the story of Jesus to John's embellishments. But in the anointing story John reduces the events to a bare minimum: now the woman is named: Mary, the sister to Martha and to Lazarus. So she is in her brother's home, and yet still serving Jesus at table. An attenuated scandal since Jesus is above such matters, and the focus stays on him in John's version. Do you see this woman? Well, don't; she really doesn't matter. Even the detail of drying his feet with her hair, which now can be a sign of love and honor for what Jesus has done (resurrected her brother Lazarus), but which would also be scandalous (it's still a first century lap dance; and imagine it happening today. Washing someone's feet is intimate enough. Drying them with your own long hair?). John steps over that quickly by shifting attention to Judas, and in the most negative way possible. Jesus dismisses the whole thing, using it as a foreshadowing of his death. He doesn't even acknowledge what she's done, or why, except to dismissively say she should save the perfume for his burial preparations.
So the story comes from Mark to Matthew, almost unaltered; and then undergoes a radical transformation in Luke. Some of those physical changes make it to John's version, but John seems ready almost to discard it, as it's not a "sign" pointing to who Jesus is or what his authority is, and it's not a "teachable moment" allowing Jesus to talk on and on and on about the nature of God and humanity. For John it's a narrative transition point between the more important story of Lazarus (a "sign" if ever there was one; and, in John’s narrative, the prefiguring of Jesus’ resurrection) and the movement of the story into Jerusalem and the "upper room" (the remainder of chapter 12 is Jesus again talking about the concept of "signs" and the narrative moving toward the foot-washing of chapter 13 and the captive audience of the disciples Jesus then lectures for five chapters. Some of this we’ll get to). It's like John knows he can't leave this story out, but doesn't really think much of it, himself. It's a pebble in his narrative shoe that he drops off as soon as he is able.
What, then, do we get from all of this? This simple story was so important to the gospel writers they all included it (the canonical gospels, I mean; not the non-canonical ones). Luke alters it dramatically. From his "Special Luke" source? From his own interests in the story of Jesus of Nazareth? For whatever reason, he puts it through a blender, changing time and place and persons, leaving out the disciples and followers so thoroughly it is obvious the woman with the jar is a stranger to everyone else in that room. There's a reason Luke goes immediately from his anointing story to a catalogue of the women traveling with Jesus. It may be one of them is the woman in the room, since they provide for Jesus' ministry out of their own resources, and undoubtedly the perfume, even if it didn't cost a year's wages, was very expensive. Luke is drawing a line underneath the woman's identity, the fact she was a stranger before she entered the room; and the enticing possibility that she is a stranger no more, because Jesus told her she had shown great trust, and that trust had saved her. Matthew and Mark intimate the woman is one of the group; and maybe that's why Luke says the women had resources to fund the ministry when offerings weren't enough. Matthew and Mark make it clear this is an anointing: the perfume goes on the head, like the oil on the head of the king, or as in Psalm 133:
{A Song of degrees of David.} Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!
2It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;
3As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.
That is an anointing. Luke shifts not only time and place (not Bethany; and far earlier than the fateful Passover events) and location (feet, not head). Is it even an anointing anymore? John restores (follows?) tradition, by calling the act an anointing, but Mary aims for the feet, not the head. And in Mary we finally identify a woman (although no one tells that story in memory of her) and a reason for her gratitude (her brother has been restored to life). John also includes a lovely, concrete detail: "And the house was filled with the lotion's fragrance." A metaphor? Or merely a physical detail about the nature of perfume? Either way it's wiped aside by the actions of Judas and the blunt retort of Jesus. None of this really interests John; but what's always been interesting to me is why John includes this story; and why he shifts to location to Jesus' feet, even as he keeps up with the tradition of the house being in Bethany, and the disciples (well, Judas) being present.
In "JCS," the anointing story turns into the emotional heart of the story. Immediately after Judas' lament "Heaven on their minds" we meet the disciples with "What's the Buzz?" And among them is Mary Magdalene and the women (as a backing chorus) who sing "Let me try to cool down your face a bit", which allows Judas back in with "Strange Thing, Mystifying":
It seems to me a strange thing, mystifying
That a man like you can waste his time on women of her kind.
Yes, I can understand that she amuses,
But to let her kiss you, stroke your hair, is hardly in your line.
It's not that I object to her profession,
But she doesn't fit in well with what you teach and say.
It doesn't help us if you're inconsistent.
They only need a small excuse to put us all away.
