Anointing to Do the Job That Needs to Be Done
By Charles Rush
January 10, 1999
Matthew 26: 1-13
rrison Keillor's Saturday evening radio show,
A Prairie Home Companion,
on National Public Radio is sponsored by Powdermilk Biscuits. The
by-line says they are the biscuits that give shy people the courage to
do the job that needs to be done. Isn't that great? They come in a
blue tin. I've heard that advertisement for over a decade now and more
than once I've wished I could order a tin of those biscuits. How about
you?
I'm going to preach on Matthew 26
and 27 over five different
Sundays between now and Easter. We are turning to look at the destiny
of Jesus. Perhaps it is better called his vocation, his calling. It
is the work that all the gospel writers tell us that Jesus came to do.
It is a story that leads Jesus ultimately towards death, a story that
has an approach/avoidance power to it, in part because we also know
that we are destined to die. We slow to the story like so many cars
slowing for a wreck on the side of the road, curious and fascinated by
death, afraid of it too, and ashamed in a strange way of our
curiosity.
And the death of Jesus is more than
that. We stand in awe of a man
who held to his convictions, unwavering in his righteousness, able to
withstand torture and death rather than be compromised.
At the same time, he is very threatening in the way that he does not
stand up for himself in the midst of a mortal challenge from evil men.
We stand in awe of someone who appears to be so internally confident,
apparently intimately in touch with himself and with God. At the same
time, it is unnerving to think that God would let chaos and evil run so
rampant in our midst, that the Anointed One would so resemble a
victim. And it is precisely through this combination of awe and horror
that Matthew tells us that God is working, despite the fact that evil
men appear to be succeeding in their mani pulation, despite the fact
that all around the disciples are weak and faithless. Nevertheless,
Gods goodness is accomplished and our sinfulness and weakness are
healed.
I have done an unusual thing for
you this morning. I have given
you each a Xerox of the synopsis of the four gospels. Our story occurs
in all four and I thought that some of you might appreciate a little
lesson in how to read the bible. You can look at the four stories more
carefully when you get home. What you will notice immediately is that
the story is never told the same way twice and that is because the
bible was not written as a simple historical narrative. Each of the
gospels use narrative to make specific instruction about who they
thought Jesus was, what his mission was about, and what Jesus came to
teach us. They all drew on a body of stories about Jesus but they put
them together quite differently. They composed these final stories
decades after the death of Jesus, probably after a time when there
weren't any eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus left.
For example, in Matthew and Mark
this story takes place as one of
the last things that happens before Jesus dies. In Luke and John, it
happens in the middle of his career. In Matthew and Mark, the woman is
unnamed. In Luke, we are told that she is a sinner. In John, she is
said to be Mary Magdalene, a woman that tradition tells us was a
prostitute. In all of the stories, the disciples complain that the
costly anointing was a waste. Only in Luke is the story connected with
the forgiveness of sins. Indeed, Luke adds a teaching from Jesus on
the nature of forgiveness, the parable of the forgiveness of the two
debtors.
In Matthew,
our story begins with an ominous turn. The chapter
opens, when Jesus finished all these sayings. That means we are
finished with the teaching part of Jesus and now we turn to face the
mission that Jesus had set before him, the mission of the cross.
As I have mentioned before, Matthew
lacks subtlety. In case we
might have missed the point, he tells it to us again. Of all the
gospels, only Matthew has Jesus saying You know that after two days,
the Passover is coming and the Son of man will be delivered up to be
crucified. Jesus himself is telling us what is going to happen.
And if that is not enough, he adds
Then the chief priests and the
elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, who was
called Caiaphas, and took counsel together in order to arrest Jesus by
stealth and kill him.
This whole section is filled with
irony. The people that should
recognize the authority of Jesus most, recognize it least. The Chief
priests, the elders, the disciples, Judas. They were closest to Jesus
and through the story each of them deserts Jesus, each betrays him,
each contributes to his ultimate death.
There is the irony that they are
celebrating the Passover that
remembers the liberation of the Jews from slavery to freedom. In the
very midst of this celebration of freedom, the principals who will
betray Jesus act in the manner of moral bondage. They use deceit, they
are evasive, they lie, they curse, they scheme. And all of this
plotting is to kill the very one who points the way toward true
freedom.
There is irony at this ceremony of
anointing. Anointing was a
Jewish institution with many positive associations. Kings were
anointed upon their inauguration. Anointing signified divine approval
and so priests were anointed when they were ordained. Sometimes
children were anointed by their parents as a sign of divine approval on
their lives. Anointing of each other was done during times of great
joy, when the harvest of grapes yielded a new wine, when victory in
battle had taken place. Yet, here the anointing is done with great
love, to be sure, but it is unmistakably a prelude of death , a kind of
living embalming. None of the disciples who have been following Jesus
for the past three years have a clue as to what is about to happen.
