"You will not always have me" -- a call to cherish the times God shows up in our lives

Sermon delivered Sunday, March 13, 2016 (Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C), at St. Cuthbert’s Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA (where I am serving as long-term supply priest).

(John 12:1-8)



As we close down the season of Lent and prepare to move into Holy Week next week, our Gospel passage today gets us ready for that transition. The story we hear today is set six days before the Passover, and so we’re hearing it approximately the same amount of time ahead of Holy Week as it took place before the events of the actual Holy Week. Jesus is having dinner at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus of Bethany, and Mary pours a jar of expensive oil on Jesus’s feet and wipes them with her hair. Judas protests that this use of the oil was wasteful and that Mary was not being a good steward of her wealth; “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” he asks?

Interestingly enough, the story of the anointing of Jesus is one of the few stories that appears in all four of the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all have slightly different accounts of the story; the woman is not always the same, nor is the person who objects, but the core elements of the story – that it took place at a dinner in someone’s home, that a woman poured expensive oil over Jesus and someone protested that that was an extravagant and wasteful act – are consistent across all four accounts. In all of the Gospels except for Luke, Jesus’s response to those who criticize the woman is some variation of:

“Leave her alone. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

This famous one-liner is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted sayings of Jesus. Throughout the centuries, Christians who wanted to justify neglect of the poor and extravagant, lavish displays of wealth in the church would turn to this passage as a biblical basis for the use of solid silver chalices and vestments adorned with rare and precious jewels, and enormous marble churches with gold-gilded ornamentation. To anyone who would protest that perhaps this spending was a bit excessive and maybe more good could have been done with that money in the community to help those in need, well, you know, Jesus said “the poor you will always have with you,” and that woman in the Bible poured out that jar of oil on Jesus that would have been worth an average laborer’s entire yearly salary, so as long as you’re spending lavish amounts of money to express your love for Jesus, it’s all ok.

Sometimes I think Jesus looks down on us and just shakes his head, going, “Seriously?” Like, “that’s where you went with that?” And I’m probably not too far off in my imagination, since Jesus did a lot of shaking his head at the disciples while he was with them on earth, expressing in many ways some version of this sentiment: “You’ve been spending time with me for HOW LONG and you STILL don’t get it??”

Somehow I don’t think Jesus was making known his desire for lavish, expensive gifts in his defense of the woman’s actions in this story. I personally think Jesus could care about less where we worship him and what we wear when we worship him and what kind of objects we use to worship of him. His defense of the woman was not about condoning extravagant displays of wealth. It was about encouraging us to cherish the sacred moments in our lives.

Jesus tells the woman’s critics that she has anointed his body for burial. That’s the key aspect of this story – Jesus’s death is near. “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial,” he says in John’s version of the story that we heard today. This woman, despite her seemingly wasteful use of money, “gets it.” While the disciples are quibbling about finances and expenses, not really aware of the gravity of the situation and the preciousness of every last moment they have with Jesus, this woman realizes her time with him is limited. She realizes that Jesus’s days are numbered and she wants to give him the best send-off she can. So instead of waiting until he is dead to anoint his body with oil, as was the custom, she chooses to do this for him while he is still alive. How many times have you sat at a funeral reception and wished the deceased could have heard all the wonderful things that are being said about him or her? So often we wait to honor people until they are dead, but this woman wants to honor Jesus while he is still with her. She wants to express her love for him before it’s too late.

I am reminded of a TED Talk I watched recently by Janine di Giovanni, a journalist who reports from war zones around the world. In her talk, she mentions that in 2004, after the birth of her son, her foreign editor sent her back to Iraq to continue her coverage of the war there when her son was just four months old. She says she was crying on the plane because of how difficult it was to leave her son, and an Iraqi politician who knew she had recently had a child said to her, "What are you doing here? Why aren't you home with [your son]?" And she said, "Well, I have to see." It was 2004, which was the beginning of an incredibly bloody time in Iraq, and she felt a sense of responsibility to bear witness to the atrocities and bring the stories of those people who were suffering to the world, as she had done in places like Sarajevo and Rwanda years before. "I have to see, I have to see what is happening here. I have to report it," she said. And the politician said to her, "Go home. Because if you miss his first tooth, if you miss his first step, you'll never forgive yourself. But there will always be another war."

