The Fifth Sunday of Lent
ISAIAH 43:16-21: Two things stand out in this magnificent prophesy of Isaiah of Babylon. The first is that God is about to use his saving power to deliver the people of Judah from their exile as God used that same power to deliver the Hebrews from their slavery in Egypt. The second is that this new deliverance will transcend the first. In the first deliverance the people were led by God through the desert. In this new deliverance the desert itself will be transformed. As of old, says the Lord, "I made a way through the seas, a path in the mighty waters. . . . But I am about to do a new thing: . . . I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people."
"The desert" is at issue here. For people who lived in the 6th century B.C. the desert was an insurmountable obstacle. On occasion armies could pass through it. The Assyrians had done so in the 8th century and the Babylonians in the 7th and 6th. But this was unusual. It took immense and costly preparations to do so. Despite this many soldiers died from heat, dehydration, and exhaustion as they marched forward under the scorching sun. Caravaneers might lead their donkey cavalcades along its almost waterless courses, but only the hardiest would survive. For the common men and women, encumbered with flocks and families, the desert was as impenetrable barrier for them as the impassable seas were for the people of Europe in all the centuries before the 15th. To get a sense of the somber power of the desert, stand by the pyramids of Giza and look to the west; nothing is visible but the skies and sands. You might also view again the video "Lawrence of Arabia." The desert stands out in the film, and its sense of brooding mystery dominates every scene.
But God is about to do another new thing. Bringing the Hebrew slaves through the waters of the Sea and the encirclement of the opposing armies was a magnificent demonstration of the delivering power of God. Now God will do an even greater thing. God will cause rivers to flow in the desert, water to spring up in the wilderness. Even the jackals and the ostriches, those creatures of the desert, will honor God; in the renewed desert their lives will be easier as well. The God who conquered the waters is about to conquer the seas, and all people will declare his praise.
PSALM 126: This psalm speaks of the fulfillment granted to the people: God had done for them what God promised through the prophecy declared above.
"The Lord restored the fortunes of Zion." So says this psalm, and this means that the psalm was written in those generations after the exiles returned from Babylon to Jerusalem. They were garlanded with joy, as the prophet had declared: their mouths were filled with laughter and their tongues with shouts of joy. The nations had taken note of what God had done for them: "The Lord has done great things for them," was the report that spread among all people. The people of Judah heard the report, and they rejoiced.
The concluding verses, 4 through 6, contain two beautiful images. The first has to do with water flowing where water is scarce. The Negeb was the desert area south of Jerusalem. In the summer the land was barren and the heat pitiless. Every stream dried up. But when autumn came, rains refreshed the earth and filled the wadies; the watercourses of the Negev were restored. So the psalmist prayed that the Lord would come and, in Ballard's marvelous phrase, "change us from frustration to fertility."
The second image may be based upon a primitive mideastern practice. "One must not laugh when he sows," says the proverb, "lest he weep when he harvests." The psalmist builds on that idea. "Those who go out weeping bearing seeds for sowing shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves."
This psalm is gracious in its simplicity. To quote Ballard once more, "In its few verses the psalm passes swiftly through the vicissitudes of human life -- its laughter and tears, sorrow and joy, dejection and exaltation, exile and redemption, spring and autumn, the beautiful dream, and the cruel reality. But the sorrow (of which it speaks) is swallowed up in the lovely vision with which it ends."
PHILIPPIANS 3:4b-14: The Apostle Paul is representative of that movement in Christianity which considered that Jesus Christ had replaced the Jewish law as normative for Christian people. He used his own personal experience as his reason for doing this.
