“What Divides the Two Worlds?”

Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – March 13, 2016

Centenary United Methodist Church

Isaiah 43:16-21; John 12:1-8

 

    Our Gospel lesson this morning provides an interesting example of how the central theme of a story can remain consistent while certain details and the setting can vary.  It is extremely rare that any story appears in all four of the Gospels; however, that is the case with today's lesson.  Before we discuss the central theme of the story, let us review this episode as it appears in all four of the Gospels.

    In Matthew the setting was the home of Simon, the leper.  The disciples were the ones who displayed anger over the use of an expensive oil that a woman was using to anoint Jesus’ head. (Matt. 26:6f)  In Mark, the location was the same as in Matthew, but in this version the people were the ones that became enraged when a woman anointed Jesus’ head with the expensive oil.  (Mark 14:3f)

    There is a similar story in Luke but the details are significantly different.  This episode took place at the home of Simon, the Pharisee.  The woman that anointed Jesus' feet with expensive oil and her tears was a prostitute.  She dried his feet with her hair.  Seeing this happening in his courtyard caused a very disgruntled Pharisee to think, “If this man really is a prophet, he would know who this woman is who is touching him and would know what kind of sinful life she lives.” (Luke 7:39)

    Finally, in John's Gospel, the drama that is unfolding takes place at the home of Jesus' most intimate friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. The woman who was applying the expensive oil on Jesus’ feet was Mary.  The person who was angered by the wasteful use of this oil was Judas.  (John 12:3)

    John’s Gospel is filled with accounts that appear to be the remembrances of an eye witness.  When we read words like, “The sweet smell of the oil filled the entire house,” no author would write in such detail unless he had been there to experience it. It is likely that John's account of Mary and Jesus is the image from which the other three accounts had their origin.

    In three of the episodes, what evoked hostility in people was the use of a product called Nard.  Nard comes from the root of the Spikenard plant, a rare species of the herb Valerian grown in the Himalayan Mountains of China.  In Jesus' day, a pint of Nard could easily have cost 300 silver coins. 

    To give this amount of money some perspective, one silver coin was the average wage for a rural worker. To rub Jesus' feet with something that cost as much as the annual wage of a worker, Mary was being accused by Judas of squandering a lot of money.

    However, John's version of this story had little to do with what Mary was doing, little to do about the value of the Nard, little to do about Judas' anger and little to do with Judas' desire to get his hands on more money.  The last verse of our lesson gives us the foundation for most of Jesus' teachings. The last verse is this, "You will always have poor people with you, but you will not always have me." (John 12:8)

    Even with this statement, Jesus was not teaching anything about always having poor people in their midst.  To understand the consistent theme in most of Jesus' teachings we have to concentrate on what would be missing from our lives and in our world if Jesus had not been born. Jesus was illustrating what divides the world of spirit from the material world.  Basically, Jesus was telling his listeners:

You will always find material possessions that you value greatly. You will always struggle among yourselves over how your highly valued property should be shared. You will always engage in speculation about the motives of those who share what you value.  You will always have people of every economic class living among you. 

 

BUT, you will not always have me to tell you about the world of spirit that you cannot see or to guide you correctly so you will find it.  Your true treasure does not lie among the things of this world.  When your motives and desires originate from your spiritual center of loving energy, everything you want in life will follow.  Fear will never guide you correctly.

    Jesus was separating the wheat from the chaff, the aspects of life that are valuable from those that are not, the qualities of life that are infinite in nature from those qualities in the world that derive their value from our attachments to them.  Jesus' message was about living from our spiritual awareness so that we can enjoy the magnificence and splendor of our material world.

    A group of people who personalized and lived what Jesus was teaching were those that had achieved a balance between the inner world of spirit and their enjoyment of their material world.  They had lived this way since the close of the Glacial Period 10,000 years ago.  These were the Native Americans who settled in what is now Seattle, Washington.

    In 1854, Chief Seattle wrote a letter to the people of the world.  Please listen to the spirit of his words.  Sense the balance between the inner world of his people and the world over which they understood themselves to be the caretakers and custodians:

The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land but how can anyone buy or sell the sky or the land. This idea is strange to us.  Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.  Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, are all holy in the memory and experience of my people.  We are part of the Earth and it is part of us. 

 

The perfume flowers are our sisters.  The bear, the deer, the great eagle -- these are our brothers.  Each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events, memories and the life of my people.  The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.  The rivers are our brothers.  They carry our canoes and feed our children. 

 

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us.  That the air shares its spirit along with the life it supports.  The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh.  This we know, the Earth does not belong to anyone.  It is we who belong to the Earth.  All things are connected like the blood that unites all of us.  We did not weave the web of life.  We are merely strands in it.  Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.  The white man's destiny is a mystery to us. 

 

What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered?  What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many people and the view of our ripe hills becomes blotted out by the poles that hold your talking wires?  Will this be the end of living and the beginning of survival?

 

When the last red man has vanished with his wilderness and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here?  Will there be any spirit of my people left?  We love this earth as a new born loves his mother’s heart beat.  So if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it.  Care for it as we have cared for it.  Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it.  Preserve the land for all children and love it as God loves us all.  One thing we know, there is only one God; no man, be he red man or white man, can remain apart.  We are brothers after all.

    Chief Seattle's insights are very close to what Jesus was attempting to illustrate to his disciples during this episode when Mary was giving her gift to Jesus.  Khalil Gibran once wrote, "Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart."  While everyone was debating Mary's use of Nard, she was giving to Jesus from the light that was coming from her heart.  The spirit of the giver is far more important than the material value of the gift.

    Think about it.  Everything that annoys and angers us is due to our attachment to things in this world that we value.  In reality, none of those things have any value when we leave this world.  Likewise, we never grow angry of the values that matter to our essential nature.

    When people give us gifts from the light of love from within them, those gifts are beyond value.  All of us are at peace with those who accept us just as we are.  We are influenced by their caring and compassion. We can be honest with them and know with confidence that they will not judge us by what we did in our past.  All of us want to be surrounded by such people. We will see more of them the moment we become as they are.

    These qualities come from our gold mine of qualities that are given birth from the spirit by which we live. There is no earthly treasure that can make us more attractive to others.  God's creation can be a thing of beauty or it can be a swirling den of iniquity filled with sinister temptations.  We cannot blame God for what we find in the created order. 

    How we express what we value in the external world is a reflection of what our inner world has become. The material world with all its treasures is exactly what we decide that it is.  Each one of us may see our two worlds differently.  Jesus was not teaching that one is good and the other is evil. He was teaching his listeners how their responses to the material world could profoundly influence and shape their spiritual journey.  

    Donna Amaral sent to me a mini-story of a little boy's understanding of the Bible.  The young man made a phrase from each letter of the word Bible.  He said the Bible is:   Basic Information Before Leaving Earth.  What a beautiful insight.  

    What divides our two worlds is the understanding and the attitude that each of us has developed.  The issue with the unhappy people in all the accounts has to do with their assigning great value and meaning to what they prized the most. What they valued blinded them to the light that was coming from the hearts of all four women.  It should give us great comfort to know that it is never too late for people to make a course correction.