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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Look. I'm for boundaries and values that are right for you, but only because you choose them, not because they are forced on you. We think rules will do the work of intimacy for us, but they will not. Rules aren't alive. With nuance and joy and justice, we are.
Speaker 1:We begin this year talking about the art of intimacy. And intimacy might be one of my great obsessions, as you'll see from my taste in movies. Recently, I joined Letterboxd, an online social cataloging service for films. Some of you have even found me on Letterboxd, so that's fun. And on Letterboxd, you can list your top four films, like, of your life.
Speaker 1:So I have been overthinking this list like I do, and I finally posted it on my profile. Now, I won't get too far into this list, but there is a common thread running through my top four. All of my movies are walking and talking movies. What I mean is that in all four of my favorite films, people are just walking around, often in beautiful cities talking about love like that is it. That is all they are doing.
Speaker 1:And the Apex Mountain is Before Sunset, this film where Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy's characters walk around Paris talking about life and philosophy and, well, their intimacy ten years after they first did the exact same thing in a movie just like that one, that time in Vienna. You can have your action adventure movies. You can keep them. I will take slow, nothing really happens, walking and talking movies any day. And thinking about these movies reminded me that intimacy, how we get it, strengthen it, expand on it, recover it, heal it, share it, deepen it, has been one of my obsessions for a long time.
Speaker 1:And every one of those top four films could be a study in what we've talked about so far. We've talked about the value of intention in a world where we are pulled away from face to face relationships on account of, let's face it, our intimate relationship with our phones. And we've talked about the importance of attention, to draw out an authentic story and to tend to each other's process of becoming more whole. And today, we will talk about just how risky intimacy can be. But first, let us pray.
Speaker 1:Loving God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden. We think of the moments that were maybe a bit heavy this week, the fear in our politics, the friends we love who are struggling, the wars that keep on raging. That's good. It's so good that we care about this stuff. You love this world after all.
Speaker 1:And into all that troubles us, we pray for love and we work for peace. We pause to just notice our bodies here in this place, to give our attention to this moment As we breathe in a little deeper and we exhale a little longer, we notice our feet on the ground and maybe some of us even roll our shoulders back It's a little gesture of openness to all that you are. Amen. So today is all about the risk and intimacy. And through the story of Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus' feet with pricey perfume, I want us to consider just how much should it matter.
Speaker 1:And by it, I mean intimacy, closeness, the love that flows between us. The story is in John 12, and we will talk about those three friends, opposite of safety, ethics of intimacy, and risk. Now John 12 follows this high point of John 11 where Jesus' friend Lazarus dies before Jesus gets there to heal him. When Jesus does finally show Lazarus has been dead for four days, the smell of death makes Lazarus' sisters, Martha and Mary, believe this is their brother's final state. It's curtains for him.
Speaker 1:But after Jesus prays, he commands dead Lazarus to come out of the tomb, and Lazarus does. It's not just rainbows and alive dead guys, though. There's a plot underway to kill Jesus, and we read about that at the end of chapter 11. And then we get to chapter 12. Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.
Speaker 1:Here, a dinner was given in Jesus' honor. Martha served while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume. She poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. This is such a key story that aversion is in all four gospels, only there are these interesting differences.
Speaker 1:In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the woman is always unnamed. And in Matthew and Mark, she anoints Jesus' head, not his feet. And in all three of these, the woman approaches from the outside. And John, this is her house. So often, John stretches these gospel stories and fills them with more detail.
Speaker 1:The characters are named and they come closer. And I love that trajectory that the further we get from the time of Jesus, the more we fill these stories with details for ourselves. It keeps them alive. And so we see the dynamic of these three friends. Lazarus attends what would have been his own funeral.
Speaker 1:Later, rabbinic tradition calls the first meal after the burial a meal of comfort. So bodies lean against bodies. After life had slipped away, they now know how good it is just to be here around this table. Martha is being her ever helpful self, and while these friends all matter, the story is about what Mary does next. And it's easy to confuse all the Marys, but this is not Mary Magdalene.
Speaker 1:She's her own Mary. The New Testament count of Marys goes up to seven. This is Mary of Bethany. Now, typically, foot washing takes place when someone enters the house. But the meal is underway already, and Mary is not trying to make Jesus clean.
Speaker 1:What happens is described in the heiress tense. It is a swift, simple act. Mary's up, She crosses the room. A pound of perfume is poured out. Her hair sops it up, and the whole house is filled with the fragrance.