That's John crossed with Luke. The objection is in Judas' mouth; but the objection itself, however obliquely expressed, is that of Simon the Pharisee. Jesus has already accepted Mary's attention:
Mary, ooh, that is good
How you prattle through your supper,
Where and when and who and how
She alone has tried to give me,
what I need right here and now.
Which sounds more like Luke than anybody. This story recurs with the famous love song "I Don't Know How To Love Him." Again Mary soothes Jesus, upset by the events of the march into Jerusalem (Simon Zealotes tells Jesus to use this power for glory), the cleansing of the Temple ("My Temple should be a house of prayer!/But you have made it a den of thieves!") and the followers ("Christ you know I love you/Did you see I waved?/I believe in you and God/so tell me that I'm saved!") and the beggars and diseased ("See my eyes, I can hardly see/See my legs, I can hardly walk/See my purse, I'm a poor, poor man/See my toungue I can hardly talk") to whom Jesus finally screams "HEAL YOURSELVES!" And then Mary is back, offering "Myrrh for your hot forehead/calm you and anoint you" as she soothes him to sleep, and then sings her song of confused, bewildered love. It isn't the song of the woman in Luke's version of the anointing; but it could be ours, if we examine that story carefully, if we take what Luke gives us, seriously.
And here's an interesting thing from the rock opera, too. Judas says, in the first song, that Jesus has begun to matter more than the things he says. This is an old discussion in Christianity. The earliest gospels were likely "sayings" gospels. Some of those are conjectural: "Q" is thought to have been a collection of sayings of Jesus. There's also presumably a "signs" gospel behind John's version. The Gospel of Thomas is the most famous extant example of these kinds of gospels. And it’s arguable, especially after the crucifixion, especially today, that Christians honor Jesus more in who he was than in what he taught. Judas, in other words, is on to something. Gallup reports that church attendance in America is declining, and thinks this marks something in American cultural history. Perhaps; or perhaps it just marks a new social willingness to admit you don't go to church anymore. The decline in attendance has been obvious to pastors and churches for more than half a century now. Gallup thinks it’s discovered something but, again, the world is just catching up to the church. And still we're a long way from the early 20th century. This fight between who Jesus was, and what Jesus said (and which matters more) is a very old one, in other words; and if the latter is starting to prevail over the former (not to its extinguishment, but with a renewed emphasis on the latter above the former), perhaps that's all to the good. Perhaps that's even the Holy Spirit (Luke) at work. Perhaps we should let that fragrance fill the house (John).
Luke's story is, in my understanding, a powerful story about grace and salvation, forgiveness and redemption. We want things to be earned, especially something as important as grace and acceptance (acceptance often includes some manner of forgiveness), but we want these blessings purchased with some coin. For me that coin should be as small as possible, a mere mite, because surely I am deserving of forgiveness and grace, especially if I can't possibly pay for it. For you, however? Well, I'm not sure I want you getting something for nothing. That seems unfair. Maybe if you were to show a little love, you'd be deserving. But to be deserving and to show some love, surely you have to have some prompting to respond to. So would it work like this?
"I walked into your house and you didn't offer me water for my feet; yet she has washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You didn't offer me a kiss, but she hasn't stopped kissing my feet since I arrived. You didn't anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with myrrh. For this reason, I tell you, her sins, many as they are, have been forgiven, as this outpouring of her love shows. But the one who is forgiven little shows little love."
But that's an ouroboros, a Moebius strip; it doesn't seem to have a beginning or an end, and if you walk along it, it has only one surface. There's no way in, no point at which you can begin your payment for that grace. How do you earn it, then?
Precisely. Begin there.
On what condition does goodness exist beyond all calculation? On the condition that goodness forget itself, that the movement be a movement of the gift that renounces itself, hence a movement of infinite love. Only infinite love can renounce itself and, in order to become finite, become incarnated in order to love the other, to love the other as a finite other. This gift of infinite love comes from someone and is addressed to someone; responsibility demands irreplaceable singularity.
Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, tr. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 50-51.
These conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your own cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it, so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. Adulterers! Do you now know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, "God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us"? But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
James 4:1-6
I am reading (Simone Weil's) essays as a part of my Lenten reading...She says that we "...must experience every day, both in the spirit and the flesh, the pains and humiliations of poverty...and further we must do something which is harder than enduring in poverty, we must renounce all compensations: in our contacts with the people around us we must sincerely practice the humility of a naturalized citizen in the country which has received us."I keep reminding the young people who come to work with us that they are not naturalized citizens...They are not really poor. We are always foreigners to the poor. So we have to make up for it by "renouncing all compensations..."
Dorothy Day, from The Dorothy Day Book, p. 11.
