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RSSCostly Ointment, Clean Water
by The Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton
3/25/2007
Lent V, Year C
Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8
"You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me." -- John 12:8
Is this a statement straight from Jesus that serving the poor comes second to the deep connection of worship? That, for all time, compassion takes a back seat to contemplation?
I think not. This remark about the poor comes in the days before Jesus' betrayal and death, in response to Mary's symbolic action foretelling these things. Mary anoints Jesus' living body as if for burial; who could miss the meaning of that? It is certain that Judas doesn't; he is the one who protests and tries to set the needs of the poor against devotion to Jesus, hoping that those who were there would forget all about the somber symbolism of Mary's action. But then, maybe Judas already knows what is going to happen.
For us, serving the poor is anointing the body of Christ. They are the same action: an act of honoring, of making clean, of preparing the way.
As Mary washed Jesus' feet with costly ointment and dried them with her hair, Jesus' feet became clean. This cleansing wasn't about her fussy housekeeping or people tracking in mud on her clean floor; Mary doesn't "tsk-tsk" about cleanliness being next to godliness. This cleanliness is life itself.
With what might we symbolize the same love of Christ? Last Thursday was designated by the United Nations as World Water Day, a day upon which Episcopal Relief and Development and others in the communities of service and philanthropy focussed on the 2.6 billion people in the world who suffer from daily shortages of safe water, on the thousands of children who perish each day from waterborne disease. A billion people worldwide don't have a sufficient supply of drinking water.
The digging of wells in Angola. The protection of natural springs and recovery of watersheds in Haiti. Community education about safe water everywhere, and technical help to achieve it, for village after village.
ERD addresses this local problem in partnership with local people, place by place, town by town, so that fewer children die of water-borne disease. Fewer, then fewer, then fewer still. Eventually, none.
First the anointing, pointing straight toward the cross. And then, the resurrection. Both anointing and resurrection speak powerfully of love, one in term of human devotion and one in terms of divine power. We already know which side God is on. Are we ready to break open our costly ointment and begin the anointing?