Speaker 1:Now we could talk about the nard and where it comes from in the world and if the text really means myrrh. We could notice that Mary isn't ashamed of anything here. Her hair, undone from its customary braid, is a sign of intimacy and grief. And we could even spell out the erotic overtones when we trace this act all the way back to Song of Songs chapter one, where the lover sees the king recline on the couch and pours forth the fragrance of nard. That's the only other place where we find nard in the scriptures, and it's kinda sexy.
Speaker 1:While those are all honestly pretty cool details worthy of our time, what I actually want you to notice is that the bond between Mary and Jesus, it is palpable. And Mary is nothing if not secure in her relationship with her friend to offer him everything. And if you're like, oh, should we be looking at this intimate act? Like, is it really for public consumption? I mean, we will see in a moment that one person takes issue.
Speaker 1:But part of the problem for us is that we are not used to seeing real intimacy in friendship, particularly between women and men. We often jump to a consumptive sexuality and miss out on the significance of what's present in this moment. Here, Jesus is as present to Mary as he is to Peter, John, or any of the disciples, and I'd love him for that. And honestly, honestly, my life would be a shell of itself if it weren't for the safe, respectful, intimate friendships I've formed with men. Stay open to the people who might heal you and build you up when you get close to them.
Speaker 1:Our differences can be so incredibly good for ourselves. But back to the story and what the threat of intimacy can do if you're not in a good space. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later later to betray him, objected. Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages.
Speaker 1:He did not say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, as keeper of the money bag. He used to help himself to what was put into it. Of all four versions of the story, this is the only version where Judas is named as the objector. Now at first, it seems like there's not much room for interpretation here. Well, we don't know what moves Mary in the scene, which I find so interesting.
Speaker 1:Is it gratitude? Is it desire? Is it premonition? I mean, who can say? But the text does say what moves Judas.
Speaker 1:And we're told that Judas just wants the money for himself. Now, greed is not an emotion. It's a behavioral drive. And what fuels greed is intensely emotional. It's fear and inadequacy and envy.
Speaker 1:With feelings like that bottled up, I imagine that Judas has been honestly avoiding intimacy for a while. I mean, just look around the room. Lazarus and Jesus recline together. Martha makes the meal. Mary moves to get as close as she can to Jesus.
Speaker 1:They are all pulled toward him. But Judas stands outside the intimate scene. And as Judas watches their closeness, he objects, enough. Enough already. It's gone too far.
Speaker 1:And deep inside Judas squirrels an impulse that's in all of us too. It's the impulse to stay away from the very thing we know is good for us. The thing about Judas here is that he isn't wrong. Why not use the money to help the poor? Only there's this interesting detail that we miss without the Greek.
Speaker 1:The word for money bag, glosocomen, is also the word for, get this, coffin. And that stings. Judas doesn't object with altruism, he objects with greed. You could say that this act of generosity by Mary makes Judas feel unsafe, like the justification of his choice to skim money off the top of other people's generosity is under threat. We can do terrible things when we feel isolated and unsafe.
Speaker 1:Like, we take what's not ours, and we bury our shame, and we betray our friends and partners. So I wanna spend a little more time with this idea of safety. A couple of weeks ago, I made a case during the question and response portion of the 7PM service that God might not have it in God's plans to heal us without us. What I meant was that we can get so concerned with safety that we think intimacy and even the love of God looks like ease in our lives. And I just don't think that's true.
Speaker 1:I think intimacy is at its best when it asks something of us and when it's not something that we control and when it's shot through with so much trust that it leaves us laughing at the rush of it. But I get it. I get the urge to hide from intimacy. In fact, I think Christians have been masters at making rules so that people don't get hurt from the mess they make of intimacy. Sometimes these rules are well meaning.
Speaker 1:Other times, they are meant to keep people submissive. But rules like this, they can extinguish the spark of life because rules guarantee nothing. In fact, I think they can keep us from healing ourselves. They keep us from wrestling with intimacy, really figuring out what is good and right and true. Look, I'm for boundaries and values that are right for you, but only because you choose them, not because they are forced on you.
Speaker 1:We think rules will do the work of intimacy for us, but they will not. Rules aren't alive with nuance and joy and justice. We are. Here's the thing. There are no rules strong enough to keep Judas from stepping outside the bonds of closeness, and there are no rules that could hold Mary back from pushing even further into the love that she has for Jesus.
Speaker 1:Intimacy draws us in or it pushes us away. And which way we're going is about the disposition of our hearts and how open we are to the risk of getting hurt or being betrayed and trusting somehow that we could actually survive all of that. So what do we do with the live wire of intimacy? What does Jesus do with Judas' dreams of exploiting generosity and Mary's perfumed and dripping hair? Jesus faces all of it.