Paul said that no one had more reason to boast of his Jewishness than he had. He was no mere proselyte to the faith; he was a lifetime adherent of Judaism, circumcised as an infant "on the eighth day," as the Law required. He was of the people of Israel, not of mixed stalk as were many of the conglomerate population which then occupied Palestine. He was of the tribe of Benjamin, the select little tribe which gave Israel its first king, held the prerogative of marching as the vanguard into battle, and that descended from Rachel, Jacob's favorite wife. He was a "Hebrew of Hebrews," which meant that he spoke Hebrew in his home, read the Scripture in that language, and prayed in Hebrew when he went to the synagogue. He studied the Law in Pharisaic schools. He was a persecutor of the church, so zealous was he for the Jewish faith he held dear. As regards his righteousness, Paul considered himself blameless. The ambition of every pious Jew was to secure, by unfailing observance of the law, a righteousness that would make him perfect in the sight of God. Few could claim to have come anywhere near to the ideal, but Paul, after incessant self-discipline, felt that he had become a truly righteous man. No one could question Paul's Jewishness. His credentials in Judaism were impeccable.
But he turned his back on all that. Paul made an accounting of his life and found that by some error he had put to the credit side what had instead been his losses. So he counted everything that he had gained in Judaism as refuse, garbage. Paul may be thinking of actual penalties inflicted on him by Jewish authorities. He may well have been disowned by his family and disinherited, his property confiscated; he was deprived of his rights in the national community of Judaism. But no matter. Paul had replaced all that by what he called "the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord."
Paul described this worth in explicit ways. To know Jesus Christ, as he had said before, is to give up dependence on all the other systems of life that conflict with that of Christ. To know Jesus Christ is to trust him for guidance and comfort, for forgiveness and friendship; Christ, not the law, revives the soul and rejoices the heart. To know Jesus Christ is to share his sufferings, even to the point of suffering a death like his. To know Jesus Christ is to hope for a resurrection, like his, from the dead. To know Jesus Christ is to continue to press on to make Jesus Christ our own, as he has made us his own.
Paul concludes this exciting passage by using the metaphor of a race. To do this, the athlete must forget what lies behind, his past victories and losses. He must prepare himself for the contest, clear his mind and flex his muscles. He must strain forward with all his strength. He must press on to the goal line, keeping his eye on the wreath that is hung there as a prize for the winner. The life in Christ is like the life in a race: "One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
JOHN 12:1-8: At the dinner in the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, a very unusual thing occurred. The woman of the house took an expensive jar of perfume, anointed Jesus' feet with it, and then wiped the excess perfume from his feet with her hair. Judas Iscariot complained about the waste of money, though the gospel is quick to point out that he did not care about the poor. Jesus answered that he should leave Mary alone.
The perfume was expensive indeed. Judas said that it was worth 300 denarii. A denarius was the usual wage paid for one day's work. This perfume therefore would have cost a village workman a whole year's wages. The nard mentioned here was Syrian Nard. It was a prized ingredient for any ointment. It may have been gotten from an herb grown in the high pasture land in the Himalayan Mountains. This distant source would explain its high cost.
Even more remarkable was what Mary did. She not only anointed Jesus with the oil, she wiped his feet with her hair. To do this she had to unbind her hair. That was unthinkable. Only a harlot was seen with unbound tresses. The pouring of the ointment on the feet and not on the head is strange enough, but to wipe it with one's hair is unimaginable.
Judas Iscariot protested Mary's act: "Why was this perfume not sold and the money given to the poor?" Jesus answered him, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for my burial." There was momentous irony in Jesus' words. Up to this moment in Jesus' ministry, people had speculated that Jesus might be the messiah of God, but they had no proof to support their suspicion. When Mary poured the oil on his feet, her act fulfilled their conjecture. "She has anointed me," said Jesus. "Now all the world will know that I am truly the anointed one, the messiah." Mary's act put Jesus into a predicament. When the report went out that he had been publicly anointed as the messiah, the Romans would join forces with his Jewish enemies to kill him. This action of Mary, called "an unknown woman" in the other gospels, was significant far beyond the cost of the ointment. It led directly to Jesus' death and burial.
It is worth noting the low esteem in which this gospel holds Judas. He did not care for the poor, said the writer. He also was stealing from the common purse he held in behalf of all the disciples. And he was about to betray Jesus! He has no advocate in this gospel.
At the end of the account we learn that the chief priests not only were planning to do away with Jesus; they were going to kill Lazarus as well. As long as he lived, he who had been raised from the dead, Lazarus was a symbol of the power of Jesus and a threat to the power of the priests.