Renewing Faith: Staying Whole

Note: You can view this teaching on our YouTube Channel. The scene (John 12:1-6) is a dinner party honoring Jesus. Lazarus is there, which is a pretty big deal since he was dead a few days or weeks before. Jesus was being honored for lots of reasons, but everybody present surely appreciated Lazarus’ presence given that Jesus was the one who called him out of the tomb to live another day. Lazarus’ sisters are present. They were both on the front row the days leading up to Lazarus’ death when they summoned Jesus to return, the day Lazarus died, the days before Jesus arrived in Bethany, the fourth day when Jesus arrived and restored their brother to them. Mary and Martha were sisters with different personality types. Martha seemed to live more on the task-oriented side of things, leaning on logic more than feeling. Mary wore her heart on her sleeve.

Nobody was really surprised when Mary made an extravagant gesture of love and adoration toward Jesus as she opened a bottle of perfume worth a year’s wages and used it to anoint Jesus’ feet with her hair. This was pure nard from a flower found in the Himalayan mountains. Rare and expensive. The whole house was filled with the aroma of her loving kindness. It was just a pure expression of her gratitude, appreciation, and devotion. Surely others around the room shared her feelings and joined her in honoring Jesus with their love as well.

Questions: When have you broken a vase to express your love toward someone? How did it feel? Are you glad you did it? How was it received? Was the recipient glad you did it?

Not everybody reacted the same way, however. Judas was indignant, in fact, complaining that it was a waste of resources. He said out loud what people have struggled with for a long time – isn’t this gesture wasteful considering a world of need? Imagine how much good could have been done with it? How many mouths could have been fed? People are starving and Mary’s wasting a valuable resource. John informs us of an ulterior motive that also courses through our veins at times – he wanted some of the money for himself. While we may not literally steal from the coffer as Judas apparently did, we human beings do struggle with the tension between wealth and generosity, being good stewards of our own resources while also being a responsible citizen of the world in the face of need.

Jesus read Judas’ mind (and ours) and addressed him with a quite famous rebuke: the poor will always be with you, but you won’t always have this moment. Lay off your criticism of Mary. What she did was right and good – so much so that people will remember it forever. It is important to note that Jesus isn’t encouraging the neglect of the poor in favor of our own hedonistic leanings. The Jewish tradition which informed Jesus gave clear instruction about the need to balance wise personal financial management while at the same time looking out for the vulnerable. We human beings are created in the image of God and are, at our core, very good. Yet we struggle with all sorts of self-centered temptations, greed being one of them. Because of that struggle, Jesus was affirming the truth that individuals and entire systems will take more for themselves to the neglect of those who they can take it from. Usually this includes people with less power, less influence, and less money. Women, widows, children, orphans, people of color, and immigrants. The principle of the Jewish tradition that Jesus surely espoused was to do our best to be forever vigilant against such abuses, with particular attention to systemic abuses of power that keep the imbalance just the way it is.

U2’s lead singer, Bono, and friends figured this out decades ago. During a crisis in the 1980’s, bands came together to raise money for the cause. They raised tens of millions of dollars through their efforts. Bono and others realized that all that effort wasn’t really going to make a lasting difference so long as limiting policies were in place on the local and global levels that made it nearly impossible for large groups of the poor to thrive. He and a friend founded One.org in response, which seeks to change things on a system level. Most of us live unawares of how the systems we live in are what really make all the difference for most people on the planet. This is why the Jewish tradition affirms the constant monitoring of such things so that justice is assured. This is why Jesus was extremely politically engaged and why we, as Jesus followers – if we really are – should also be civically aware and engaged regarding the systems in place, especially how they may be benefitting a few at the sacrifice of the many.

Questions: When have you been truly generous toward relieving the suffering of the vulnerable? How did it feel? When have you been civically engaged to address systemic issues that favor the powerful at the expense of the poor?

So far, we have a very practical passage that helps us address a question we must engage regarding our resources. In short, I think Jesus is saying that there are special moments that deserve breaking the piggy bank, going a little overboard with love. There is a balance to be respected, of course, but the stingy parts of us need to loosen up the purse strings. At the same time, Jesus is reminding us that the work to protect the vulnerable will never be done. We who have been transformed by the love of God in such a way that we see everyone as beloved sons and daughters of God are (hopefully) naturally motivated to seek social and economic justice for those who are being mistreated.