Speaker 1:Leave her alone, Jesus replied. It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will not always have the poor among you, but you will not always have Did I read that wrong? You will always have you will. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.
Speaker 1:I love the way that Jesus cuts through the scene and defends Mary. Stop it, Judas. You lost the plot. Now it's true that verse eight has been used to uphold the status quo. Christians have piled up money and opulence for centuries but denied the needs of their neighbor.
Speaker 1:And across scripture, this is not the way of God. But here, the emphasis is on presence. Jesus says, you will get to the work of meeting needs and helping the poor, but right now, let's be together. Mary's right. And we see the good of her action in the way it actually prefigures what is to come.
Speaker 1:Jesus himself will wash his disciples feet. So maybe Mary gave him that good idea in the first place. But even more than foot washing, Jesus says that what Mary does is wrapped up in his death. The fragrance that fills the house will one day fill a tomb, death, and the courage to face it is what hangs over this story. Now, there is this thread of interpretation that says that in anointing Jesus' feet and soaking up the perfume with her hair, Mary is actually anointed too.
Speaker 1:And what this means to me is that there is no part of Jesus's life that Mary does not now share as his disciple. As Jesus will grieve, so Mary grieves at his feet. As Jesus will die, so too will Mary die. But as Jesus will rise, Mary will rise as well. There's no part of Jesus' life that has not become her own.
Speaker 1:And so we work to anoint our bodies for closeness with God and with each other. And it takes work to shape this ethic, this practice of living well together. It takes deliberation and judgment and wisdom, humility, and honest conversation to figure out what it really looks like to love each other well. The theologian Luke Bretherton says it like this. At its most basic, the term ethics refers to intentional and rigorous reflection on what it means to flourish as human beings in relationship with the world in which we participate.
Speaker 1:And so in living and dying in the agony and the ecstasy of it all, Jesus doesn't provide a rule book. The Bible is something that we wrote down. But what Jesus does is give us a life, his own, so that divine life can become our own. There is no protective boundary drawn around you that will keep pain and tragedy at bay. Jesus didn't protect himself from the fullness of being human, and he won't protect you from that either.
Speaker 1:Intimacy requires vulnerability. Even Jesus did not skip past that part. What Jesus does is pay attention and welcome affection. He tells the truth, and he heals us with us. Jesus does it by telling stories.
Speaker 1:He reminds us to love each other as best as we can. And when the betrayers come, and they do, Jesus doesn't fight them. He gives himself over so that we can see who we are at our worst and who God is no matter what we throw God's way. Between the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and the one of Mary anointing Jesus with perfume sits a darker story. We're told in John 11 of the plot to kill him.
Speaker 1:As crowds around Jesus grow, folks see a threat. They fear the movement is getting so out of control that Rome will notice too. So they complained to the religious leaders, we read from that day on, they planned to put Jesus to death. Empires are threatened by our intimacy, our love, and our protection of one another. Keep that in mind if there are stormy political days ahead.
Speaker 1:In threat, what does Jesus do? Does he run and hide? Does he build a bunker? Does he hit the gym and invest in crypto? No.
Speaker 1:No. He just goes to Bethany where Lazarus, Martha, and Mary live. He goes to Bethany before Passover on the way to Jerusalem just to be with his friends. To get the intimacy you want in your life, you have to risk something. And still, it might not go the way you hope.
Speaker 1:You might not have the marriage you thought you did. Your friendship might not weather the storm. The connection you hope for might result in rejection. But when the smoke has cleared and the dust has settled, you will know what you have to work with. It is worth everything to fling your life toward intimacy.
Speaker 1:And if you're having trouble with next steps, and that is perfectly normal, then find out what is getting in your way. Because in the art of intimacy, you will find out who you are and how much you already love God and just how worth it the risk of closeness really is. It's so worth it. Let us pray. Loving God, for the gifts of friendship, for the love in our lives, for the desires that we kindle, for the passions that draw us out into the world, for the joy and good stories and kind gestures, for the generosity and shared work of making a community and a society together, we say thank you.
Speaker 1:As we go into the week wondering how to stay open to intimacy or how to make healthier the love that we have in our lives, won't you walk with us? And might we see through those who walk with us to something so beautiful and divine. The spirit of the living God present with us now, enter the place of our loneliness and our longing and heal us of all that harms us. Amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Speaker 2:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you
Speaker 1:soon.