Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church and yesterday was the Ninth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IX). Today (29 July), the calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship celebrates Mary, Martha and Lazarus, Companions of our Lord, with a lesser festival.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
John 12: 1-8 (NRSVA):
1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ 6 (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.) 7 Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’
This morning’s reflection:
During my ‘mini-retreats’ in Lichfield, I often visit the Hedgehog Vintage Inn on the northern edges of the cathedral city, close to the junction of Stafford Road and Cross in Hand Lane.
It is a pleasant, 20-minute stroll along Beacon Street between Lichfield Cathedral and the Hedgehog, which stands in its own grounds, in a tranquil, semi-rural setting. I sometimes find myself sitting in the window area, where there are two framed collections of postcards.
One collection includes postcards showing the house in Lichfield where Samuel Johnson was born, and another depicts Samuel Johnson’s statue in the Market Place. A second collection of postcards includes Lichfield Cathedral, Beacon Gardens and Christ Church, Lichfield, and the back of a postcard with a personal message to Brother Samuel SSF, congratulating him on becoming the Guardian of Hilfield Priory in Dorchester.
Charlotte recently identified the senders of the postcard as Anne and Tony Barnard. This is a Pitkin postcard, and Canon Anthony Nevin (Tony) Barnard is the author of the Pitkin Guide to Lichfield Cathedral, as well as a book on Saint Chad and the Lichfield Gospels and a children’s guide to Lichfield.
Tony and Anne Barnard now live in retirement in Barton under Needwood. I got to know them while he was the Canon Chancellor of Lichfield Cathedral and they were both involved in USPG. They were regular participants in the USPG annual conferences in High Leigh and Swanwick, and we took part together in training days in Birmingham Cathedral for USPG volunteers and speakers.
When I met them again recently, I told them of how Charlotte and I sat beneath the postcard they had sent from Lichfield Cathedral 30 years earlier. They shared happy memories of visiting the Diocese of Kuching when it was twinned with the Diocese of Lichfield and of visiting Charlotte when she was placed there with USPG.
The image on the other side of the postcard cannot be seen, but the caption says it is a photograph by Sonia Halliday and Laura Lushington of a panel in the central East Window in the Lady Chapel in Lichfield Cathedral.
The windows of the Lady Chapel contain some of the finest mediaeval Flemish Painted Glass. They date from the 1530s and were reinstalled in 2015. The seven Renaissance Herkenrode glass windows represent the greatest collection of unrestored 16th century Flemish glass anywhere.
The windows were bought by Lichfield Cathedral to replace the mediaeval stained destroyed during the English Civil War in the mid-17th century. The glass came from the Abbey of Herkenrode, now in Belgium, in 1801. They were bought by Sir Brooke Boothby when the abbey was dissolved during the Napoleonic Wars, and they were then sold on to the cathedral for the same price and were brought to England in 1803.
The postcard to Brother Samuel is obviously illustrated with the panel above the altar in the Lady Chapel showing Christ as the guest in the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus in Bethany.
The timing for this morning’s Gospel reading (John 12: 1-8) is the day before Palm Sunday, and the setting is in Bethany, on the Mount of Olives, 3 km east of Jerusalem. It was there, in the previous chapter, Christ raised Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, from the dead (see John 11: 1-44).
The name Lazarus is a form of the name Eleazar. As the freed slaves moved through the wilderness in the Exodus story, the priest Eleazar was responsible for carrying the oil for the Temple menorah or lampstand, the sweet incense, the daily grain offering and the anointing oil (see Numbers 4: 16).
So, as Saint John’s Gospel carefully sets the location and the timing of this story, we can expect a story this morning with a connection to death and resurrection, and with some association with anointing.
The plotting against Jesus has intensified. Meanwhile, many people are making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. The religious authorities, aware that Jesus is ‘performing many signs’ (11: 47), now want to arrest him.
Jesus now returns to Bethany, where the family of Lazarus invite him to dinner. In this account, Martha serves the meal, and Lazarus is at the table with them. In Saint Luke’s account, Martha serves while Mary sits at the feet of Jesus (see Luke 10: 38-42).