Questions: What’s the next vase-breaking thing on your horizon? What is a way you can lend yourself to social and economic justice?

I’m wondering about something else, though, that this scene showcases. Two devout Jesus followers – Mary and Judas – had two very different responses to everything about Jesus as he headed into his final week of life. One clearly represents someone who is motivated by love. The other something different.

I believe that Jesus himself had many moments when he was overwhelmed by the love of God that transformed his life, resulting in attitudes and behaviors that were loving toward all. I think this contrasted him from John the Baptist, who apparently was founded more by the much more common view of God as the coming, wrathful warrior-judge god. Where John was vinegar, Jesus was honey. John’s fear-based approach was effective and likely changed lives for a minute or two. Jesus’ approach, however, had a different, more thoroughly transformative impact. Jesus’ followers, I would think, were initially compelled by the love of Jesus, and were likely similarly transformed. I think Mary and Judas both were wooed by the love of God that Jesus modeled and offered. What changed, then? Why, at the end of the Jesus story, was one follower overflowing with love and the other not so much?

I suggest that what we are witnessing here is a cautionary tale that depicts our human capacity to waiver from one end of the devotional spectrum to the other. On one extreme is Mary, full of love and expressing it freely. On the other end is Judas, still in the room but no longer motivated the way he once was – so much so that the next few days would have him betray the one he had been following for years. Throughout our lives we will struggle with this human reality to varying degrees. The real question for me is, how do we stay in the zone like Jesus did, so that we end up more like Mary than Judas?

We live in a time where we have an abundance of resources to help us think this through. One resource that I have found to be very helpful is from the Gottman Institute. This institute focuses primarily on marital health, offering insight regarding warning signs to look out for and what to do when some negative tendencies have crept in. They also offer helpful, practical tools to keep relationships in a healthy space.

What does this have to do with faith? A lot. Faith isn’t simply intellectual assent to a doctrine or set of belief statements. Faith is meant to be our most core relationship in life. Relationships are living entities that need to be nurtured to thrive. Marriage represents the most intimate relationships we can have in life. Learning from experts about how to keep a marriage relationship alive and growing surely offers a lot of transfer application to faith.

In short, most of the advice comes down to what we are doing to foster the relationship. Relationships begin to break down when intentionality is dropped, when we no longer do the things we naturally did when we first fall in love – how we began and ended the day connecting with each other, how time was easily made to talk about dynamics between us, how time was carved out to regularly spend quality time together, how affection in various forms was normalized. The behaviors feed the feeling and the feeling feeds the behaviors. Sometimes, however, we neglect the behaviors that support the feelings, that allow the feelings to be nurtured, and the feelings can begin to fade or grow dormant. With the absence of feelings, the desire for the behaviors that maintain the feelings fall off easily. When this goes on too long, couples can become vulnerable to outside influences and temptations – other sources that stoke our feelings and elicit behaviors take the spouse’s place. Sometimes it’s another person who is often in a similar relationship. Sometimes the temptation is work, or addiction, or sports, or a hobby, or an interest, or a cause, or, well, the list is long. Whatever the cause, when people are on this track they look and act a lot more like Judas than Mary. To maintain love, attention and intention is required. Mary was acutely aware of God’s love for her and Lazarus and couldn’t help herself.

Questions: How are we choosing to engage God throughout the day? How are we beginning our day with God? How are we interacting with God for extended conversations – date nights with God, if you will? How are we taking time to evaluate how our relationship with God is going to nip problems in the bud? How are we staying aware of the love of God for us and around us, and how are we expressing our love for God?

When we do as Jesus did to keep our relationship with God alive and growing, we discover a faith that continues to transform and lead us to lives that are increasingly whole, connected, loving toward ourselves and others, and helping the world become more whole as well. We break vases at times while at other times challenging power structures that are hurting God’s beloved children. This life of faith modeled by Jesus yields a truly abundant life that I believe every person yearns for at their core. How is your faith? How would you like it to be? What are you going to do about it?