June 17, 2001
Third Sunday of Pentecost
Year C
Title: Perfume And Grace
Theme: Jesus reminds us that we have been given so much—so much
so that we are called to give it away.
Before I even begin this sermon, I wanted to put to rest something you
might be thinking if you were present during last week’s sermon. Last
week I brought up my mother and I’m about to bring her up again in my
sermon this week, something that I know may have a few of you
wondering whether I’m working out some of my family dysfunction in full
public view—or that there must be something major going on in my family
right now which is the reason she keeps showing up in my sermons. I
just wanted you to know my family is no more pathological than your
family—and there is nothing going on beyond the normal dysfunction
that all family seem to thrive on. Nonetheless, let me bring up my mother
again—this time in a very positive way. Many of you may already know
from last week’s sermon that my mother works in a regional department
store in Mississippi, something the equivalent of Foleys in this area, but I
didn’t mention that she worked in the men’s cologne section of this
store. And you probably have already guessed that I have more cologne
than one person should legally be able to possess—and I suspect in
some states, its probably illegal to own so much cologne. I get all of her
free samples and any time I express some interest in a cologne the store
carries, I can be guaranteed to have a least a 10 year of supply in my
hands during the first year she knows of my new taste in a particular
cologne. Needless to say, I haven’t actually bought cologne in years.
But cologne and perfume often have an important place in our lives, as
they did during Jesus’ day, though it was less plentiful and much more
valuable than it is today. I suspect that people in Jesus’ day had the
experience we have often had with colognes and perfumes—they remind
of times and places, and especially, of people. There are certain
colognes that bring to my mind certain places, certain times, and certain,
very special people—I suspect that many of us can testify to that truth.
It’s as if that fragrance stops time and calls forth long forgotten memories
of special times and special people. I’m sure people in Jesus’ day had
the same experience—and that they did what many of us do with
perfume and cologne—we give it away as a gift to the people we love on
special days like Father’s Day, today, or Mother’s Day, or even
Valentine’s Day. We give the gift of fragrance as a sign of our love for
someone else, which I think must be an ancient practice because we see
it being done in Jesus’ day, in this extraordinary story that we witnessed
in the Gospel reading from Luke.
Here, Jesus receives the gift of fragrance as a sign of this women’s love
for what has happened in her life. She had been given so much, she
had been the recipient of forgiveness from God, the writer of Luke tells
us, forgiveness for having let her life get out of control, and she seeks
this Jesus of Nazareth out in the village, the one whom the buzz is all
about, certainly he is a prophet, maybe even the Messiah. We don’t
know if there was some earlier encounter with Jesus—all we know is that
she shows up uninvited at some Pharisees’ home, and she pushes her
way through the crowd who are hovering around the open doors and
windows, something that was common anytime a celebrity had dinner in
the villages of the time—eating, you see, was a public spectacle. She
needs to show her appreciation, her love, her grace, because she has
been given a new life, the past has been wiped clean, hope has come
after a devastating and long night of the soul. She has been given so
much grace that she has to give it away—she does exactly what she
should have done, despite the judgmentalism of the dinner host, Simon.
You see, we’re given grace so that we can give away grace in our lives.
We’re given forgiveness so that we can give away forgiveness. We’re
given mercy because so that we can give away mercy.
And she lives out this truth, in ways that are startling and beautiful and
even sensual and erotic. The dinner guest are all around the food,
which is on the floor, and they lie with their left hand being used to prop
themselves up and their right hand free for eating, and their legs are
facing away from the table. Here she comes, this women overwhelmed
with what has happened in her life, crying and weeping, and she takes
the ointment, the fragrance, and mingles it with her tears of joy, and
thankfulness, and perhaps even some regret, and she begins to
massage and clean Jesus’ tired feet, slowly caressing them and cleaning
them, wiping away a dirt and fatigue with her hair and with the beauty
and tenderness of her hands. It’s a beautiful moment, one of the most
beautiful and moving moments that I think you will ever find in Scripture.
It is beautiful because she has received grace, and like us, she wants to
give it away now, she wants to find some way of expressing her
gratitude. Life is new because grace has come into her life—and now it
pours out of her like her own tears and she starts to give away the
generosity of God, starting with the tired feet of this Jesus of Nazareth.
There is a lot to this short passage—stuff about faith and forgiveness,
stuff about judgmentalism, even stuff about hospitality, but this evening I
want us to pay to attention to the women in this story. Like the women in
the story, we receive so much in our lives, we receive so many gifts, so
much mercy, so much forgiveness, so much grace, from God and from
each other, that we sometimes forget that we aren’t given each of those
gifts so that we can store them up and keep them all to ourselves. No,
we’re given mercy and grace and hope and joy and forgiveness so that
we can give those gifts to others who are in such need of each of these
things, just as we are in need of these things. What I love about this
story is that this women gets it—she knows the depth of grace that
perhaps few of us can fathom—and because she knows that grace is
deep and wide, that it is welcoming, and, oh so very free, she has to give
away what she has been given, that keeping it locked up will not do—
actually, she cannot keep it within her because it will not allow her to do
such a thing—this grace drives her out into the streets, fragrance in
hand, and it sends her to the home of Simon, and to the feet of this
Jesus of Nazareth. We’re not given grace because we have done
anything or we deserve or we’re nice people—we’re just given grace
because we’re given grace, period. And because it is a gift, we have to
pass it on—it was never ours to keep, really. If we don’t give it away, we
simply don’t get it, just as our host Simon didn’t get it in this story we
heard today. Love, hope, mercy, forgiveness, grace—all of realities are
gifts from God that are meant to be given away by us to other people.
And so if we’re not doing that—if we’re not aware of the all of those good
things that have been given to us and we’re not giving them away, we’ll
probably end up being like Simon, living in a world of credit and debit, a
world divided up between the deserving and not so deserving, and we
will be forever ready to exclude people from our homes and lives and we
will hold back what has been given to us, thinking that it was ours to
keep. You and I, we’ve received so much—we are surrounded by the
goodness of grace, the depth of mercy, the bright sun of hope, the
wideness of forgiveness—and in return we are asked to give away what
we have been given---grace, mercy, hope, forgiveness to the deserving
and undeserving alike. This woman is like us in so many ways—like us,
her instinct is to give away perfume and fragrance as a sign of her love
and gratitude to someone special. But its not the perfume that will linger
for an eternity—no, it will fade with the night and the dusty roads that will
rise up to meet Jesus in the coming days—what remains is what she
gave back to Jesus, a grace, a kindness, a moment of rest, because the
grace was too much, it was too plentiful, and she had to find some way to
give it away. Oh, that we would do this with those in our lives who are in
need of much grace, much mercy, much hope, much forgiveness! May
God grant us mercy and goodness and hope and forgiveness and
grace—not so that we alone will have these things, but so that we can be
just as generous with each of them as God has been with us! Amen.