But this woman, who is not part of the inner circle, prepares him to
do the job that needs to be done.
And then we are told, at the end of
this act, Truly, I say to you,
wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done
will be told in memory of her. In memory of who? We don't even have
her name. We know the name of each and every disciple who will later
betray Jesus and fall away faithless. We know the name of the Chief
Priest who will manipulate him. We even know the name of the ordinary
criminal, Barabas that will be released instead of Jesus at the very
end. But this one example of faithfulness, this one woman, remains
anonymous.
She took a simple jar of ointment
and anointed him with the courage
to do what he had to do. What a simple, yet profound thing. Don't you
need the anointing too?
Casey Hawley tells a story about
flying on an ordinary routine
flight coming back from a business trip. Only this flight began
jerking shortly after take off. Folks tried to remain blasé.
"We didn't remain blasé for long. The pilot soon gave the grave
announcement We are having some difficulties, he said. At this time,
it appears we have no nose-wheel steering. Our indicators show that
our hydraulic system has failed. We will be returning to the Orlando
airport at this time. Because of the lack of hydraulics, we are not
sure our landing gear will lock, so the flight attendants will prepare
you for a bumpy landing. Also, if you look out the windows, you will
see that we are dumping fuel from the airplane. We want to have as
little on board as possible in the event of a rough touchdown.
"In other words, we were about to
crash. No sight has ever been so
sobering as seeing that fuel, hundreds of gallons of it, streaming past
my window out of the planes tanks. The flight attendants helped
people get in to position and comforted those who were already
hysterical.
"As I looked at the faces of my
fellow business travelers, I was
stunned at the changes I saw in their faces. Many looked visibly
frightened now. Even the most stoic looked grim and ashen. There was
not one exception. No one faces death without fear, I thought.
"I began searching the crowd for
one person who felt the peace and
calm that true courage or great faith gives people in these events. I
saw no one.
"Then a couple of rows to my left,
I heard a still, calm voice, a
womans voice, speaking in an absolutely normal conversational tone.
There was no tremor or tension. It was a lovely, even tone. I had to
find the source of this voice.
"All around, people cried. Many
wailed and screamed. A few of the
men held onto their composure by gripping the arm rests and clenching
teeth, but their fear was written all over them.
"In the midst of all the chaos, a
mother was talking, just talking
to her child. The woman, in her mid-30s and unremarkable, was staring
full into the face of her daughter, who looked to be four years old.
The child listened closely, sensing the importance of her mother's
words. The mother's gaze held the child so fixed and intent that she
seemed untouched by the sounds of grief and fear around
her.[1]
"I strained to her what this mother
was saying to her child. I was
compelled to hear. I needed to hear.
"Finally, I leaned over and by some
miracle could hear this soft,
sure voice with the tone of assurance. Over and over again, the mother
said, I love you so much. Do you know for sure that I love you more
than anything?
"Yes, Mommy, the little girl said.
"And remember, no matter what
happens, that I love you always. And
that you are a good girl. Sometimes things happen that are not your
fault. You are still a good girl and my love will always be with you.
"Then the mother put her body over
her daughters, strapped the seat
belt over both of them and prepared to crash."
[She had done as much as she could
do in that moment to release her
daughter from the future bondage that traps survivors in the feelings
of guilt and unworthiness.]
"For no earthly reason, our landing
gear held and our touchdown was
over in seconds.
"The voice I heard that day never
wavered, never acknowledged
doubt, and maintained an evenness that seemed emotionally and
physically impossible. Not one of us hardened business travelers could
have spoken without a tremoring voice. I heard the voice of courage,
undergirded by love that bore that mother up and lifted her above the
chaos around her."
When the church is working, we are
like that. We are anointing one
another with love and courage, telling each other that we can do it,
giving each other the power to overcome those things which bind us,
freeing us to new heights.
And we need encouragement in our
moral and spiritual lives as well.
John Kennedy once said, "The credit
belongs to the man who is
actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and
spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, if he wins, knows the
thrills of high achievement, and if he fails, at least fails daring
greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid
souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
Kennedy also said "A man does what
he must -- in spite of personal
consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures -- and that
is the basis of all human morality."
"Courage is the ladder on which all
the other virtues mount." -- Clare
Luce Booth
Lord Moran: "Courage is a moral
quality; it is not a chance gift of
nature like an aptitude for games. It is a cold choice between two
alternatives, the fixed resolve not to quit; an act of renunciation
which must me make not once but many times by the power of the will."
Amen.