Dabbling in Generosity

Lent 5, Year C
March 17, 2013
John 12:1-8

I’ve been dabbling this Lent.  I got to Ash Wednesday and still didn’t have much of an idea of what I wanted to give up or take on for Lent.  I think this indecision was due partly to a lack of organization, partly to a fear that I wouldn’t be able to live up to whatever I came up with, and partly to a realization that my plans for Lent often don’t end up feeling as meaningful as I’d hoped.  And so for me, this Lent has been an interesting mish-mash inspired by a few things I’ve been reading.  I’ve been keeping up with the Bible Challenge readings and also subscribing to a couple Lenten e-mail series – one from the Episcopal Public Policy Network about violence in society and one from Credo (a group related to the Episcopal Church’s pension fund) about feasting and fasting.  But my favorite one is a short daily video sent each day from the brothers at the Society of St. John the Evangelist about prayer.  Each morning, I lie in bed listening to one of the monks wearing their dark robes and sitting in front of a beautiful stained glass window and candle speaking for just a few minutes on some small example of prayer that works for them.  And either then, or if the kids have piled on the bed by that point, sometime later in the day, I try to return to some piece of something I’ve encountered and spend some time with it – maybe a few words from scripture, or a thought from one of the e-mails, or some new way of looking at prayer.  And at first I wondered if my dabbling was a cop-out, but God has been providing some interesting experiences so I don’t think it is.

The little piece that has been sticking with me this week has been about generosity.  Something that I read along the way suggested looking for generous acts to do for others during Lent.  Things you could do for loved ones or strangers, things for which you wouldn’t take credit or look for any kind of reward.  It seemed fun and easy enough and so I gave it a try.  And what I realized was how very ungenerously I have been living.  Things like putting a new roll of toilet paper on instead of just putting it on top when the one before it runs out.  Turning off lights behind people without grousing about how they left them on.  Turning my husband’s shirts right side out before folding them.  Taking things down to the basement storage rather than letting them sit in the hallway waiting for someone else to get to it.  Holding open doors just a little bit longer.  Smiling at children and their frazzled moms in the grocery store and not being in such a hurry.  My guess is that no one has even noticed because these things are so small.  And yet even the simplest small things take effort.  Every time I do one of these tiny things I am actually making a choice to live generously rather than lazily or grudgingly or selfishly. And every time I’m reminded that that is how I want to live.  How I wish that I could live without making such an effort.  In a relationship of love and giving with the people around me, not tit-for-tat, keeping track and looking for affirmation.

I think that’s why I’m so struck by Mary in our Gospel reading for this morning.  Mary who is living as I want to live.

Everything about what she did was shocking and offensive.  First she loosens her hair in a room full of men, which an honorable woman would not have done in her day.  Then she pours perfume on Jesus’ feet – too much, too expensive – an entire year’s salary worth.  Then she touches him, caresses him --a single woman rubbing a single man's feet--also not done, not even among friends.  Then she wipes the perfume off with her hair – way too intimate.  It’s too much, really.  Doesn’t she care what people might think about her?

Which was so often the complaint about Jesus.  He was too inclusive of the wrong people.  Healing at the wrong times.  Eating in the wrong places.  Dying on the cross.  Doesn’t he care what people think about him?

Just like Jesus, Mary is acting out of love.  She’s grateful to Jesus for having raised her brother Lazarus from the dead.  (We don’t know exactly how long ago it was, but it was only 12 verses before this story in John’s gospel.  There is Lazarus, who just a while ago was stinking in his grave, and now he’s reclining at the dinner table with Jesus.)  Mary is also glad that in Jesus she has found someone that finally gets her.  Someone that includes her -- lets her just sit at his feet and breathe in his teachings.  And everything that he has done for her, all the love and compassion and understanding he has shown her, make her want to respond with the same kind of abundant love and generosity for him.

Judas doesn’t get it, and that’s what makes him such a tragic figure.  He doesn’t understand that Mary’s abundance and Jesus’ abundance are from God.  He misses Jesus’ invitation to get so caught up in love that we act it out – unthinkingly, excessively, wastefully.

I read an article in Christian Century yesterday that talked about how we are constantly presented with choices about whether or not we live with that kind of love:

To perceive the world is always to perceive it as a certain kind of space: as mere “nature” or God’s creation; as the flattened, disenchanted space for human self-assertion or the enchanted, sacramental realm of God’s good gifts; as a competitive arena for my plunder and self-fulfillment or a shared space of neighbors who beckon to me for care and compassion; as a random assemblage for which we now claim “progress” or the stage on which is played the drama of God’s gracious redemption?

Mary shows us what those choices can look like  Mary shows us how to live as disciples.  How to love with all of our heart.  How to respond to God’s love for us with our own love for the world.

I wonder if you’ve ever received the kind of generosity that Mary shows Jesus?

I wonder if you’ve ever felt like you’ve received that kind of generosity from God?

I wonder what your life might look like if you could live into that kind of generous love with the people around you?