Sermon: Fifth Sunday in Lent, John 12:1-8

April 6, 2025 
Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church
Pastor Jonathan Linman

People are fascinated by the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Wasn’t there once a TV show with that title? Each week, the Arizona Republic publishes details of the sales of upscale properties in Phoenix. I confess to sometimes reading these articles. The homes – estates, really – are quite often in Paradise Valley and sell for nothing less than 5 or 6 million dollars. They usually feature elevators, wine cellars for hundreds of bottles of wine, pickleball courts, and on and on. 

Personally, I find such displays of wealth obscene. Especially when wealth inequality has increased exponentially in recent decades, and the gap between the fabulously rich and everyone else has been growing wider and wider. Of course, this wealth inequality is wreaking havoc on our whole society and, in my mind, is largely responsible for the trouble we’re in right now as a nation, with billionaires calling more and more of the shots and ordinary people rightfully aggrieved for being left behind and out in the cold. 

Along with extreme wealth, of course, comes the markets for luxury items out of the reach of most people. I just saw an ad this week for $650 flipflops. That’s right, plain ol’, ordinary rubber flipflops for $650. 

The late 19th Century Norwegian American economist Thorstein Veblen had a word for buying flipflops for $650. “Conspicuous consumption.” You know the term? Veblen is the one who coined that expression during the last gilded age in 1899. “Conspicuous consumption” is when the rich acquire over-the-top luxury items – like private jets and yachts, estates and mansions, or crazy expensive shoes – to display their status. Now we have some billionaires seeking conspicuously to buy elections to advance not just their wealth but their power…. 

Well, we saw what at first glance appears to be an act of conspicuous consumption in today’s gospel reading. Mary in the story managed to acquire a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard to anoint Jesus’ feet in an act of over-the-top extravagance. 

A pound of perfume. That’s one heck of a lot of perfume. And you all know that a little bit of perfume goes a long way. Here’s another interesting fact: the three hundred denarii that was spent on that pound of perfume was about a full year’s wage for an ordinary laborer. Spending a full year’s wage just on perfume seems to be a huge waste and a great example of conspicuous consumption, right? 

In response to what seems to be such wasteful extravagance, we might be ready to take sides with Judas who complained that the money spent on the costly perfume should have been given to the poor. Except we know that Judas cared nothing for the poor. He wanted to steal the money for himself from Jesus’ and the disciples’ common purse.

But before we condemn Mary, we do well to look at ourselves in the mirror. We in the church have our own versions of apparent conspicuous consumption. Christians for centuries have built elaborate buildings. The Gothic Cathedrals of yesteryear were the skyscrapers of their day. 

And our forebears here at Faith Church gave lavishly to build this sanctuary and its expensive appointments. We have a wonderful pipe organ, sounds from which we’re hearing anew reflected in Paul’s talents on his first Sunday with us as our Music Director. All of this in some way on the face of it may seem like spiritual conspicuous consumption in keeping with Mary’s behavior in today’s gospel story. 

But here’s the thing: Jesus did not criticize or condemn Mary for her act of extravagance. In retort to Judas’ complaint about the lavish spending, Jesus shot back: “Leave her alone. She bought [the perfume] so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Jesus’ statement invites us to look more deeply at Mary’s extravagance in today’s gospel passage to discern the deeper meanings of what’s going on here. And of course, as usual, when it comes to Jesus, we cannot stay very long at the surface level appearance of things. 

The dinner at Lazarus’ house served by Martha was the town’s thank you to Jesus for having restored Lazarus to life after he had died. It’s a mere six days before the Passover which would become Jesus’ own Last Supper with his disciples. Jesus knew full well what was coming. In fact, there was a plot to kill Jesus because of his miracle in raising Lazarus. The authorities are almost waiting at the door to nab Jesus. And, of course, Judas would be the one soon to betray Jesus to the religious leaders for Jesus’ arrest. 

All of this is to say that this dinner at the home of Lazarus foreshadows the Last Supper. And Mary’s getting down on her hands and knees to anoint Jesus’ feet prefigures Jesus assuming the same posture to wash the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper as an expression of his servanthood love for them. 

In this way, Mary in the story represents Jesus. She gives everything she has to engage in an act of deep devotion and love for a friend. So, it’s not so much conspicuous consumption as an extravagant and conspicuous self-offering in love. And Mary’s action points to what Jesus is about to do – to give everything he had, his very life, offering even his last breath on the cross for his friends, who, by the way, include all of humanity without exception. 

Mary knew that everything – even a years’ worth of wages – was nothing compared to her beloved teacher, Jesus Christ. Mary would do anything for him, including giving away all that she had. She had the same perspective as the Apostle Paul as we heard in today’s second reading: “Whatever gains I had,” Paul writes, “these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ” (cf. Philippians 3:7-9).

What Mary does for Jesus points to his saving death on the cross where we gain everything in Christ once that death is overcome and vindicated in the resurrection. And what Jesus did for Lazarus in restoring his life points not only to Jesus’ own resurrection but to all of our resurrections, when the living Christ will pull us all out of the tomb just as he did for Lazarus. 

In Jesus’ death and resurrection, God is up to something new in keeping with and in fulfillment of the prophecy we heard in today’s reading from Isaiah: “I am about to do a new thing [says the Lord]; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert…. I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people.” (Isaiah 43:19-20) Friends, that water in the desert wilderness flows right here in our very own baptismal font.

Mary’s love, devotion and self-offering point with thanksgiving to God’s sacred new thing happening in Jesus’ death and resurrection to which our baptism joins us. And our dinner here at this table is a remembrance of Jesus’ dinner with his disciples, and also the dinner at the home of Lazarus where Mary’s extravagant devotion happened. At this table, we, like Lazarus, Martha, Mary and the townsfolk give thanks for the new life that Christ makes possible. And we eat and drink of that new life.

At our best, what we do here on Sundays in our expensively built, and expensive to maintain, building with its beautiful appointments is not conspicuous consumption so much as an expression of our conspicuous and extravagant devotion and self-offering to our Lord Jesus. 

Like Mary, we do here in this room our own forms of bathing Jesus’ feet with our love in word, song, and ritual – and on festive occasions we even fill this room with the smells of the perfume of incense. 

And at our best, our self-offering to Jesus here in Sunday worship leads to our self-offering to each other and to the world in our own forms of getting down on our hands and knees to literally and metaphorically wash each other’s feet and those of the poor. Thus, we fulfill Jesus’ command to love one another just as Jesus loves us. It’s the new commandment given to us on Maundy Thursday. 

Jesus said, “You always have the poor with you.” To me, what Jesus means here is that the poor are always the ones populating our mission field, and they are the first ones who should receive our lovingkindness in word and deed. 

At our best, we do what the ancient Deacon St. Lawrence did when the imperial prefect ordered him to give up to empire the treasures of the church. Fully expecting him to produce the gold and silver and other material luxury items belonging to the church, Lawrence instead presented to the imperial leader the poor, the sick, and marginalized, and speaking truth to power, Lawrence said, “Here are the true treasures of the church.”

May it be so among us. May our extravagant love for Jesus here in this luxurious place be in keeping with Mary’s conspicuous devotion to her teacher. And may our worshipful lavishness here in this beautiful place lead us lovingly to serve God’s beautiful people in whom we see the face of Christ, the least of these our brothers and sisters, the most humble and lowly of our sacred siblings. 

And may our witness in loving service be for the healing of those afflicted with the malady of conspicuous consumption of earthly riches to the exclusion of the sacred riches of heaven. Amen.