There will always be another war. This is what I think Jesus meant when he said “the poor you will always have with you.” He meant what the politician meant when he encouraged the reporter to go spend time with her son. By saying that, he didn’t mean that the suffering and death in his country wasn’t important, or that the stories of his people didn’t need to be told. He didn’t mean that on a cosmic level it would be ok to neglect their stories and the stories of countless others who suffer. What he meant was, there is an endless amount of suffering in the world. You can’t capture it all and see it all and fix it all. You can only do your part, and right now your part is to focus on this beautiful miracle that has been given to you, this new life which, in a few blinks of an eye, will be a full-grown, independent man.

When Jesus said, “the poor you will always have with you,” he didn’t mean that helping the poor was unimportant, or that it was ok to spend lavish amounts of money on worship instead of giving to those in need. Jesus was one of a long line of prophets in the Jewish tradition who called the people to care people in poverty, who taught that you can judge a society by the way it treats its most vulnerable members. But this particular saying of Jesus actually has very little to do with people in poverty and has everything to do with recognizing the preciousness of each moment you have with the important people in your lives, whether that be God himself in the form of Jesus for the disciples in the first century, or whoever mediates God’s presence to you in your life today.

For me, this Lent has brought news of the deaths of several beloved parishioners from former parishes I have served. From Atlanta to Nashville, the stories of their deaths have come to me across the miles, and I am reminded of the most basic truth behind Jesus’s comment in today’s Gospel reading: “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”

You will not always have me. Our days with our loved ones are limited, so spend time with the ones you love before they are gone. Don’t miss a precious, irreplaceable moment focusing on something that will still be there for you to take care of later.

This truth is perhaps hardest to hear when the limitations of our time and money force us to make impossible choices – to choose between visiting a sick child of a parishioner in the hospital or going to our own child’s soccer game – to choose between paying the hospital bill for our parents’ stay or to make that annual donation to our favorite nonprofit, a donation we know provides the bulk of their operating expenses – to choose between spending time with our dearest friend in a time of crisis or giving an educational presentation about the very topic our friend is struggling with, to a large audience where we have the potential of touching thousands of lives. Whatever your deepest calling is, the thing that gives your life meaning and which you feel God has uniquely gifted you to address, whatever work you do that has the potential to bring hope and healing to many people – put that in the place of “the poor” in Jesus’s statement:

“__________ you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”

There will always be another ________. What is that for you? What is that thing that you do, even if noble and important and sacred and holy, that threatens to blind you to the times God chooses to show up right in front of you?

Jesus’s point, I think, is that even if you are doing good work, like caring for the poor, if you are doing it in such a way that you miss the precious, beautiful moments life has to offer you – the incarnational moments, the times when God is in your midst – and do not stop and celebrate or acknowledge them appropriately, then you miss the point just as much as if all you do is praise God and neglect to care for the poor. We must do both – acknowledge and marvel in God’s presence and go out to do the hard work he calls us to do. Each of us has a tendency to err toward one extreme or the other. The key is finding a balance, that Anglican via media, the middle way, between the two extremes.

“You will not always have me.”

Our time with those we love is precious. Our experience of God’s presence in our midst is often fleeting and temporary. Don’t let anything keep you from reveling in those moments and soaking them up. Like Mary anointing Jesus before his burial, pour out lavish amounts of thanksgiving and praise whenever you encounter God in your life. Remind yourself: “There will always be another war. There will always be another societal ill to address. There will always be poor among us. But there will not always be this.” – and cherish it while you can.

To Everything There is a Season

Sermon delivered on my last Sunday at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN -- Sunday, August 30, 2015 (14th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 17).

(Song of Solomon 2:8-13, James 1:17-27)



Our first reading today comes from the Song of Solomon, that great love poem of the Hebrew scriptures, and is perhaps best known for its use at weddings. But at this particular time in my life and in the life of the community at St. Paul’s, I am struck by another aspect of this poem – its emphasis on change and seasons.

“Now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come” (Song of Solomon 2:11-12).

