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In her book honoring the Body, Stephanie Pulsell draws attention to the glory found in caring for the mystery of the human body. She tells about her friend Kay who washed her mother while she was dying of

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non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. And as she gave her bath, she studied her mother's vulnerable body as if it was the most sacred of texts. What if these moments of intimacy, these moments of care are not so

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different from the encounter at Bethany, where Mary expresses her love for Jesus? Let us listen in for a moment on Kay's reflection about the bathing encounter. So this is from her journals. She insists on

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being clean and today Amy and I invite her to invited her to a bath if she was up to it in the late afternoon. The appointed time came . Mom worked and worked and finally sat up on

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the side of her bed, legs down, feet toward the floor. Then the vomiting began, violent vomiting, taking her last bit of strength. She told me to draw her bath, showing me with

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her hands how deep. I turned the bathroom heater on. I cleaned the hair out of the drain trap. I ran all the hot water at first to warm the tub, then moderated it, checking

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it with my wrist. She shuffled to the bathroom , sat down on a towel I had placed on the edge of the tub. We undressed her. She stood up, grabbed the grip bar that Dad

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had installed for her. I stood behind, straddling the tub, ready to catch her in case she fell. She told me I needed to trust her to know what she could do. And then that

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precious body that I have looked at and loved and memorized lowered into the water. She never opened her eyes, lay there still, silent. Then put her hand out and I placed a plastic cup in

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it as we had discussed I would. She slowly lifted a cup of water and poured it over her arms. Lying back down, she poured another cup over her throat and neck, sighing a tiny sound

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of pleasure. The water sounded like baptism, holy quiet, small splashes. In the passage for this morning, we encounter Mary touching Jesus's feet with her hair and wiping them with her tears and expensive perfume

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. It's a scene of uncontrollable love, and it occurs at the dinner given on behalf on Jesus's behalf in which he is seated next to Lazarus. In John's Gospel, the glory of God is revealed in

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the world, but it's rejected right away because it appears too plain or too simple. It's kind of hidden in plain sight. You have to be clued in in a special way. To see and understand

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grace in the world, it's hard to see it or interpret it correctly with the wrong lenses will look the other direction. In John's world, there's glory everywhere we simply need to make space. So the

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location of the story, it's 6 days before the Passover, and this places Christ as the spotted lamb and the location of Bethany seems significant because just a chapter earlier Jesus has raised his friend Lazarus and Lazarus

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seems to be on display. The text is at pains to show him eating and drinking. Which gives proof of the miracle that Jesus had performed. This is also the reason why the events seem so dangerous

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and fraught, a political scene. So how are we to see this central action? It was rare at the time for anyone to unbind their hair. I was wondering why the encounter happened at dinner.

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Was she doing some ritual action that was prescribed or doing something that completely didn't make any sense? And I was wondering why was she doing it? Did the response point backwards, a belated action of gratitude

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for her raising Lazarus or some other special reason, or did it point forwards? The preparation of Jesus's body for burial as he describes it, I also wondered, seemingly incidental or trivial questions, how did

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Lazarus feel watching this lavish act and how about Martha who had to serve the dinner and didn't get to ask questions? I wondered about your own special senses when you hear the story. Is there like some

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ick factor or shame that attaches to it? Or does it seem to you especially beautiful and meaningful? I was wondering, would Mary have any other setting in which she could have encountered Jesus and appreciated appreciated

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him in this openhearted way? Would she have another opportunity if she didn't take it right then at Bethany ? Jaime Clark Solace in her book Reading John for Dear Life describes how Mary's spontaneous act. Prepares the

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way for Jesus' own washing of the disciples' feet just shortly after in the in the passion week she notices that Mary's not a sinner or a prostitute in contrast to some of the other gospel stories that have this

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, and she's not recovering from some hidden shame. As some interpreters have said, instead she focuses on how Mary shows Jesus's hospitality, shows that Jesus hospitality in one of the most radical acts in the gospel

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in her words, we extend hospitality as a sign of the presence in our world of a risen Christ who longs to gather into one the dispersed people of God. So a deeply radical act belonging in the

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context of sharing hospitality at the dinner meal. In this context we have a major objection from Judas. Judas objects to Mary's action. The perfume alone seems to have been worth a year's wage, and we

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can't help but wondering if his critique is a sign of intimacy as well. By the way, I want to speak up for the people who pay attention to the money. I think that's an important job

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too. Um, do you know how often the people who are the most conflictual actually wanna be close and experience intimacy as well? Their harshly critical comments can be a form of longing in reverse, a

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negative through which you read the stifled self-proclaimed. Perhaps Judas wanted to touch Jesus himself, but he spoke for all the disciples perhaps as he raised his concerns , and his concerns seem warranted. Would you intervene

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if something similar happened in your ministry setting? Jesus responds in one of the most powerful phrases in the text that Judas should leave her alone and that her actions are a preparation for his burial. The Gospel

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of John, well known as one of the most anti-Semitic of the Gospels, uses the term Jews and has one of the harshest pictures of Judas. So if Judas as a character here seems overdrawn, this

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is part of the picture. So Jesus responds to Judas' critique with a gentle protectiveness of Mary and the theological reframing of what she's done. He interprets her act as pointing forward to his own death. How

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does it make sense to anoint someone ahead of time to anoint a living body. Here we're thinking forward of the framing of the action that Jesus gives it preparing for the burial and why the feet and not

