5 de abril de 2009 + Spiritual Foundations for Life: Anointing, Friendship, Failure (Mark 14:1-52) + Frank Alton

Anointing (An act of understanding and of friendship) 14:1-11
The story of Jesus’ anointing by the unnamed woman is sandwiched between two brief narratives in which the plot to kill Jesus is hatched then sealed. Mark is setting the reader up to see the difference between true friendship with God and merely apparent friendship with God. The chief priests and scribes were the apparent friends of God in the eyes of Jewish society. Here they are presented as Jesus’ enemies. Judas was one of Jesus’ most intimate friends. Here he betrays him for a little cash. Between these two pieces of bread is the story of a true friend of God – a woman who truly understood Jesus’ mission as big enough to endure death.
So she anointed Jesus for death, just as he had been anointed for life at his baptism. A community that understands true friendship with God will surround people at moments of beginning and at moments of ending. Many of those of us who feel adequate unto ourselves miss this truth. Those who get it are those who have to rise to the occasion to respond to the challenge of the moment.
This woman’s story is one of faithfulness by the unexpected one. It must have been the disciples who were present at the dinner complaining about her lavish act. Religious leaders wouldn’t have attended a meal at the home of a leper. So it was the disciples that misunderstood Jesus’ call while this woman understood. Sometimes misunderstanding looks so much like understanding that we get confused. It is consistent with the logic of the gospel at one level that “this ointment could have been sold and the money given to the poor.” But there is a deeper logic that is more about being present to the moment, no matter how illogical it might appear. This woman was present to the moment, while the disciples were fearful about the future and therefore living in a theoretical plane rather than in reality.
The Gospel of Mark actually presents a whole series of unnamed figures who understood, received and followed Jesus when the expected ones don’t: Let’s remember them:
• the nameless leper whom Jesus healed
• the anonymous paralytic, all of whose sins Jesus forgave
• the nameless man with the withered hand
• the unnamed Gerasene demoniac
• The woman with the issue of blood and Jairus' unnamed daughter
• The nameless Syrophoenician woman
• the unnamed blind man of Bethsaida
• The unnamed epileptic boy
• The young man who ran away naked at Jesus’ arrest
• The young man at empty tomb
I cannot end this reflection without referring to the misunderstanding and misuse of the “poor always with you” text. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard Christians say that justice work is not part of the Gospel because of this text. That statement reflects the very misunderstanding of the truth of this woman’s action that the disciples demonstrated. In Deuteronomy, these words are followed by, “therefore, you can always do good to the poor.”

Sermon Part 2: Friendship (giving ones life for all, including enemies) 14:12-26
Jesus started out troubled from the previous meal in Bethany where the disciples failed to understand the appropriate response of friendship and maintained the dominant social perspective (especially toward women) Jesus was hoping to reverse. He didn’t expect much more (and didn’t get much) here. It looked like the disciples would unite around resentment over the death of their leader to undertake a self righteous revolution against the Romans that would fulfill their desire (need?) to make a sacrifice out of the perpetrators of this crime against them and their cause. This is the mentality that the church took up in the wake of Constantine, most classically demonstrated in the Crusades of the Middle Ages.
Jesus had to give a powerful demonstration of friendship so that at least they might remember later, if not understand then. It is important to take note that the demonstration of friendship comes against the thickly painted backdrop of the betrayal, which was already underway in Judas, and already predictable in the rest – predictable in a way that didn’t require divine inspiration, but simply human insight involving paying attention with eyes open. We learn of two acts that Jesus performed that night in order to further equip the disciples to live true friendship: the washing of feet, which we will practice together on Thursday evening, and the breaking bread and blessing the cup, which is the focus of Mark’s telling of the story.
Foot washing was a simple and transparent act, but the disciples still didn’t comprehend it. Resentment was building in their hearts around the rejection of Jesus’ mission. The image of foot washing was a giant STOP sign to their hatred and resentment toward Jesus’ enemies. A servant who washes the feet of her subordinates is hardly the kind of person who will destroy the Romans the way God had destroyed the Egyptians in the first Passover. It’s probably more accurate to say that they couldn’t embrace it. Peter understood it well enough to protest against it. Judas seems to have understood it all too well; it fueled the already raging fire in his heart. Jesus knew that telling them one more time wouldn’t help. Something other than words was needed. He gave them a simple and concrete image of his teaching about friendship. If more and more people treated each other like this, the entire social order would crumble around the communal life that emerged through this action.
But Jesus knew that an image alone wouldn’t provide what was needed. The second action of the night – breaking the bread and blessing the cup – provided the spiritual possibility for living out Jesus’ kind of friendship. Jesus’ style of friendship involving loving enemies and eschewing violence was so far beyond them and us that only if the Spirit of Jesus actually takes up residence inside us can we embrace it. That is what happens in the Eucharist. The words, “This is my Body” and “This is my blood” were revolutionary, spoken as they were by Jesus at a Passover celebration. At Passover, the Jews were not just recalling the Exodus from Egypt; God was actually made present yet again in their midst. So, in breaking bread and blessing the cup, Jesus was promising to be present to the disciples every time they followed this commandment.
Here, Jesus' descent is far deeper than the position of a servant who washes feet. Now Jesus descends to the level of the vegetable kingdom and gives his life in the grain of the fields and the grapes of the vine. Jesus becomes be one with them and with us – as the food we eat becomes one with us. In the Eucharist, the reign of God assumes a form in which it can enter into us and thus infiltrate our defensive wills, leaving no room for resentment against those who put Jesus to death. (Schwager, Raymund: Jesus in the Drama of Salvation. New York: Crossroad: 1999, p. 113) As far as God's reign is concerned, it would make no difference whether the disciples overthrew the Roman Empire or were crushed by it. So Jesus didn’t give himself as a corpse in hopes that the world might become a better place if enough people feel bad about killing him. He gave himself as a living being. Only when they broke bread and passed the cup in memory of Jesus would they begin to realize that in Jesus the living God was giving them abundant life in spite of the fact that Jesus had been nailed to a cross and left to die. (THE FIRST SUPPER: In Which the Servant is Betrayed. by Andrew Marr, OSB)
In Jesus’ words of institution the usual direction of sacrificial offering is reversed: instead of the worshiper giving to the god, the god is giving to the worshiper. the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the wine as substitutes for the killing of victims in the temple. The room substitutes for the temple, the table for the altar, and the sharing of the food for the killing of the victim. Normally, the worshiper brings the offering into sacred space; here, the upper room is the nonsacred counterpart of the holy of holies, and so the offering is made outside of sacred space. Thus, the sacrificial system is subverted by the reversal of the direction of its ritual logic.