Although the poem describes physical aspects of the earth’s changing with the seasons – from winter to spring, from rain to flowers – perhaps there is a deeper metaphorical message. The lovers can celebrate their love with joy and go away together because “the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” Perhaps the “winter” was a difficult time in their relationship; perhaps the “rain” was external stressors beating in from every side.

In any case, this passage points us to change – change in seasons, change in dynamics of relationships, and a recognition of the impermanence of everything in life, even of our lives themselves. It reminds me of another passage from the wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible that gives voice to this theme more fully. Made famous by Pete Seeger setting it to music in the song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” in the 1960s, the words are from the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 3:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

This passage resonated with me as I thought about taking my leave from you after three years serving together in ministry, and as this congregation goes through significant changes in leadership. “To everything there is a season.” A time to arrive, a time to depart. A time to welcome new people, and a time to say goodbye. A time to remember and honor the past, and a time to move forward and look to the future. Having just packed up my office, I know quite a bit about “a time to keep, and a time to throw away,” and perhaps rather than stones, “a time to throw away books, and a time to gather books together.”

This passage reminds us that no state of being lasts forever, whether it be positive or negative. Although we might bristle at the suggestion that there is “a time to hate” and a “time to kill,” I read this passage as describing the reality of human existence in this world, not necessarily the ideal or how it will be in the next life. In this life, nothing lasts forever. In this life, we experience seasons of good things and seasons of bad things. There are times of weeping and times of laughing. When we’re weeping, thinking that there will be a time to laugh in the future may bring us hope, and help get us through the tough times. When we’re laughing, we always realize that at any moment, something could happen that will send us back into crying again. Nothing lasts forever. Everything is temporary, no matter how permanent it may seem to us in the moment. Even our buildings and monuments that outlast generations of people are subject to the destructive forces of nature. As a line in our closing hymn today says, “Though with care and toil we build them, tower and temple fall to dust.”

But our epistle reading from James reminds us of what is truly eternal. “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). With God there is “no variation or shadow due to change.” It is only in God that we find permanence, constancy, a true illustration of the word “forever.” Although “tower and temple fall to dust,” in the hymn text we go on to proclaim, “But God’s power, hour by hour, is my temple and my tower.” In the midst of this ever-changing tide of seasons that flows through our lives, bringing good and bad, life and death, we must always remember to turn our attention to the one “fixed point” in the midst of all the changes: God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s power, God’s eternal presence, the fount of all being, sustaining and guiding us as our life unfolds.

One of my favorite prayers in the prayer book is in the service of Compline, that service in the Daily Office intended for use right before bedtime. It says:

“Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (BCP 133).

“We who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life” – that is such a vivid turn of phrase, isn’t it? Who among us can’t relate to the feeling of being “wearied by the changes and chances of this life” – this life which can change in an instant, in which things we spend hours and years building can be destroyed overnight, this life in which friends and relatives can betray our trust, drift away from us, or get sick and die, this life which offers us no guarantees except for the fact of change itself.

But even in the midst of all that, God remains constant. As the collect says, we can rest in God’s “eternal changelessness,” that solid foundation at the center of our faith. And as Christians, we are an Easter people, a Resurrection people. Change and transformation are at the heart of what we understand God to be about in the world, bringing new life from death. The year I graduated high school, the song “Closing Time” by SemiSonic was at the top of the radio playlists, and I have always remembered a line from that song during times of transition in my life: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” SemiSonic didn’t come up with that line; it is actually an ancient saying often attributed to the 1st century Roman philosopher Seneca. But it could very well be the slogan for the Christian faith: “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” Or as Jesus puts it in the Gospel of John, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)

On Ash Wednesday and at every funeral liturgy we are reminded that “we are dust, and to dust we shall return.” As we commend a loved one to the Lord, we say to God: “You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return” (BCP 499). Our opening hymn today reminded us, in words that echo lines from the psalms and the prophet Isaiah, that “we blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree; then wither and perish, but nought changeth thee.”

Nought changeth thee. The author of the letter to the Hebrews put it this way: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). The scriptures say in various places that Christ is our foundation, our cornerstone, our rock. God is the one thing we can count on not to change, no matter what. But for everything else, there is a season…