Making Preparations

John 12:1-8

Lent 5, April 6, 2025

Holy Trinity Cathedral

“Making Preparations”

How many people hate doing their taxes?  That’s a chore that comes around every year with a deadline. This year is no different, although the process seems to keep getting more complicated for businesses, churches, and individuals. For those of you who held onto every receipt and kept records towards this time of year- well done!  For those of you who have avoided this seasonal headache or are now experiencing anxiety about filing, I sympathize.  As we get older, do we get wiser about making preparations?  After all, as the old saying goes, “nothing is constant in life except death and taxes.”  Getting our financial lives in order is helpful.  Getting our spiritual lives in order is essential.  Today’s gospel reading from John 12 highlights the priority of preparing for endings and new beginnings. 

We encounter Jesus after a life and death episode at Bethany.  He and his disciples travelled there after news reached them that his friend Lazarus was gravely ill.  By the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus has died and been laid in the grave.  His sisters Mary and Martha both reproach Jesus for delaying his arrival, telling him that if he had come sooner, their brother would not have died.  When Jesus calls Lazarus forth from the tomb, and restores him to life in the sight of his family and friends, they marvel at God’s work and believe in Jesus.  But this miracle ignites the fear and anger of the Jewish authorities.  What if the people go after Jesus as their king and bring down the wrath of the Romans on the Temple and the nation? The Pharisees and chief priests begin to plot to put an end to this threat. “It is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” one justifies.  Giving life to Lazarus puts Jesus on the road to death.

So when Jesus returns to Bethany to visit, the shadow of coming conflict hangs over the gathering.  He has already told his followers that going up to Jerusalem for the Passover festival will bring things to a head.  His head.  How well those who have gathered with him understand what is to come is unknown.  But Mary is ever practical: people still need to eat.  She prepares supper for the assembled.  Lazarus shows his emotional gratitude and support for Jesus by his presence at the table.  He is not going to disown the one who gave him a second life even if it puts him in danger from the authorities.  And Mary? Mary is attuned to Jesus’ spiritual needs.

She takes a costly oil and anoints the man that she and others are acclaiming as the Messiah, the anointed One of God.  In John’s gospel, we don’t know how she got her hands on a jar of ointment that cost a year’s wages.  Maybe it was not used for Lazarus’ body when she and the other women anointed him for burial.  But being a funeral perfume, she is very aware of its significance as she pours it over Jesus’ bare feet as he reclines at the table.  She dares the intimacy of wiping them clean with her long hair.  She is anointing him in preparation for the day of his burial, a day when perhaps she will not be allowed close enough to perform this service and say her farewell.   This is anticipatory grief. 

Judas doesn’t get this.  He is fixated on the wastefulness of the gesture.  The money obtained could have been used for a better purpose.  On the surface, he puts forward the accusation that the money could have been given to the poor.  Maybe that was his motivation for protest, or maybe he had been eyeing the jar himself to sell on the black market and replenish the group’s funds.  Jesus chooses not to call him out as a thief.  Instead, he responds to Judas’ words of practicality by affirming Mary’s wisdom and foresight.  She is the one who sees what is coming and is making preparations for the kingdom.  Judas, sadly, has lost faith in Jesus.  Even now, the temptation to give up this man is stirring within, a betrayal that hastens his death.

I wonder, however.  All the while Mary is engaged in this act of final unction- of anointing for burial- does she harbour hope?  Jesus raised her brother Lazarus from the dead.  If he is put to death by the authorities, could he not do the same?  Could he not pass through the grave to the other side?  At the end of John’s story of the passion of Christ, Mary is the first person on that Easter morning to come early to the tomb.  She’s not waiting for the other women. There is no mention of spices or ointments being brought to anoint the body.  That doesn’t seem to be her purpose.  She finds the stone rolled away, just like the stone had been rolled away from her brother’s tomb to allow him to emerge into new life.  But there is no sign of a risen Lord within.  It is not until shining messengers and an unknown individual greet her in the garden that she realizes the truth of the resurrection.  As much as she had prepared for this possibility, God still surprises her!

We can make preparations, but we don’t always know how things will turn out.  After you have done your taxes, you may get a big refund!  After the end of this life, there is something more!  There are plans to be made that are helpful.  Everyone is encouraged to make a will, designate a power of attorney, appoint guardians for children, and reflect on the legacy they want to leave.  These are practical considerations. In our daily living, we also need to attend to things of the heart.  The business of loving and forgiving and helping and mending relationships continues to the day of our departure.  The greatest gift of all, however, is that each of us is offered hope that goes beyond the grave.  This painful process of dying and grieving is for a purpose that is in God’s hands.  We are being asked to do the best we can and trust the One who went before us through death into new life.  Amen.