Lent 5C (Is 43:16-21; Ps 126; Phil 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8)

As I reflect on today’s gospel lesson, it seems a man’s tendency to comment or explain something to women in a rather condescending way has been at least 2,000 years old. This tendency nowadays is called ‘mansplaining,’ which was one of the New York Times’ Words of the Year in 2010. We hear Judas indirectly mansplaining to Mary and directly complaining to Jesus about her anointing of Jesus’ feet with this attitude of know-it-all. 

At the same time, Judas’s perspective on how to spend money more wisely is worth listening regardless of his true intention. Even though St John says Judas has no heart for the poor because he is a thief, spending money for the poor rather than buying a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard and wasting it over Jesus’s feet sounds more Christian. Let us not forget Jesus’s own words, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Also, Judas’s way of utilizing our resources represents our prevalent ethics of utilitarianism which considers the greatest happiness of the greatest number as something good. 

But let us keep in mind that this context in which Jesus and Mary of Bethany interact so lovingly isn’t so much about how to spend money more wisely. Today’s gospel lesson should be read more as a love poem not as a financial advisory lesson. I am quite guilty of treating things in a practical and utilitarian manner. For example, I like plants more than flowers. Why? Because it lasts longer than flowers. Plants are sort of like an investment with benefits of reducing carbon dioxide and airborne dust levels and increasing humidity. Yet, my wife loves flowers over plants. Well, she doesn’t just love flowers. She likes receiving flowers from me. Her preference for flowers over plants did change the way I thought about flowers. They are beautiful. They don’t last long. And it doesn’t matter as long as I’m getting for someone I deeply care about. 

You’ve probably done things that you wouldn't do for yourself but for others out of love. You wouldn’t buy a toy that is so overpriced for yourself but happily so for your children or grandchildren. You wouldn’t get something uselessly luxurious for yourself but for someone you care because of your love for that person. This behavior is obviously far from being financially reasonable or the utilitarian way of spending money. Why get a useless toy that has no profit producing investment instead of depositing that money into that kid’s savings account? But as human beings we do these things when we are in love. Love moves our hearts to do things that require our sacrifice which we believe to be worth doing for our loved ones. 

Mary's decision to anoint Jesus’s feet with a costly perfume is just like this love-driven act that is voluntary and volitional. Her pouring of the perfume is reckless, wasteful, and extravagant, yet expresses her love for Jesus. Now, does this abundant and extravagant pouring of love remind you of the prodigal father from last Sunday’s gospel lesson? The father who celebrates his younger son’s return behaves not in the way of what his younger son deserves in our perspective but solely in the way of love. This prodigal father’s act of love for the younger son is shown in the act of Mary. Yet, there’s a difference between them. While they both show their extravagant and abundant love in common, Mary’s anointing of Jesus’s feet is her response to that unconditional love she experienced from Jesus. It may be easier if you imagine Jesus being the prodigal father and Mary the younger son. Now back to today’s gospel story, Mary is like  the younger son who shows his love to his father. The son learns and mimics the way his prodigal father loves. As the father runs to him, hugs him, kisses him, and celebrates his return, the son washes and anoints the father’s feet that get dirty from running so recklessly out of joy and love. St Paul in our second lesson confesses that he regards everything, literally everything in this world such as honor, respect, fame, wealth, and even health as “rubbish” because of Jesus. This is not some kind of dogmatic manifesto of some fanatic but the confession of love to Jesus. Because St Paul too received that love from Jesus. 

One of the most valuable human behaviors is that we learn. Mary learns from Jesus what it’s like to be loved and loving. Jesus also learns from Mary’s footwashing practice that he does for his disciples. In this unconditional and extravagant love Jesus shows to all, Mary does what she can. And it seems she may have been one of the few disciples who actually listened attentively enough to Jesus’s foretelling of his death and resurrection. She must have kept all the things Jesus said in her heart. She must have known there was no way of stopping Jesus from dying and following God’s will. On his way to death in Jerusalem, Mary may have found the way to show her love for Jesus, which is to be on the same path as Jesus. It is to help him prepare his way to the crucifixion and resurrection. It seems she followed the Jewish funerary custom. Which is that the body is “...cleaned, purified and anointed with water and oil, and sprinkled with perfume in preparation for burial before being wrapped in shrouds.” (The Tome of Jesus and His Family?, James H. Charlesworth, p. 86) Mary truly listens and does what Jesus desires before his burial out of love. 

Judas, on the other hand, is just like the older son in the parable of the prodigal father. He is frustrated with Jesus and Mary. Because not only Mary is wasting all that expensive perfume which should not even be purchased, but also Mary is taking Jesus’s saying of his death in Jerusalem too seriously. In order for Jesus to be Judas’s ideal messiah, Jesus shouldn’t die but liberate the Israelites from the Roman Empire’s colonization and should rule the world. But deep down, what’s really at stake is his refusal to receive the unconditional love of God that Jesus manifests in his ministry. Judas is one of the twelve disciples who eat, sleep, and journey together with Jesus. He has seen what Jesus has done for people. He has witnessed the love that changes people. But he just wouldn’t accept that love which is available to him. In his utilitarian remarks on how Mary ought to spend money, Judas shows his frustration and dissatisfaction with Jesus whose love transforms people, with the love that he chooses not to accept. 

We have about two weeks left until our Easter season. How is your Lenten season going? I wouldn’t ask you whether you’re keeping well with what you have decided to give up. I wouldn’t ask you whether you have examined your shortcomings thoroughly. I wouldn’t even ask you whether you’ve been mindful of this Lenten season. But I do want to ask you whether you are willing to change your understanding of God who is so in love with you just like the prodigal father with extravagant and abundant love. If you are able to see God as the prodigal father who is helplessly in love with you, can you see yourself in Mary who takes a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anoints Jesus' feet, and wipes them with her hair out of love? I would like each one of you to be able to see how Mary is able to be so loving to Jesus like the prodigal father and how you can be Mary in this world. 

My friends, we all know our world is driven by the free market ethos. We know what that does to all of us. I am quite skeptical if politicians can transform things even though they are able to bring positive changes. But in order to see God’s transformation in this world, the Church’s role is more than crucial. We must seriously reflect on St John Chrysostom’s saying that the Church is wider than the world. The Church must see things differently and calculate what’s worth spending differently than the world. The Church’s way of calculating love is extravagant, abundant, and sometimes seemingly wasteful and reckless. May God give us the courage to be holy fools for Jesus with enough foolishness to believe we can actually make a difference in the world for the poor. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.