FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT
21 March 2010

It is one of my little complaints around Christmas and birthdays, that our teenage children probably spend ten times as much on presents for their boyfriends and girlfriends as they do on their poor old parents, who tend to get taken for granted at such moments.

Well, they're not bad children otherwise, so perhaps I shouldn't make too much of it; but of course we all make such comparisons, because the giving of gifts – and especially costly one – is one of the ways in which we show our affection for one another … which is precisely what Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus does in our Gospel today. She comes with a jar of very precious ointment, worth about a year's wages for an ordinary labourer in her day, and uses it all on Jesus. He matters a great deal to her; and she shows it. And I'm sure Judas, whatever his motives, wasn't the only one to be taken aback by her extravagance.

It is interesting to speculate on why Mary felt so indebted to her Lord. He has, of course, raised her brother from the dead only a little while before; but apart from that the only other glimpse of her we have in the Gospels is at a similar meal in Luke, where once again we find her at Jesus' feet while Mary does the serving … and it's not impossible that these are two accounts of the same event.

But Christian tradition goes further, linking this Mary with another woman of the same name, Mary of Magdala (or Mary Magdalene, as we usually say), one of a group of women Luke tells us travelled with Jesus and his disciples looking after their practical needs, and from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons. And if, as tradition has also assumed (though on less evidence) this is the same “woman who was a sinner” who interrupted an earlier meal by washing Jesus' feet with her tears and drying them with her hair, then clearly she is someone who owes Jesus a very great deal indeed; and she shows her gratitude by what she does.

In the end we cannot know for sure whether these three women are one – the Bible simply doesn't tell us; and modern scholarship tends to assume they were not – but there is at the very least a dramatic symmetry if it is the Mary who sits at Jesus' feet and anoints him a week before his death, who then (as we shall hear in two week's time) goes to the tomb on the first Easter morning intending to do the same, and clings weeping to the feet of her risen Master. And that is why Mary Magdalene is always depicted in art carrying an alabaster perfume jar, and with hair long enough to dry someone's feet with.

Be that as it may, however: What of us? How do we show our gratitude to Jesus? As Jesus himself points out in his reply to Judas, he is not around for us to lavish our physical attention on him.

One way, of course, is by doing what Judas thought ought to have been done in the first place: by caring for those in need. Jesus does not say to Judas we should not be concerned for the poor. Nor are his words, as people sometimes imply, an excuse for doing nothing to try and alleviate poverty, on the grounds there will always be poor people. If anything they are an encouragement to the very opposite: You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me … you can do good to them at any time in a way you cannot to me.

Jesus tells us that whenever we reach out to those in need, we are ministering to him; and we show our gratitude to Jesus for all he has done for us each time we do good to those who need our help. So one thing we should be doing as a sign of our gratitude is seeking opportunities to reach out in love and service to those around us.

But there is a time and place for extravagant gestures of love and devotion like Mary's as well. And we also show our gratitude to Jesus when, like Mary, our actions are genuinely costly. Paul knew that only too well. In our Epistle today he talks about all the things that once mattered to him: his lineage; his privileged background; his learning; his zeal for the faith of his fathers … and he goes on to describe it as completely worthless compared with what he has now found in Christ. He has sacrificed it all to the cross, as he presses on toward what he calls the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus:

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.

Can we say the same, that nothing matters more to us than knowing Christ? And if so are we, like Paul and like Mary, truly extravagant in showing our gratitude? Is it costly to us as it was to them? Do we seek to do good to those around us joyfully and not merely grudgingly; and (because this question cannot be skirted) are we as generous with our treasures as Mary was … in our generosity and willingness to share, and in our giving, both to the church and to other charities? We sing, Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all. Does it show?

Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus – possibly Mary Magdalene if tradition is right – knew what she owed Jesus, as did the Apostle Paul: everything. They showed their gratitude in their lives, as we are called to, by serving Jesus those in need, and by giving sacrificially of what they had … and we are called to do the same as we show our gratitude to Jesus for all he has done for us, and press on toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.