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the head which would be typical in a practice of anointing. Well, maybe we could think it, you know, pastoral care professor that I am, maybe we could think of it psychologically as a form

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of anticipatory grief so anticipatory grief is that shock, numbness, fatigue, and despair that comes from preparing mentally for something that's going to be painful. But there's also some theological explanations we can think of some

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interpreters have suggested that anointing Jesus as a living body points ahead to the resurrection, and Jesus's permissive attitude shows that all things in the world are clean. Perhaps what we have nowadays is a chance to bless

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one another in episodes akin to Mary's care for Jesus , maybe just like Kay's mom did for her as she cared for her in the bath. In both in everyday life and in special circumstances as we approach

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death moments where our bodies change in profound ways perhaps it's through blessing and caring in the ordinary moments that we discover we have a chance to witness everyday moments of mercy. I just gave you all the title

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of the sermon by the way, that was just thrown in there. In his poem Michael's Dream from a collection of dream-based poems Atlantis, Mark Doty writes about caregiving for chronic grief during the AIDS crisis unimaginable

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, right? And he brings to life each person touched by death through the poem's naming, and the perfume of this poem lingers still. So I'm just gonna go ahead and read it all. Michael writes

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to tell me his dream. I was helping Randy out of bed, supporting him on one side with another friend on the other, and as we stood him up, he stepped out of the body I

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was holding and became a shining body, brilliant light held in the form I first knew him in. This is what I imagine will happen the spirit. Release Michael when we support our friends, one of

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us on either side, our arms under the man or woman's arms, what is it we're holding vessel , shadow, hurrying light all those years I made love to a man without thinking how little his body

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had to do with me. Now diminished, he's never been so plainly himself, remote and unguarded and otherness I can't know the first thing about. I said you need to drink more water or you're gonna

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turn into an old dry leaf, and he said , maybe I want to be an old leaf in the dream, Randy's leaping into the future and still here. Michael's holding him and releasing at once just

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as Steve's holding Jerry those he's already gone. Marie Marie holding John gone. Maggie holding her John gone . Carlos and Darren holding another Michael gone, and I'm holding Wally who's going? Where isn't the question

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though we think it is. We don't even know where the living are in this rattled and unraveling here . What is the body? Rain on a window , a clear movement over whose gaze, husk,

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leaf, little boat of paper and wood to mark the speed of the stream. Randy and Jerry, Michael and Wally and John. Lucky we don't have to know what something is in order to hold it

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. What strikes me today is the gentleness of the gospel story and of all these stories I've shared. What does it mean to take care of these precious bodies of our loved ones near or before death,

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to walk with them summoning care through the changes that happened to all of us. Perhaps Jesus's leave her alone was especially gentle because the hard scandal of the cross was near, or perhaps he just couldn't help

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himself as moved as he was by the event. In John's Gospel, Jesus encounters a variety of women , you might know this, from the one caught in adultery to the Samaritan woman to Mary's sister Martha

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in just the earlier chapter. In each instance, he tells them something significant that reorients their lives. But here Mary takes the initiative and does something that leaves Jesus, should we say flat footed and almost

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speechless for a time. Her actions remind me of the woman with bleeding who reaches out to touch Jesus , causing his power to be diminished. It's, it seems impulsive, out of control, overflowing like

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it would completely take your breath away. It seems there's something behind the act which could not have been stopped and which draws the urgency of the moment into high relief. It's the kind of act that sets

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everyone wondering what did Mary experience in Jesus that led her to such radical outpouring of love, such generosity that couldn't help expressing itself. The strong perfume of her act leaves its mark and the act is with

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us still. It kept making me wonder on a personal note, was there something Mary saw in Jesus that I missed? Did she find something gentle? Kind, extraordinary that remade her life in a way

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that was almost difficult to recover from and so Mary's feeling for Jesus in this radical act becomes an act that brings me to reflect on Jesus and my life anew. Sometimes when you feel disappointed, it's easy

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for your heart to get hard and to and for you to forget that this kind of extravagant love is possible, the Mary of Bethany kind of love. And that's, that's what Judas's complaint amounts to as

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well, not a literal accounting but rather a register on an emotional level of something unbelievable and difficult to understand. A kind of refusal. Love has entered the world full of glory, and when we compare

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ourselves to actual love, when we see it show up in our midst. It's like the heart wakes up with hope. What if it could be real ? What would happen to my heart if I allowed

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myself to feel this love again, to risk again ? Has there been something small about the way that I've been living? Can you think about a moment when extravagant love entered your life? When you saw

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a display of love that woke your heart up to both love and hurt in the world? Let us be on the lookout for this love. Mary, one of the pioneers of contemplative Christianity, an early

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disciple of the Lord, took a lavish act that could have been embarrassing. And in doing so she set the stage for the events of the passion and because of her doing this and because of Michael's dream

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and Kay's love for her mother and maybe because if I had time I would get into self love as one of these acts because I know that caregiving can get a little idealized it's really really difficult work.

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Um, so maybe caring for yourself with that same kind of Mary of Bethany love. Especially if you've been a caregiver, means that we can open again our hearts to the possibilities of love, that we've

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been living in too small a fashion and that hurt and grief can be transformed into God's kingdom. The spicy fragrance of the perfume that filled the house leaves its mark because the act is with us still.