Sermon Part 3: Failure (grace is the only adequate response) 14: 27-52
It may not seem quite right to end our Lenten sermons with the theme of failure. But unless we understand the role of failure we will miss the entire thrust of the Gospel. Failure is a spiritual foundation for life because only when we face up to the inevitability of failure and allow it to be our teacher can we possibly find life. The story of the second part of Thursday night is all about that failure. Peter's refusal to believe Jesus’ prediction of his failure is the essence of spiritual pride. Whenever we see ourselves as “the great exception”, we are falling into that pride. The shallow heroism and false understanding of life that led Peter to exclaim, “Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.” is itself the failure. And it wasn’t just Peter’s failure. “All of them said the same.”
The Gospel exposes the fallacy of such spiritual heroics. Not one of those heroes stood by Jesus. In the very next scene, they show that they cannot even watch with him as he prays in Gethsemane. They have not understood that Jesus is no sacred hero, religious virtuoso, or saint, but simply a victim of violence in need of moral support. They fail to understand that he needs companionship in his time of temptation. Confident that the great leader has everything under control, they doze off in the midst of his struggle. They cannot bear to hear that his soul is sorrowful, or accept his frailty, or believe that he needs their presence and support. "My soul is very sorrowful unto death" (14:34) is the last thing they want to hear from him. So they maintain their sacred illusion by shutting out reality in sleep.
Jesus rebukes Peter for not being strong enough to stay awake to all that is going on, warning him to be alert and on guard against temptation. It’s as if he were answering Peter's declaration of faithfulness unto death. When Jesus says “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” he is not comparing Peter’s unwilling spirit to Jesus’ “un-frail” flesh. The point is that Jesus faces up to the struggle with the demons inside through prayer.
That has been the point of our Lenten emphasis on spiritual practice. If we could overcome failure any other way, or somehow avoid it altogether, we wouldn’t need spiritual practice. But we can’t; so we need to pray like Jesus, in the multiple ways that we have witnessed throughout this season. There is an irony in Jesus’ words to Simon the third time he returns to find the disciples sleeping. One translation says, “Go ahead an sleep for the rest of the time.” Don’t watch while the rest of the drama is played out. You don’t have the strength to go through this with your eyes open, so you might as well remain asleep. We, the readers, are expected to hear the irony and be convicted by it, and thus motivated to "Stay awake & watch!" so as to see the truth unfold in the text & in the world.
Jesus’ friends allowed themselves to be scandalized by Jesus. Scandal is either the inability to affirm the way of the cross or a breaking of the relationship with Jesus altogether. It wants Jesus to use rather than to suffer sacred violence, to be a hero rather than a victim. The result of the scandal is, therefore, that the disciples wander from the way of the cross & are scattered like sheep without a shepherd (14:27). They are confused and without direction. Unable to take the way of the cross and unable to turn back, they mill around in confusion.
To the extent that Christian piety has denied failure’s role as teacher despite Jesus' insistence on its role, it has actually interfered with Jesus' work for our souls. So, listen up; this is important. There are several failures in the Passion story: from the world’s perspective, Jesus failed in his project, since death is understood as the end of a project; Jesus’ friends failed to grasp Jesus’ message, which included the teaching that failure is a necessary part of any significant human project; because they didn’t know that failure was alright they all betrayed him to avoid failure. s
Jesus could “foresee” the “failure” of his project precisely because he understood that failure is necessary for life. But he didn’t see that as the end of it, simply a death it had to pass through in order to be fulfilled. His foresight was neither fate nor divine inspiration. It was human insight informed by an accurate perception of the inevitability of failure.
Failure is not outside the Gospel story but at dead center. Jesus doesn’t call us to honor him as a hero but to join him in facing up to the indignity of political defeat and personal failure. Only by facing up to failure and death can we break their hammerlock on history, the world, and our lives. Only then can the story begin afresh, based not upon idealism but grace. Whether we will carry on with this story or not depends upon our understanding and acceptance of both the tragedy and the hope of our own failures. For it is there that our following Jesus will either truly end or truly begin. The failure of the disciples was not so much their denial itself, but their refusal to accept Jesus’ assessment that they would fail.
The spiritual foundations for life are usually suprising. That is a testimony to how far we have wandered from the way that Jesus is and that Jesus showed us. The invitation of this season has been to get back on the path and to practice spirituality in order to stay on it. I encourage you to heed that invitation.