After dinner, Mary takes ‘a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard’ to anoint the feet of Jesus. Nard came from the roots of the spike or nard plant grown in the Himalayas. If the guests were reclining on couches, Jesus’ feet would be accessible for anointing, but a respectable Jewish woman would hardly appear in public with her hair unbound.
The reaction of Judas points forward to the impending arrest of Jesus (see John 18:1-11). The cost of this nard, 300 denarii, was almost a year’s wages for a labourer. I wonder whether there is a link between 300 denarii and the 30 pieces of silver Judas receives in Saint Matthew’s Gospel (see Matthew 26: 15)?
Anointing was the last step before burial, but it was not for executed criminals.
Has Mary bought the perfume to have it ready for Christ’s burial?
Does she realise that using it now is not a waste of the perfume?
Mary, Martha and Lazarus have offered their home in Bethany as a place of welcome, peace and refuge for Jesus. His life is under threat, but still he has time, and they have time, for a meal together.
They had a hint of the Easter story already in this home when Jesus raised their brother Lazarus from the dead. Now we have a sign of Jesus’ impending death, when Mary anoints his feet with costly perfume.
But Judas fails to see the full picture, to understand the full scenario that is beginning to unfold. Judas has a point, I suppose, from our point of view. There is so much need in the world, so much need around us, there is so much that is demanding the best of our intentions.
But, so often, the best of my intentions remains just that, and I never do anything about them. How often do we hear people say, ‘Charity begins at home,’ as a way of putting down people who genuinely want to do something about the injustices around us, even the injustices in the wider world?
Yet, so often, we suspect, that in their case charity does not even begin at home … it never even gets to the starting blocks.
For Mary, in this morning’s Gospel reading, charity begins in her own home. But we get a hint that it is not going to end there, that it has only started.
Judas is told the poor are always going to be with him … perhaps because charity does not even begin in his own home, never mind reaching out beyond that.
Mary’s action is loving and uninhibited, Mary’s gift is costly and beyond measure.
Love like that begins at home, and it goes on giving beyond the home, beyond horizons we never imagine.
Later that week, the disciples must have been reminded of Mary’s actions when Jesus insisted on washing their feet in a similar act of love and humility, once again at dinner.
How would I feel if Jesus knelt in front of me and washed my feet?
Would I worry whether I have smelly socks, whether he notices my bunions, chilblains and in-grown toenails? Would I be so self-obsessed and concerned about what he thinks of me that I would never stop to think of what I think of him and what he thinks of others?
Or would I, like Mary, smell the sweet fragrance that fills a house that is filled with love?
Someone has described prayer as ‘a time of living in the fragrance and the scent of God. It is gentle, light and lasts long. It comes off us; if we live in love, we spread love, and others know that something deep in us gives a fragrance to all of our life.’
Mary of Bethany is extravagant and generous and is not inhibited by the attitude of others around her. How much did she understand about Jesus’ impending death when none of the disciples saw it coming?
Mary does not sell the perfume, as Judas wants her to. Instead, she keeps it and she brings it to the grave early on Easter morning with the intention of anointing the body of the dead Jesus.
Can people smell the fragrance of Christ from us?
Are we prepared to let charity begin at home, but not end there?
And then, in the joy of the Resurrection, are we ready to allow that generous charity, that generous love, to be shared with the whole world?
Today’s Prayers (Monday 29 July 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Fighting and Preventing Human Trafficking in Durgapur.’ This theme was introduced yesterday with a reflection by the Revd Davidson Solanki, Regional Manager for Asia and Middle East, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 29 July 2024) invites us to pray:
We pray for all that the Church is doing around the world to fight against human trafficking. May this work continue in your Holy Name.
The Collect:
God our Father,
whose Son enjoyed the love of his friends,
Mary, Martha and Lazarus,
in learning, argument and hospitality:
may we so rejoice in your love
that the world may come to know
the depths of your wisdom, the wonder of your compassion,
and your power to bring life out of death;
through the merits of Jesus Christ,
our friend and brother,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Post Communion Prayer:
Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name,
your servants Mary, Martha and Lazarus revealed your goodness
in a life of tranquillity and service:
grant that we who have gathered in faith around this table
may like them know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge
and be filled with all your fullness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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