Extravagant Presence

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 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. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (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.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”  — John 12:1-8

A close colleague of mine died while I was at the Cathedral in Atlanta. Bill Payton was a fellow traveler, a lover of liturgy, and possessed one of the best belly laughs I have ever heard in my life. When Bill was diagnosed with cancer, he was the most amazing witness to the transition of death I had ever seen. When I visited him for his funeral planning, he was working on his taxes for that year with good humor. When he described what he hoped for his own burial, he said with a twinkle in his eye, “I’ve got quite a few ideas – it will not be without some excesses.” 

He gifted one of these excesses to me and several other priests – tasking us with clothing him in his priestly vestments before his burial. He was invited to do that very thing for a friend and counted it as one of the most deeply moving moments in his own priesthood. 

As we gathered at the funeral home, we recited the Psalms as we placed his vestments on him for the last time. We knew that the proper clergy shirt to use was his blue plaid that he always donned for Easter. He gave up wearing black shirts after one of his sabbatical leaves years before. 

I’ve often thought of that twinkling in his eye and his comment about the excesses for his burial. There was nothing self-centered in the hope he described. It was all about giving us the chance to deeply pause and honor the great transition of death to new life. In that sense, he was very much acting with the extravagant devotion of Mary and her gift to Jesus. She accepted that his soon-to-be entrance into Jerusalem will be his entrance unto his own death. She makes the courageous decision of not shying away from that truth, but rooting herself in all that it means. To honor this person she loves, she decides to not to wait to anoint his cold feet after his death but lavishly wash his feet with perfume and dry his feet with her hair while he is still alive. That excess of love and care often makes us uncomfortable, but Jesus receives it with grace. How might our lives be transformed if we too acted with such reckless and abandoning love?

Peace, Beth +