“For the Love of Money”

• Scriptural Reference: John 12:1-8
• March 25, 2007

Fred Craddock tells the story of how he and his wife, Nettie, once took a trip to Ireland. As they were traveling around, they noticed that behind many of the farmer’s homes was a fenced-in back yard. And in many of those back yards he noticed donkeys, as he said, “like some people have a dog.” He asked one of those farmers one day after they’d fallen into a conversation about the donkey, “You still use a donkey to work your peat fields?”

“Oh, no, we have a motorized plow now to work the fields.”

“But you still have the donkey.”

“Oh yes. The donkey used to pull our plow and cut our peat for six years. We don’t need the donkey now but we’re not going to run it off of sell it. That donkey’s a part of our family and our children would kill us if we did something to that donkey.”

“So, you just keep that donkey back there, feed it, take care of it, pay veterinarian bills, etc.?”

“Yes, we do.”

“That must get expensive.”

“Yeah, yeah it does, but what’s the alternative? We love this donkey.”

After Craddock had that conversation he came to this conclusion: sometimes beyond the practical, to the level of love, the rules change so much that you would risk everything – and it wouldn’t seem like much at all.

I like that story and the conclusion a whole lot. The crucial truth emerging from it is this: when you live on the level of love you have a different set of standards than when you don’t love. In the 12 th chapter of John, we have two different set of rules lived out, one based on the impractical level of love and the other on the practical level of carefully budgeted self interest. Mary most definitely would’ve kept the donkey in the back yard. Judas would’ve sold the donkey to the local glue factory.

John tells us that a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. We’ve all attended celebratory meals and we all know what they’re like. Just imagine that comforting chaos that surrounds your Thanksgiving gatherings and you have an idea of what it was probably like there in Bethany. Those people in Bethany had an extra reason to celebrate. Their brother Lazarus was going to be eating with them when just a few days before that, he’d been dead and buried. Jesus had showed up and raised him back to life, so they threw a party, a banquet of honor for the man of the hour, Jesus.

When John tells us that they were reclining around the table, we might get a little confused. We sit around our tables. We spend a lot of money on fellowship hall chairs and my wife loves the antique chairs we have at our dining room table, but in Jesus’ day, they didn’t sit in chairs. The table on which the meal was set was probably about 18-20 inches off the floor. The guests would then lie down on thick cushions, supporting themselves on their sides or stomachs, propped up by the softness of the pillows and allowing their arms to move freely about the serving dishes and goblets placed before them. Their feet would extend behind them.

In this scene in John, Martha is behaving true to form. In Luke 10, Martha distinguished herself by telling Jesus to make Mary get up from sitting at his feet listening to him teach and come help her serve the meal. Jesus told Martha that he wasn’t going to make Mary quit listening to teaching. In John 12, Martha is serving again. Bless Martha’s heart. She was always serving. And bless Mary, too. She’s at Jesus’ feet again – but this time in an entirely different way.

I don’t know if this meal came before or after the incident described in Luke. It’s really impossible to tell. But Mary seems to forget her proper duties on a regular basis when she’s around Jesus, and she always gets criticized for it, poor lady. But Jesus also always defends her. Both Luke and John remember a woman who for some reason operated on a different level, and impractical level, a level where the rules changed – and all because of love.

Get the picture. Jesus is reclining at the table with his feet out behind him. He’s just pulled a morsel of kosher lamb from the fondue. Nobody pays attention to the female form moving behind Jesus. That’s where all the servers walk about tending to empty goblets. But then a new aroma fills the room and overwhelms the smell of roasted lamb and sweet red wine. It’s akin to concentrated cinnamon mixed with cedar. It’s so sharp, it opens up everyone’s nostrils, and right away they know, someone has opened a jar of spikenard, a treasured and expensive perfume derived from plants that grow in the mountainous regions of India and imported to the regions of Palestine by way of extensive camel trains. It’s expensive stuff and always used sparingly so that it would last.

