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Channel surfing last week, I landed briefly on a scene in the movie, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. The plot unfolds as a mother suspects that her daughter’s withdrawal, lethargy, and anger are signs of her having been sexually abused. She coaxes her six-year old to talk about the experience, and she promises her support. Tucking the girl in for the night the mother tells her: “You are my daughter, and I love you. Nothing you say, nothing you do, will change that. Ever.” The mother knows that the child can face the truth only when she knows that she stands on the bedrock of unshakable and unconditional love.

That movie’s scene reminded me of today’s gospel lesson, in which John, like that loving mother, sets the passion of Jesus in the context of God’s love. The opening phrase of the gospel lesson reminds us just how close death stands: “Six days before the Passover,” John writes, “Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.” The context is unmistakable. Jesus will soon be buried, even as Lazarus recently was. We know, and Jesus must surely suspect, that this Passover’s unblemished lamb, is not bleating in a pen somewhere in nearby Jerusalem, but this year’s sacrifice is Jesus, reclining there at the table of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.

John wants us to face the awful truth of our savior’s sacrifice on our behalf. John hopes that we will face our own sin as finally the cause of this godly sacrifice. So, to give us courage to face our deep rebellion against God, John gives us a lasting reminder of God’s unshakable love. He gives us this story of Jesus’ anointing by Mary, the sweet smell of perfume filling their house. Of course, the perfume is a symbol of Mary’s extravagant love for Jesus, her rabbi and her friend. Perhaps hers is a gesture of thanks for Jesus who has given Lazarus his life. The perfume might also remind Jesus of the beginning of his own vocation, the baptism of John back at the Jordan River. As his own personal journey to the cross nears its end, he remembers his baptism and the voice of God affirming an unshakable, unconditional love: “This is my son, my beloved, with whom I am pleased.”

If we faithfully follow Jesus to the cross in coming days; if we fulfill this Lenten journey to confront our own deep sin; and therefore if we also confront our own need for God’s redeeming love, then we do well to remember our anointing and God’s gift to us of that same unshakable, unconditional love.

Our faith teaches us that baptism is about many things, including dying and rising with Christ. Baptism is also a ritual of our accepting that eternal love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And at every baptism we use a fragrant oil to remind the baptized, including us, that we are “marked as Christ’s own, forever.” (From the Chrism, an ancient Christian baptismal rite, and part of our church’s baptism ritual.) As Paul says to the first Christians in Rome, words we recall at many a funeral, “neither death nor life…nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from God’s great love in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (From Romans 8:38-39, NRSV.)

That’s an easy enough affirmation for us to make at the beginning of our life’s journey. But what about at the end, as time shortens, and we wonder what’s really out on the other side of Jordan’s “deep river”? Our gospel tells us that for Jesus, the fragrance of Mary’s perfume most likely accompanied him, and sustained him, in the awful six days leading to his death as the holiest Passover lamb. So maybe we do well to face his death, and the promise of our own, with a reminder of God’s eternal love.

Methodist Bishop Will Willimon tells a story in a recent book about a man who walked toward death confident of God’s unfailing love in his savior, Jesus Christ. “I was visiting a man as he lay dying, his death only a couple of days away,” says Willimon, who then asked him what he was feeling, especially if he was fearful.

“’Fear? No,’ he responded. ‘I’m not fearful because of my faith in Jesus.’

“’We all have hope that our future is in God’s hands,’ [Willimon] said, somewhat piously.

“’Well, I’m not hopeful because of what I believe about the future,’ he corrected me, ‘I’m hopeful because of what I’ve experienced in the past.’

“[Willimon] asked him to say more.

“’I look back over my life, all the mistakes I’ve made, all the times I’ve turned away from Jesus, gone my own way, strayed, and got lost. And time and again, he found a way to get to me, showed up and got me, looked for me when I wasn’t looking for him. I don’t think he’ll let something like my dying defeat his love for me.’” (Will Willimon, Undone by Easter, Abingdon Press, page 48.)

Baptized by Christ, we are anointed, with Christ. With Christ, we share a hope in God’s undying love. As God’s children, with Jesus our Lord, we are loved with a love that never lets go. God reminds us, as the mother told her daughter, “There is nothing you can say, and nothing that you can do, which will change my love for you. Ever.”

So we approach the culmination of our Lenten journey. We near the cross. We face our own sin, the truth of our brokenness. We remember our own rebellious determination to place ourselves at the center of the universe, arrogantly replacing the Lord of all creation. We come to the cross knowing our own complicity in its shame, of how, as Bill Coffin liked to say, “The worst in us killed the best among us.” At the cross we face not only Jesus death, but we see our own deadly lording over all who have less power, less money, or less privilege than we do. Worst of all, we face our worship of death itself.

In this difficult confession of our sin, we find in the gospel a bit of encouragement: we remember our own anointing in baptism, even as Jesus had occasion to recall his own baptism when he received the extravagant gratitude given him by his disciple, Mary. God’s love for us is equally extravagant, and in the truth of that love we approach the cross with Jesus in hope, not in fear.

As you come to the table today, receive the elements of bread and wine, the ordinary reminders of God’s extraordinary grace. And then, if you like, come to the table for a touch of that fragrant baptismal oil. May its smell remind you, as you wear it on your fingers or your forehead, that God’s love lingers as sweetly and a surely, and God’s love fails us not, even in the shadow of death’s looming cross.

Amen.

Mamaroneck United Methodist, March 21, 2010.
 

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