Walking through Holy Week
By Martin Gorick, Bishop of Dudley
If life is all about learning how to love. What can we learn about love and being people of God, as we walk with Jesus through Holy Week?
A week before he was killed on the cross, Jesus went to Bethany, to have dinner with his friends: Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha. You can read it in John 12.1-8.
They show us different ways to love and be loved.
Lazarus is simply there, sitting with Jesus at table. It’s the most basic form of loving, being with, sticking with it, sharing life. Everyone thought that Lazarus had died, his body had been wrapped in cloth for burial and laid in a tomb. Jesus had saved him. He must have been suffering post traumatic stress. Just being there was the most he could do. That showed love and determination, and that was enough.
Martha is hands on, practical and thoughtful. She’s serving dinner. She meets Jesus needs for food and shelter. Always on the road, he was tired, probably fearful of what was to come. She met his physical need with the comfort and energy that comes from good food.
Her sister Mary shows us how to love in a very different way. She takes a very expensive jar of perfume, and pours it on Jesus’ feet, wiping it away with her hair. Its physical, extravagant, intimate and probably embarrassing for her brother and sister to watch! But perhaps she senses that Jesus is in danger. In a week he will indeed be dead. Sometimes we are too sensible. But not Mary. In the face of death no gesture of love is too much. No ‘if only’s’ for Mary. She goes the whole hog.
And Jesus shows us another lesson about loving. He shows us how to be loved. How to receive love, to receive kindness. Some of us find it much easier to give than to receive. Jesus receives the love of Martha, Lazarus, and now Mary with grace and with deepest appreciation. We need to let God love us sometimes. However that love comes.
But Judas Iscariot is there too. The one who will betray Jesus. He objects this outpouring of love. ‘Why was that perfume not sold and the money given to the poor?!’ he says. It was worth almost a years wages. In an unjust world where many go hungry, why waste it on one man?
Sometimes it is so hard to know how best to love. Judas ensures the poor are not forgotten, as they so often are, wasn’t he right to complain?
There is a beautiful folk song about this story. And if you are willing to put up with my singing, I’ll end with it now.
Said Judas to Mary by Sidney Carter
Said Judas to Mary, "Now what will you do
with your ointment so rich and rare?"
"I'll pour it all over the feet of the
Lord, and I'll wipe it away with my hair,"
she said, "I'll wipe it away with my hair."
"Oh Mary, O Mary, O think of the poor. This
ointment, it could have been sold; and think
of the blanket and think of the bread you
could buy with the silver and gold,"
he said, " You could buy with silver and gold."
"Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll think of the poor;
tomorrow," she said, "not today; for dearer
than all of the poor in the world is my
love who is going away,"
she said, " My love who is going away."
Said Jesus to Mary, "Your love is so deep
today, you may do as you will. Tomorrow,
you say, I am going away, but my body
I leave with you still."
he said, " My body I leave with you still."
"The poor of the world are my body," he said,
"to the end of the world they shall be.
The bread and the blanket you give to the poor
you'll know you have given to me.
he said," You'll know you have given to me."
"My body will hang from the cross of the world
"Tomorrow," he said, "and today.
And Martha and Mary will find me again and
wash all the sorrow away,"
he said," And wash all the sorrow away."
Words © 1964 Stainer & Bell (admin. Hope Publishing Company, 380 S Main Pl, Carol Stream, IL 60188)
