Fifth Sunday in Lent,
Year C
The Rev. Vicki K.
Hesse,
Director of the
Whitaker Institute,
Episcopal Diocese of
Michigan
Cathedral Church of St.
Paul, Detroit, MI
Sermon Preached on April 7, 2019
O Lord, take my lips and speak through them;
take our minds and think through them;
take our hearts
and set them on fire with love for you. Amen.
Many
years ago I worked
as
a computer project manager.
This one
customer, Mr. Sedat,
Knew something
very important:
the difference
between effectiveness and affection.
Over the
span of a year,
we met
once a month to plan, review progress,
make
changes and follow up on outstanding issues.
At the
end of the project,
we invited
my “big boss” to come and
meet the
customer to show that the work was done.
At that
one-hour meeting,
Mr. Sedat
asked my big boss about
his
children, wife, parents, childhood, friends,
and about
his life.
For 50
minutes.
He had
someone bring in tea and coffee
and
lounged in conversation about personal things.
In the
last 10 minutes,
he simply
shared the results of the project
and
thanked the big boss.
I was
stunned,
as I had
prepared charts and graphs to show the results
which was
not needed at all!
Mr. Sedat
simply befriended my boss,
who left that
day so pleased to know Mr. Sedat
and they
promised to do more business together soon.
Now, I
notice that there are many societal issues
whose
solutions are couched in results measurement.
Climate
change?
Cut
fossil fuels by x amount,
increase
forest carbon by Y
and
problem solved.
Weight
problem?
Count
calories, reduce by x amount,
exercise
by y and problem solved.
Face it,
our society has an inclination
towards
utilitarian morality.
And I can
say that this applies to me, too.
Today’s
gospel reading
has
something to say about this problem of utility.
It’s the
week just prior to
Jesus’
triumphal entry to Jerusalem, and
Jesus had
just raised Lazarus from the dead.
And many
people believed in him.
He had learned
that the chief priests and Pharisees planned to put him to death.
With that
backstory, we enter today’s gospel.
The
family of Lazarus
held a
dinner party for Jesus and his disciples.
At that
dinner party,
Mary
poured expensive perfume
on Jesus’
feet and wiped them with her hair.
Judas
exclaimed in the midst of that action
why the
perfume instead of giving to the poor?
There, we
hear about this perspective of utility.
We hear
the difference between
the way
of Mary and the way of Judas.
What was
true then is true today –
two
options:
the way
of effectiveness and utility and
the way
of humility and affection.[1]
Just to
be clear, aside from Judas being a thief,
he was
the utilitarian.
He was
calculating the costs and benefits
of that
expensive perfume.
And with
quick math
he
decided that the best use of that perfume
could be reasoned
logically.
He was
not concerned about particular poor
people,
but for
“the poor” as a generalized blob.
Total the
number of meals served,
beds
filled,
healthcare
units distributed
and
problem solved.
For
Judas, that nard could be broken down
into a
price that could create an abstract good.
But Mary
had a different way.
She was
not measuring costs and benefits.
And in
her slow contemplation,
she
decided that the best way was affection,
to be
guided by love
for the
One who was before her:
that
specific person whose value is priceless.
She
showed her love as abundant, effusive, excessive.
Her
gesture of anointing
was not
to show the value of the love,
but “to
show how impossible it would be
to fix
any value to such a person.”
The
perfume was simply a symbol
of the
infinite love that exceeds any measurement.
If there
is any hope in the knowledge
that we
will have “the poor” with us,
it is
that the way of Mary – of affection and love.
Pause
These two
ways of
effectiveness
and utility or
humility
and affection – are relevant today.
The
novelist Jonathan Franzen
recently
unsettled the environmental conversation.
He
questioned the over-focus on the current level
of
atmospheric carbon: 411.
CO2, as a
number, means little, he implies.
He shared
about the paralysis we all feel
when faced
with challenge of climate change.
He wrote
of the stress that this had on his daily choices,
so he disconnected from
caring for creation.
Franzen
wrote about the time when
he started
to care about climate change
by
watching birds.
As he paid
careful, specific attention
to that
tiny part of creation,
he
learned about
the effect
of deforestation on migration.
He began
to care about the earth
not
because of a carbon count
but
because of the specific creature
that
lived in the forest: the Cerulean warbler.
Once he started
watching birds,
and worrying
about their welfare,
he says
he became attracted to St. Francis’s Christianity:
of loving
what is concrete and vulnerable
and right
in front of you.
Perhaps, when
we pay attention
to the
specific and concrete person right in front of us,
The Way of Affection governs
our choices.
That
person in front of us has
a story,
a family, friends, an interesting life.
When we
pay attention to that person,
our lives
and we are transformed
by God’s
love incarnate.
When we
go out and get to know real people, well,
the
danger is that we might love them.
In 2009,
I came face to face with how this works
at the
other border, Mexico.
That
summer, my spouse Leah and I
traveled
to El Paso, Texas
where for
a week we lived with two Dominican Sisters.
These
nuns founded and ran Centro Santa Catalina,
a Community
Center based
across
the border in the city of Juarez.
They
minister among and with
the poor
women and children of the Colonia
located
on what was once the city garbage dump.
During
the day,
we hung out
with the women of the Center.
We
talked, shared,
tried to
teach each other our language
and
played with the children.
We saw
how they lived with so little
in terms
of material wealth and
so much
in terms of abundant joy.
Many have
built their homes over time,
often
starting with cardboard and wood pallets,
and
eventually graduating to cinder blocks.
Most of
their homes have no water, sewer or
electrical
services; and for those who do,
the
services are inadequate and unreliable.
One day
for lunch, we walked
from to
Irene’s house, past rancid garbage
and
decomposing
carcasses of cats and dogs,
over
broken glass and wind-blown plastic bags.
Irene, a
widowed mother and grandmother
who works
at the Center’s sewing co-op,
offered
to prepare lunch for us in her home.
Instead
of a simple meal of beans and tortillas,
she
called her grandson over
and
handed him a couple of bills
from her
now empty change purse.
He
slipped away and returned shortly
with a
package of queso.
She
prepared a feast of enchiladas
filled
with rice, beans, queso, tomatoes, salsa and spice.
The aroma
filled the house!
She
offered us a soda to drink.
In my
head, I cringed. I was measuring it all in my head,
Look,
Irene, you have nothing!
You don’t need to feed us! I was thinking.
Irene
could certainly have fed us more simply,
scrounging
up something from her near-empty pantry
and
saving her money to feed her family for weeks.
Yet,
thankfully, she did not understand my language.
She only spoke in the language of God’s love
that works
in God’s economy.
Sharing
what she had, with gifts from her neighbors,
trusting that it would all be
enough,
grateful
for our companionship.
She
offered me a fresh perspective on affection.
She chose
to offer us her extravagant hospitality,
to put
this privileged, first-world women’s needs
over her
own real needs.
Just as
Mary poured out for Jesus
her
expensive perfume,
Irene
embodied God’s love.
. . . . .
pause
Today, Mary
shows us
how to
love those in front of us
with all
we have, excessively.
Through
humility and affection,
“the
poor” –
impoverished
people and impoverished places –
will no
longer be among us,
not
because there is no need, but because (like us)
they are named and love for who
they are,
specifically, beloved of God.
As we
approach Holy Week,
God calls
you to practice the Way of Love:
The way
of our liberating, life giving and loving God
who knows you specifically,
intimately, excessively.
You are
not “the poor,” you are love made incarnate.
And, God
alone grants us the grace
to love
excessively
by fixing
our hearts
where
true joys are to be found:
Jesus
Christ our Lord.
Amen.
