April 20 Homily

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:48:37 GMT

20 April 2008….John 12:1-18

How else could she thank him?

How else could she let him know that she understood?

How else could she love him?

With him she knew a silence, a peace, a wholeness she had never known before.

She had reasoned that it was necessary for Jesus to be physically in the presence of the person needing to be made whole. All that she had heard of his miracles seemed to indicate he had always been present. She knew that he could heal. It did not occur to her that he could revive the dead. After all, Jesus was in the same space-time continuum as she. She confronted him. “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” He had been dead now four days.

Then she watched him raise her brother from the dead.

A simple command…”Lazarus come forth.”

There had been no invocation of God. He had not said, “In the name of God, Lazarus come forth.”

A simple command, “Lazarus come forth.”

“And he who had died came out, bound hand and foot with grave clothes.”

Jesus said, “Loose him and let him go.”

Mary awakened to the divine authority before her. Truly Jesus was one with God. He was a universal power…The power of Christ was infinite. Not controlled by time and space. A power without limit, the sacredness of the Godhead.

She knew too that he was also human. Jesus had loved Lazarus, he had wept over his dead body. Reason merged with feeling. Mary was eminently sane.

And now Jesus was to die, and soon…a victim of his own power, of his own deity.

How could she thank him?

How could she love him?

How could she acknowledge that she knew…that she had awakened to his divinity?

She took a pound of very costly oil and anointed the feet of Jesus…then wiped his feet with her hair.

When chastised by Judas, Jesus defended Mary…”Leave her alone; she has kept this for the day of my burial.”

How else could she thank him?

How else could she love him?

How else could she say, Beloved, God?

But to give him in life, that which she had saved for his death.

Mary had awakened. She surrendered to this incredible knowing, to this epiphany, to this feeling of love, eternity, and eternal life.

Judas Iscariot asked, “Why was this fragrant oil not sold for three hundred denari and given to the poor?”

A reasonable question…and even a legitimate one, had Judas not been known for his greed…had not been in charge of the money box and was known to have helped himself to it. A reasonable question, had he really cared for the poor. Reason tainted with

greed…with the need to control. Reason, not used to enhance love, to at least get you to the doors of mystery…some entry to the Godhead. Not for Judas…reason used to placate fear…to cause dissension. Reason used to avoid the chaos of feeling…reason used as salve for the ego…to wash one’s own feet.

In today’s gospel we are introduced to the forever ancient conflict between reason and feeling. To have one without the other is insanity. To live in this perceptual world reason and feeling must be in balance. The pursuit of reason alone has led the human race into some of the most despicable political regimes man has created…Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin….the list is as long as history.

Reason does not, cannot control epiphanies…does not control joy…is not the igniter of love.

To live in the world of Christ, reason must finally lose its tenacious hold…it must be replaced by compassion, by love.

A week before the death of Christ…the two forces which seem to dominate our human existence appear together in an important event in which Jesus endorses the feeling side of our nature.

The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know.

bpjim

April 20 Homily