Then the astonishment would’ve compounded. There’s Mary, again at Jesus’ feet, but this time pouring the entire contents of the spikenard over his ankles and arches so that the smooth oil ran between his toes. And as the priceless ointment drips on the terra cotta tiles beneath his feet, Mary unbinds her hair – an extremely immodest act in a culture where women kept their hair under a shawl – and adding offense to immodesty, begins wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair, in a culture where women didn’t touch men unless supervised by their fathers or husbands.

This was an audacious act, bordering on downright sexual impropriety. At least, that’s what everyone in the room was more than likely thinking. Notice that Martha makes no protest in John’s account of a Mary-Martha dinner. That could be because Martha had been stricken dumb. Let me emphasize that: everyone would’ve been thinking about the inappropriate contact between unmarried persons of the opposite sex. And what does Judas say?

“According to my calculations, this perfume she’s just poured all over the floor and over your feet, sir, which incidentally were already clean because of the ritual washing you got when you first came in – Martha being the consummate hostess – was worth at least a year’s wages. Terrible waste, that, at a time when so much could’ve been done if she’d only sold it and given the proceeds to us to be used on behalf of the downtrodden.”

John doesn’t tell us what Jesus was doing while his feet were being washed and wiped by Mary’s hair. In his response to Judas, he clearly encourages Mary to continue. At least, he speaks not one word of reproach. He DOES reprove Judas. “Judas, there are poor people around you all the time.” The implication here was clear – you always have the poor with you and you should always be taking care of their needs and fighting to reduce their poverty. It was part of the Deuteronomic code. “But Judas, you won’t always have me with you. She’s getting me ready for my burial.”

In those days, bodies were prepared for burial in part by bathing them with fragrant spices. In telling Judas that Mary was preparing him for his burial, Jesus conveyed the notion that Mary understood who Jesus was better than even his disciple’s treasurer. Mary loved Jesus. Judas loved money and power. What Mary did wasn’t at all extravagant, nor was it immodest or inappropriate. It wasn’t a waste because it was done in love. Sometimes beyond the practical, to the level of love, the rules change so much that you would risk everything – and it wouldn’t seem like much at all.

In part, this is a stewardship lesson. Stewardship, very simply, is how we intentionally plan to use our resources to support the things we love. How we spend our money always tells us – and the world – what we love the most. I bring this up because you can always measure your spiritual maturity in part on how much of your money you devote to supporting your church. This is a cause for great celebration for me regarding Walnut Grove Baptist Church because whenever we have a need, the people of this church respond generously. As you may have noted in last week’s bulletin, when the appeal went out a month ago for $7000.00 to enable our partners in Pavas, Costa Rica to complete a building, you exceeded that goal in less than three weeks. Clearly, your love of Christ is deep. You know that when you gave that money, you were supporting the least of these, and as such, were giving to Christ. That was love.

Of course, the church also has a regular budget which is the more prosaic representation of what we’ve determined it will take financially to carry forth the on-going ministries of Walnut Grove Baptist Church which we’ve prayerfully concluded Christ has called us to. Supporting that requires an on-going discipline. I sincerely hope that your monthly cable bill, for example, doesn’t exceed what you give monthly to this ministry process.

Did you know that you, the congregation, are the only source of funding for what God has called Walnut Grove Baptist Church to do? We have no trust fund, no central denominational office, no sugar daddy, no source outside what you decide to support through your giving. If we don’t meet our financial goals, it’s because we decided not to meet them. Crassly put, if we don’t meet our financial goals, it’s because we decided to fund something else we care about more. Again, it’s about what we love.

This might sound a bit heavy handed, and uncharacteristically like me. I don’t like laying on a guilt trip. On the other hand, examining how we spend our money is the most honest measure of our character. “Where your treasure is,” Jesus said, “There your heart lies.” How you spend your money will either confirm what you say you love, or it will make you a liar. Few tools diagnose our spiritual maturity better than accounting for how we’ve spent our money.

