This sermon was preached on Sunday, March 29 for Palm Sunday at Grace Episcopal Church. The Gospel for this sermon is: Mark 14:1-15:47.
“She has done what she could…whenever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”
Every Sunday we hear Jesus’s request that we remember his new covenant whenever we break bread and share wine together. In this Gospel, in Mark’s passion, Jesus asks us to remember something else—his anointing by the woman from Bethany. Her name has been lost to history, and, if we let her, she’ll disappear back into this long Gospel passage today as well. I might have passed by the importance her bold gesture, too, had I not encountered her just the other day at the high school, when some of our Peace team members and local clergy joined in a teen-led discussion helping friends in need. Our group started out by listing the problems our friends were facing—everything from the girlfriend who’s not eating enough, to the classmate’s whose parents are in dire financial straits, to the friend who’s failing his classes. Next, we thought up ways we could help. The adults at my table, myself included, were full of suggestions about how to address problems head on, how to fix situations with guidance counselors and interventions and therapists. Then one of the students at my table said something profound. “Well, when my friend’s upset,” the young woman from Medford said, “I invite her over for a bubble bath.” She dumps a bottle of nicely scented pink liquid into the warm water and they sit together, just being.
This student’s words reminded me about the power of loving the suffering however they are, sad, angry, or filled with despair, without asking them to cheer up or to change anything at all. Maybe you personally know the strength it takes to lay aside advice and comforting words, and allow a friend a moment to be what they are feeling. Perhaps you are closely acquainted with the special courage required when doing so means entering into your own places of grief and pain to be with them.
The disciples’ outraged criticism at the woman from Bethany’s supposedly wasteful gift fits in with how much easier it can be turn our attention to problems that cry out for obvious, direct actions with measurable impact. After all, we can calculate how many hot meals three hundred denarii will buy without really having to contemplate the depths of hurt poverty causes.
Jesus, just days from his death, rebukes their scolding. Look friends, he says, you can’t do anything about all that suffering forever with one act right now. What you can do is recognize the pain of the person you love sitting right in front of you, before you lose me. You can realize that this woman’s act is beautiful and holy because it acknowledges the deep sadness of my imminent death. Perhaps Jesus is also asking then to understand how sitting with a friend on the cold tile leaning against the rim of a tub is a powerful way to love that cannot be quantified.
Today we are asked to be with Jesus as he suffers. To keep awake while he grieves for his life, to remain with him when he throws himself on the ground in desperate prayer, to listen as he cries out on the cross, “My God, my God…”
We are here today because the sunrise on Easter is meaningless without the cross on Good Friday; Holy Week is empty without the Passion. Even the Good News is not a complete story, Jesus implies here, without our friend from Bethany, without the woman who entered willingly into Jesus’s own grief. “She has done what she could.” To what better remembrance could we aspire?
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