Brazen Acts of Beauty
John 12:1-11
April 3, 2022
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Irene Smith went to Hollywood with the hopes of becoming a movie star. She got a few parts and made some connections, but along the way, she also become a heavy drug user. Her career as an actress ended when she got so stoned she couldn’t learn her lines. Looking for work to support her drug habit, she took a job as one of the first topless dances in Southern California. Things got even worse for Irene in the next years. She took a job giving massages that led her directly into prostitution. She became a heroin user.
Finally, when her weight had dropped to 88 pounds and it became obvious that she was dying, she ended up at three workshops done by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the well-known specialist on death and dying. In those workshops, she discovered and revived the parts of her self that had been deeply wounded in the past. She said, “by being truly heard, witnessed and forgiven, I gained the tools I needed to continue living.” At the end of the third workshop, Irene raised her hand to speak. She announced to the group, “ I’m a prostitute and I’m going to become a massage therapist.”
I’m sure there were people who doubted her. Probably not out loud, but in their minds, they thought to themselves that they knew exactly what kind of massages she could offer. But she was bold and determined. She volunteered to massage people in hospice care. In 1983, she contacted San Francisco General Hospital. She talked with the staff about her experiences with hospice and how people with AIDS were deprived of human touch. She became the first volunteer to do massage therapy with people with AIDS. She went on to create and direct an internationally acclaimed non-profit that established massage programs for people with AIDS all over the world.[1] She died on April 4, 2021, almost a year ago today.
She was brazen, determining to care for others when her own life was a train-wreck. What she did was beautiful.
Mary of Bethany is also brazen. In one reckless act, she breaks her precious jar and dumps out expensive perfume. She lavishes perfume worth a year’s wages on Jesus’ feet in one grand gesture. Then to make things even more cringe-worthy, she unbinds her hair and bends over Jesus’ feet so that she could wipe off some of the perfume with her hair. She violates all kinds of rules about appropriate behavior. Everyone in the room is suddenly very uncomfortable. Some probably wonder what kind of relationship she and Jesus actually had. Others may think that her brother’s recent death and resuscitation had unhinged her.
You remember Lazarus. He is present, alive at this dinner party. In fact, his aliveness is a problem. The authorities, who want to kill Jesus, also want to kill Lazarus because his being alive is evidence of Jesus’ power.
Maybe Lazarus’ brush with death and Mary’s experience of grief has changed them. Maybe Mary is more determined to live boldly, to show love to Jesus while he is still alive. She is aware, perhaps as never before, about the danger he is in, the closeness of death and the preciousness of life.
What she does is intimate, not sexual, but intimate. Jesus and Mary and Martha and Lazarus have shared meals and meaningful conversation. They have wept together, been vulnerable together. Offering her gratitude and devotion and deep love, she is boldly extravagant.
But not everyone appreciates it. Judas the treasurer, thinks it is a waste. That much perfume could have provided a lot of food for the poor, he says. Jesus defends Mary,
“She’s been keeping the perfume for my burial, which could happen any day now.”
I wonder if Mary remembers Jesus weeping at Lazarus’ tomb. I wonder if she wants Jesus to know that she will weep when Jesus dies. Maybe she wants him to know that she will grieve because he means so much to her.
We often celebrate people at their funerals, but sometimes we celebrate them while they’re alive. Many of you will remember Ken Graham who was a faithful member here for decades. His adult children planned a celebration for his 90th birthday. At his request, they all came to church with him on that day. They gathered from across the country. He knew that part. The surprise was that in worship that morning they gave a gift to Emmanuel in his honor. Their gift enabled us to purchase the projector and screen that we use today. They celebrated his life while he was alive with them.
Some version of this story is told in every gospel. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus says that wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her. This action is so important that while it is happening, Jesus tells them to pay attention and remember, so they can tell the story.
Paul Tillich was a German theologian of the last century. About Mary he said, “She has performed an act of holy waste growing out of the abundance of her heart. Judas,” Tillich observed, “has his emotional life under control. . . . Jesus knows that without the abundance of heart nothing great can happen. . . . He knows that calculating love is not love at all.”
“The history of humankind,” Tillich continues, “is the history of men and women who wasted themselves and were not afraid to do so. They did not fear to waste themselves in the service of a new creation. They wasted out of the fullness of their hearts.”[2]
Brazen acts of beauty, of love and abundance are all around us. Some are acts of resistance, like the Ukrainian grandmother who walked up to a Russian soldier. With a few salty words, she gave him sunflower seeds and told him to put them in his pocket. She said that she looks forward to seeing sunflowers grow when his dead body lies down on Ukrainian soil. Props to her for creative non-violent resistance. It isn’t exactly beautiful, but definitely brazen.
There was the time when an artist named JR brought people together at the US/Mexico border.[3] They installed two tables, end to end at the border fence, just for one day. All day long, people showed up on each side for a picnic. They enjoyed the same food, the same water, the same music, as half of the band was on each side. Technically, this was illegal, but it was not shut down. He called it “Giant Picnic” Some might call it a waste. Others a brazen act of beauty.
For over a decade in Houston, someone kept painting this simple message on a bridge “Be Someone.” Others would paint over it, but then the original street artist would risk climbing the bridge and getting caught to re-paint it, encouraging more commuters, more pedestrians, more Houstonians to “be someone.
And then, there was the pair of skaters who arrived at the World Figure Skating Championship two weeks ago, without their coach, without costumes. They barely escaped the shelling in Kharkiv. Three days before hand they changed their music and redid their choreography.
It begins with them dancing to a song called 1944, which is about Stalin’s deportation of Crimean Tatars. The second piece is a Ukrainian folk song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2csIfrSevUI
The standing ovation went on for several minutes. One fan said, “Maybe it doesn’t look like the strongest performance, but if you understand how they got there, you would wonder how they were able to perform at all.”
A waste of resources or a brazen act of beauty. Judge for yourself.
Paul Tillich wrote “Without the abundance and heart, nothing great can happen. Do not suppress in yourselves the abundant heart, the waste of self-surrender. . . . Keep yourself open for the creative moment. Do not suppress the impulse to do what Mary did at Bethany. You will be reproached as she was. But Jesus was on her side and he is also on yours.” [4]
As we respond to Jesus, may we find within ourselves, Mary’s courage and devotion. May we be surprised with beauty and joy. Amen.
[1] Sherry Anderson and Patricia Hopkins, The Feminine Face of God, (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), pp 82-84.
[2] Paul Tillich, “Holy Waste” in The New Being (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1955), p. 47-48
[3] https://time.com/4977283/artist-stages-picnic-on-us-mexico-border/
[4] Paul Tillich, “Holy Waste” in The New Being (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1955), p. 47