John 12.1-8
+ I am in the habit of often asking people a very intimate
question. No, it’s not THAT kind of intimate question. But it is a weird, intimate question. I am in the habit of asking people about what
their funeral plans are. Many of you have heard me ask you that question. Yes, I know. It’s morbid. But, as I’ve learned
over the years, you can a lot from a person by the plans they’ve made for
themselves following their death. And as a priest, I always encourage people to
think about this issue, discuss it with one’s loved ones, write it down and
make definite plans. And of course, I always encourage to make sure those instructions
are on file here at the church.
When my father died, he had everything planned to the
detail. The funeral service, the hymns, the gravestone was set up and inscribed
at the cemetery. He had even purchased
the urn in which his ashes were buried.
Now, my dad died very suddenly, and was certainly not ill
before he died. But he was just one of those people who was always prepared. He
was like the quintessential Boy Scout. And
I can tell you, because he was, it made my job much easier when the time came
for making those final arrangements for him.
Certainly, I have my own arrangements already made. They’re in
my in my will, and I express my wishes quite often to people. I am of the frame of
mind that believes that the body, whether just buried or cremated, should be
treated with a certain level of respect and care and should be properly buried
or interred in some way.
In today’s Gospel, we find Mary doing something that sort of
encompasses this view of the sacredness of the body. We find her coming before Jesus and doing a
very unusual thing: she anoints his feet. And Jesus, even more strangely,
reprimands Judas by saying that Mary is doing nothing more than anointing his
body for burial.
As we near Holy Week—that final week of Jesus’ life before
the cross—our thoughts are now turning more and more to these “last things.” Yes, it’s all starting to sound a little
morbid. And no doubt, poor Judas was also thinking Jesus was getting weirdly
morbid himself. But, Jesus is reminding
us, yet again, that even the simplest acts of devotion have deeper meaning and
are meant to put us in mind of what is about to ultimately happen.
Mary sees in Jesus something even his disciples don’t—yet. She sees—and maybe doesn’t fully comprehend, though she certainly intuitively guesses—that Jesus, in his flesh and blood, is different. There is something holy and complete about him. She might not go so far as to say that he is God in the flesh, good Jew that she is, but certainly she is leaning in that direction.
For us, as Christians who do believe that Jesus is God in
the flesh, we know that issues of the flesh are important. Because of the
incarnation, because, in Jesus’ flesh and blood, we have come to know God, we
know that our flesh is also special. If
God would deign to come among us and take on flesh like our flesh, then our
flesh must not be such an inherently horrible thing.
One of my all-time favorite quotes is from one of the early
Church Father, John of Damascus. John
wrote a truly remarkable thing while defending the veneration of icons—or holy
images of Jesus and the saints. There was a time in the church when people felt
there should be no images of Jesus because it violated the commandment to make
no graven images. John wrote in defense
of icons:
“I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who
became matter for my sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my
salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which
works for my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God."
Why so many Christians view matter or the flesh as such a
horrible, sinful thing baffles me. And
there are Christians who believe that. There are Christians who believe that
these bodies of ours are sinful and should be treated as wild, uncontrollable
things that must be mastered and disciplined and ultimately defeated.
Why we as Christians get so caught up with this awful
ridiculous view that the flesh is this awful, sin-filled thing we carry around
is frustrating for me. In fact, the belief that the flesh is bad and the spirit
all-good is a very early church heresy, that was condemned by the Christian
Church.
We have all known Christians who do think that flesh is a
horrible, sinful thing—who think all we should do is concentrate only and the
spiritual. For those of us in the
know—even for those of who have suffered from physical illness and suffering
ourselves in this flesh—we know that the flesh and the spirit truly are
connected. We cannot separate the two
while we are still alive and walking on the earth.
Still, I do always love the quote from one of my personal heroes, the Jesuit priest and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, from his incredible book The Phenomenon of Man:
“We are not human
beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human
experience.”
I think we could
just as easily say that we are spiritual beings having a material experience. I, of course, don’t see that as a downplaying
our flesh. Rather, I see it as truly the
spirit making the material holy. Our
flesh is sacred because Jesus makes it sacred. He made it sacred by
becoming flesh, by showing us in his incarnation—in his in-flesh-ment, shall we
say—that these are bodies are good.
And if we have trouble remembering that our flesh is sacred,
that God in Jesus cares about us not just spiritually but physically, we have
no further place to look that what we do here at this altar, in the Eucharist. Here, we find Jesus, in the same flesh and
blood that Mary herself anoints in today’s Gospel reading. Here, he comes among us and feeds our flesh,
as well as our spirits. And, we can even
go so far as to say that by feeding our flesh, he becomes one with us physically
as well as spiritually.
This is part of the reason why I think that even following
our death we should honor what remains of this flesh because it is sacred. We shouldn’t just toss it away or frivolously
dole it out or in any other way disrespect it. We should be respectful to our ashes and those
of our loved ones, for truly God has worked through the flesh of all the people
we have known in our lives and, by doing so, has made them each uniquely holy
and special.
Next week, on Palm Sunday, we will begin our liturgy with
joy and end it on a solemn note as we head into Holy Week. Holy Week is a time for us to be thinking
about these last things—yes, our spiritual last things, but also our physical. As we make our way through Holy Week, we will
see Jesus as he endures physically and spiritually, from the a spirit so
wracked with pain that he sweats blood, to the terror and torment of being tortured,
whipped and nailed to a cross. As we
journey through these last days of Lent, let us do so pondering how God has
worked through our flesh and the flesh of our loved ones.
Yes, we are spiritual beings enjoying a physical experience.
We are spiritual beings enjoying a pilgrimage through matter. Let us
rejoice in these material experience.
Let us be grateful for all the joys we have received through
this matter in which we dwell and experience each other. And let
this joy be the anointment for our flesh as we ponder our own end and the
wonderful new beginning that starts with that end.
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