Are We Having Fun Yet?

5 Lent C (2004)
John 12:1-8

Richard Burridge (Four Gospels, One Jesus? [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994]) and other commentators talk about the Markan sandwich, "where one story provides the 'filling' between two pieces of 'bread'" (39).  Looking at this week's gospel, I notice a Johannine sandwich.

Look at what happens just before the dinner-and-anointing scene: the authorities plot to kill Jesus. And after: the same authorities plot to kill Lazarus. There is danger on every side now, so that "Jesus no longer walked openly" (11:54). There is danger, too, within the inner circle, as we find out from the parenthetical comment about Judas in 12:5.

In the context of all this plotting and imminent betrayal, Mary, Martha and Lazarus invite Jesus and his friends to dinner. In the parable of the prodigal son, the father said to his elder son, "We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found" (Luke 15:32). Here is another brother, back from the dead. This time, the brother and his sisters are celebrating.

But who would sandwich a party between so much that is going so wrong? How can you celebrate in the midst of all that danger? The first answer that pops into the minds of pop psychologists is "denial." "They just don't get it," we might say. "They are fooling themselves; they are in denial." I think that's the wrong answer. It is not denial that fuels the celebration. Jesus is clear on the fate that awaits him (cf. John 12:8). He talks about his burial and he says that Mary understands that he is about to die. Jesus is not in denial about the danger. He just doesn't fear it.

"God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear..." (1 John 4:16b-18a) The author of 1 John is talking here about not fearing punishment from God because God abides in us and loves us. Yet the love of God does even more than just allay our fear of a righteous God. It banishes fear of other threats, whether they come from enemies like cancer, or terrorists, or (as in the case of Jesus) your own government.

In a sermon preached at Duke Divinity School chapel in 1996 or so, homiletics professor Richard Lischer told this story.

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"Our friend had already done two full courses of chemotherapy and through it all had somehow managed to complete a doctoral dissertation at U. Va. She had done it. To celebrate she and her husband rented a VFW hall, hired a band, and threw one of the biggest parties I've ever seen for the whole church and half the community. Two days before graduation her doctors confirmed that the cancer was back. The experimental treatments would begin the day after graduation. Only a few of us knew it, and my guess is we would have limped through the ceremony and canceled the party. "But she had the party. And I tell you I have never heard the gospel of God's Yes preached more powerfully than I saw it danced on the floor of the VFW. An outsider would have seen only the vintage 1960s, arthritic gyrations that we were all doing, but this was a woman of faith and she danced her Yes in the grip of the No. And that's the way we do it. The best celebrating is done in the face of the enemy, the best dancing on the devil's dance floor. "You can't always separate the Yes from the No but at least one person has done it definitively. Because of the resurrection of Jesus, we trust that there is this distinction, and that it holds true for us." Richard Lischer, sermon on 2 Cor. 1:15-22, privately printed.

Martha who served, Lazarus who came out of the tomb and then to dinner when called, Mary who spent a year's salary on the best party favor ever, Jesus who loved them all, along with loving the rest of us—this is what they know: The best dancing is done on the devil's dance floor.  Perfect love casts out fear.  It does so by offering a security that all the carefulness in the world cannot match.

Comments

[Julie]

Oh, wow. The gifts the lectionary gives us -- thank you for noticing the link between the party in Luke last week and the party in John this week. That thought sets many fresh thoughts spinning in my mind, about God and love and who and how God wants us to be...this text is about being, now. Not doing, not planning or plotting, but being and loving.
Peace!

[Sivin Kit]

I really appreciate te insights i get here, thanks

[Pastor Kris Snyder]

The texts from both last week and this week fit together like book ends. Your ideas add to the richness of God's intention here. The lavish love that Jesus tries to stress comes alive as we experience this gift of love poured out on Jesus. Who gets the Gospel message here? How has the church neglected the lavish law of love? Nothing was wasted here. The rural church often hears a loud NO when it needs to hear a proclaimed YES. We forget that the church is more than its walls, greater than its own efforts, and of greatest importance to Jesus and the order that comes through the Cross.