The lectionary texts this week are not about the same old thing, though. They are about a NEW thing! A new thing that God promises and that only God can deliver.
The texts for the week are:
Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8
Note: I particularly like the word cloud this week, with the new thing that is Jesus coming out of the bell of a shape reminiscent of a trumpet.
Come Holy Spirit. Show us who we are in the light of the new thing you bring to us. Amen.
WHAT’S NEW!
What’s new?
No seriously… what is “new”?
In Ecclesiastes, the Teacher says nothing… nothing new under the sun.
But in Isaiah, God says there will be a new thing.
In Philippians, Paul talks about BEING new… that all his reasons for boasting are meaningless in the face of what Christ has done for us. So much so that all the things that gave him all kinds of status, that made him a really important guy, are now rubbish.
And then in John, Mary did a new thing, much as she had been doing a new thing all along. Instead of working with her sister Martha to feed the crowd of men who had come to listen to Jesus, she sat at the feet of Jesus and listened right along – and received Jesus favor for it.
When her brother was dead Mary confronted Jesus “WHY WEREN’T YOU HERE?” and it broke his heart so that Jesus wept.
And now, that same Mary brings out a whole pound of nard – expensive, special, not just everyday anointing oil. Judas says they could sell it for 300 denarii – nearly a year’s salary! Think about that! She uses something worth a YEAR’S SALARY to wash the feet of Jesus, and then dries his feet with her hair – which clearly (at least by the standards of the day) should never have been let down in the presence of all those men!
But is Mary’s behavior really the new thing here? Or once again do we seem a woman being evangelistic, and Jesus being open to whatever her behavior is because it points to who Jesus is?
It sure made the men uncomfortable! And it really irritated the moneykeeper Judas, who did not understand at ALL that Jesus was a new thing, worthy of anointing with the finest of oils. Judas used the poor as an excuse… and according to John’s words, he just wanted to steal that year’s salary money for his own personal gain.
Mary worried about Jesus. Judas worried about himself.
Mary could see a new thing, because in her culture she was (relatively) powerless. But as an insider in the patriarchal system, Judas could not.
It’s easy to tsk tsk tsk about Judas, and feel a little superior because women do not have as many taboos about hair today, but are we really that different now?
We say we want a new thing… but when the discomfort sets in we think “OH HEY NOW WAIT A MINUTE! Maybe things weren’t actually that bad…”
We say we want a new thing, but we don’t want to give up the things that maybe aren’t that bad, that we have adjusted to or learned to work around.
We say we want a new thing, but we most definitely do not want to admit that the old things of our own making might be at the center of the problem.
But here’s the thing: nowhere in the text does God say anything about the new thing depending on us.
Our structures – monetary, political, governmental, social – are all broken in ways that benefit some people more than others. The brokenness always leads to inequity. We try really hard to pretend that things are (or can be) even, or fair. But they aren’t. They just aren’t. They cannot be if they are human-made, in a world so very broken.
Even the church, put on earth to be the means of spreading the message of redemption in Jesus, has settled into a pattern of brokenness that gives some people favor and power and leaves other people out.
I’m not even talking about prosperity gospel here. Even “community discernment” is not the same as “God’s will.” Community discernment is as broken as any other human system. But who wants to admit that the favor and power comes from an unfair system and that it is not actually a sign of God’s favor and empowerment? Certainly not the people with the influence. Certainly not the people who may be out of a job if the system changes to be more equitable.
Certainly not the people who have adjusted so thoroughly to the system that they cannot imagine it any other way.
The only thing we can do this side of eternity is create another system that is broken in a way that favors someone else (or maybe even favors the same people in some new or different way.) In her book The Power Naomi Alderman makes a compelling case for the idea that power has its own silky voice and does not care who it seduces. We are all susceptible, and will always use power to benefit ourselves inequitably.
So when God says that there will be a new thing, I have to believe that God has something in mind that goes way beyond merely switching out who holds the power – because inequitable distribution power simply is not new.
It is not an idea that I like to think about. In many ways I do not benefit from the current power imbalance in the church and the world but there are others who benefit much much much less than I do and that breaks my heart.
The reality is that in our world, including the church, anyone who is not white and male and (as a bonus) wearing a beard pretty much gets leftovers. Women and people of color and children are relegated to lesser status –if they are given access to the systems of power at all - and then condemned for not being grateful enough for the leftovers that they do get. Not everywhere, not all the time, but often enough to be statistically significant.
Often enough that the #metoo movement is a real thing. Often enough that it takes an average of six years for an African-American woman to receive her first call in the ELCA, but no white male has to wait any significant time at all.
Those are realities of our time. The inequity is built into the system. I WANT to say… take power from the white men! Give power to everyone else! And maybe that would be a lovely thing. It is how Creation was to work.
But I am ALSO utterly convinced that any other arrangement will also leave out someone.
As refreshing as it might be to see my white male (bonus if bearded) colleagues experiencing what they have not had to experience very much before, it really WOULD NOT BE a new thing, I think.
It would not be God’s new thing.
It would just be different, as human beings understand difference.
BUT!
WHAT IF God’s NEW has little or no relationship to human ideas of different?
WHAT IF God’s NEW has been among us all along, since the Creation?
WHAT IF NEW can only come from God?
What if new is something within us rather than for us, or by us? A transformation that God works across time, space, and human hearts?
Now that would be something truly new, not just a different form of inequity and brokenness!
We cannot possibly do that on our own but we do have access to that new thing, that transformation.
Let’s go back to our story for a moment – to Mary anointing Jesus.
Mary knew!
Mary had broken all the taboos!
* Touching Jesus
* Letting her hair down in the presence of all those men
* Using expensive oil to anoint someone very much alive
Did Mary understand that Jesus was about to die? I don’t know. But even if she did not, well, nobody else did either.
So the baby born of a Mary who acted faithfully in what that were completely apart from cultural norms (not to mention human physical processes) became the man who was anointed by another Mary who acted just as far outside of the norms of the day. Two Marys, bookends of a life that show us just what a new thing Jesus is.
Maybe God was telling us something.
Maybe God was saying “this new thing… it’s not from you or about you… it is the thing I do” because shortly after being anointed by this second Mary, Jesus died, and then he was Resurrected.
This Jesus is the one through whom all of Creation was created, so he is also the oldest, what with being present before the beginning of time. And yet, in his divinity, Jesus showed us something new: How to live a life of loving each other.
Jesus did not flip the power structures of the day, something his disciples expected and the kind of “different” we think of when we try to change things on our own.
It is the Jesus who was here as fully human and fully divine
The Jesus who brought a new way of living
The Jesus who lived, died, and was Resurrected who is
THE ACTUAL NEW THING
Redemption.
Freedom from a system of inescapably inequitable power.
The Law fulfilled so we can BE… so we can live in free pursuit of the life we were created to live, in community, and in God. Trusting that God will overcome all the old things somehow, in ways we cannot imagine. Literally are incapable of imagining.
The new thing is here, as it has always been here. And in Jesus we can live it out with abandon.
Amen.
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