Jesus doesn’t need you to give him anything any more than he needed for Mary to pour that perfume on his feet. But Mary needed to show her love for Jesus, and that perfume that sent a year’s wages into the nostrils of even the skeptics looking on wasn’t too much of a price tag compared to the love in her heart. You have that need, too. The church doesn’t need for you to give to the budget: you need to give to Jesus. When you love, nothing is extravagant. Indeed, sometimes beyond the practical, to the level of love, the rules change so much that you would risk everything – and it wouldn’t seem like much at all.

Back in 1977, my sister, Suzette, stood with her boyfriend, Hawthorne Granger, in the courtyard of Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg. Hawthorne seemed a bit more jumpy than normal and then he said to Suzette, “Suzette, I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you. To paraphrase a great man who stood on this spot once, give me your hand in marriage or give me death!” Suzette knew that Patrick Henry wasn’t at the Bruton Parish Church when he said that, but he’d attended that church a time or two, but given the situation and the fact that Hawthorne was holding out a diamond, she let that detail pass. She said, “Yes,” amid a torrent of tears and the proposal became part of the family lore. Tragically, Hawthorne contracted melanoma and died in 1990 after 13 years of marriage and the birth of their daughter Joy. Many times, Hawthorne, Suzette, and Joy had laughed about how Hawthorne had misused Patrick Henry’s famous phrase to express his love.

My niece is now 26 years old and lives in Denver, Colorado. This past week, her boyfriend, Andy, sprang a well-designed trap. He works for a government agency in Denver which has a branch in Northern Virginia not far from Leesburg where my niece grew up and where my sister still lives. Andy requested for the company to send him to do some temporary duty at the offices in Northern Virginia, ostensibly to get a feel for the area in which Joy was raised. Joy wasn’t too excited about this because Northern Virginia, in her mind, can’t hold a candle to the Denver area. Nevertheless, Andy insisted on coming for a week. Part of that arrangement was for Joy to come to Leesburg at the end of the week both to be with Andy and to pay a visit with my sister and my sister’s husband. Also part of the plan was for Joy to take Andy back to her alma mater, William and Mary. They had visited William and Mary some months ago, but Andy didn’t take a camera. Andy told Joy that he wanted to go back because he was so impressed and he wanted to get some photographs of the place where the nation was born. (Take that, Boston!)

It sounded a bit extravagant to Joy. Why go back to William and Mary? Why get photographs? She only had two days back east with her parents, so why waste the time apart visiting a college? But Andy insisted, so she agreed.

They tooled about the college for a while, Andy snapping pictures as Joy told him about certain buildings. Then Andy suggested that they take a walk down “Dog” Street (what the locals call Duke of Gloucester Street). He wanted to take another look at Colonial Williamsburg. As they neared Bruton Parish Church, Andy said, “Let’s go in here.”

“Okay,” said Joy, really feeling bored since she’d been in Bruton Parish hundreds of times, several times singing with an ensemble from the college and several times with the choir. They walked through the sanctuary then out into the courtyard. Andy pointed to a lamp post near a brick wall. “Let’s go over there.”

They went and stood there for a moment, then Andy said, “Joy, thirty years ago at this very spot a very great man said,” at which point Joy’s eyes flew open as she recognized the words. Tears welled up as Andy continued: “Give me your hand in marriage or give me death.” Andy then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, felt covered box, opened it to reveal the diamond ring and kneeling said, “Will you marry me?”

We celebrated last evening at Pasta Luna. There was lots of laughter and Joy’s step father paid the bill. “That’s a sizeable bill,” I commented to Ben.

“Given the occasion,” he responded, “it isn’t anything!”

True. Sometimes beyond the practical, to the level of love, the rules change so much that you would risk everything – and it wouldn’t seem like much at all.