Swimming Lessons... (My last sermon in a Presbyterian Church??)

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Luke 6:1-11

One sabbath while Jesus was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked some heads of grain, rubbed them in their hands, and ate them.But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” Jesus answered, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.” On another sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him. Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” He got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” After looking around at all of them, he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.

  I have seen my fair share of shrinks in my lifetime.  Years of shrinks.  And they have all been very helpful.  There’s a Dar Williams song that hits it just about right.  She says, “And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think - that it only makes you selfish, and in love with your shrink, but oh how I loved everybody else, when I finally got to talk so much about myself.“  They’ve all been nice women with kind eyes and have mastered the “understanding” smile and nod.  They’ve given me a safe place to be myself, to sit in an overstuffed chair, sip some chamomile tea, and tell the stories of my life, while they sit attentively in their straight-backed chair, steno pad and ball point pen in hand, probably scribbling their grocery list or their pro/con list for vacationing in Vale versus St. Pete’s this year.  But she looks like she’s listening, and that’s all that I need.  Psychologists rarely say much.  But I’ll never forget one particular piece of advice from a woman named Celaine.  She wore organic cotton, had greying cropped hair, and fixed me the most amazing mango tea every time I came to her home for a session. 

On one particularly frazzled, particularly self-deprecating day, I rushed into her office, late for my appointment. I was apologizing up and down.  Apologizing for being late, apologizing for not calling, apologizing for my B- in handwriting that I got in fifth grade, apologizing that I’d once broken all of my sister’s crayons into tiny little pieces, apologizing for my tendency to roll through stop signs and go five miles over the speed limit...  Mid confessions, right when I was about to say that sometimes I pee in the shower, she interrupted me. She said, “It’s alright.  You can never be late for swimming lessons.”  

And I thought to myself, “I’m paying you, you rarely say anything, even when I’m practically begging you for advice, just a nugget of your calming, centered wisdom, and when I finally get it, all I get is ‘You can never be late for swimming lessons?’”  What does that even mean?

And yet, here I am, standing before you all, after I’ve done hours of exegetical work on this passage.  After I’ve parsed the Greek verbs. After I’ve done historical, critical and textual analyses, after I’ve checked dozens of commentaries and prayed and made theological and cultural connections.  This is all I’ve got for ya.  “You can never be late for swimming lessons.”

See, Jesus is constantly surrounded by people who are “late for swimming lessons.”  Whether they’re his friends, or people who want to stone him, or people are just completely perplexed by him, they’re all theologically, morally, or emotionally, or physically a mess.  They’re running down the side of the pool in their swimming trunks and goggles and floaties, slipping on the wet tile, late for swimming lessons.  They’re out of breath.  They’re flushed and worried.  They’re counting how many kids are already in the pool practicing their scissor kicks and blowing bubbles.  They’re blaming their soccer moms for stopping for that latte or blaming the cartoon channel for showing too many commercials before the end of their favorite show.

Just hang in here with me for a minute.

We’ve got these two stories in our reading today.  Both are about the sabbath - that time each week that both Christians and Jews are supposed to step away from the craziness of our lives and do...what?  Or not do...what?  In our first story, the Pharisees have, for some reason, traipsed through muddy fields on the outskirts of town just to catch the disciples in the act of disobeying the Law on the sabbath.  And what do they find, but a bunch of muddy hoodlums so hungry that they’re plucking the grains off the wheat stalks and chewing them raw, unprocessed, unmilled.  So they’re standing there, caught in the act, cheeks full as chipmunks with a kind of flavorless paste.  And the Pharisees call them out on it.  It is not lawful to harvest grain on the Sabbath.  They have been caught breaking the fifth commandment: You shall keep the sabbath holy. They are in big trouble now...

Or are they?  Jesus jumps in to defend them.  He says, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”  In other words, you can never be late for swimming lessons. 

The Pharisees leave, along with their muddy robes and righteous indignation, only to try to catch Jesus again, and this time, in public. On another sabbath, Jesus enters the synagogue, and starts teaching, and this time, there is a man there with a withered hand. It seems clear that the Pharisees and scribes are just using him as a pawn with which to trap Jesus.  No matter the case, they’re definitely looking to catch Jesus, in the act, in public, doing something that no good Jew would do - disobey one of the sabbath laws.  

And what’s crazy, is that they don’t really care whether or not this guy gets healed; they just want something with which to accuse Jesus.  They want Jesus in trouble.  Who cares about this poor guy with only one working hand?  These guys are so, so late for swimming lessons...

And this poor man with the withered hand gets called out and pulled into the mess.  Jesus tells him to “come and stand here.”  He is getting dragged into this court scene whether he wants to be or not.  So the man gets up, and stands there.  And then he waits, looking awkward, probably ashamed that everyone is staring at his hand, while Jesus questions the Pharisees and the scribes.  The tables have turned.  Instead of Jesus being on the defense in a court of law, he becomes the lawyer for the prosecution, putting his own accusers on trial.  “Is it better to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life, or destroy it?”  He is asking: Is it better to be “right,” to believe all the right things and do the right rituals and expect the right liturgy, or is it better to come with your withered hand, and stand in front of everyone, just as you are?  Is it better to come to the sabbath hungry, with mud still caked on your shoes from the fields, or to wear your Sunday best suit and tie in order to hide your judging and accusing, and frankly, insecure, heart?  Is it better to slip and fall and crack your head open on the poolside tile, rushing to get to swimming lessons, flustered and frustrated and overwhelmed, or is it better to be a little bit late?  

Getting no answer from his rhetorical question, Jesus tells the man to stretch out his hand.  And when he does, it is healed.

Jesus has taken one of the three pillars of Jewish identity - keeping the Sabbath holy - and redefined it, turned it on its head.  The Pharisees and scribes are terrified because he is pulling everything they pride themselves in - out from under him.  They are terrified because they might be wrong.  Jesus is radically is adjusting what it means to be a child of God.  

Jesus Christ is lord of the Sabbath.  And in these two stories, he bids us to eat.  He tells us to rise, to stand.  He tells us to stretch out our withered hands.  To be a child of God, to fully embrace the Sabbath, Jesus tells us to eat, to rise, to stretch out. As children of God, we are eaters.  We are risers.  We are ones who stretch out.  And that means that we enter the sabbath hungry.  We come a little bit low.  We come a little bit withered.  

On the Sabbath, we aren’t supposed to have it all together.  We’re supposed to come together as the messes that we are.  We are to come hungry.  We are to come with muddy feet and wrinkled hearts.  We are to bring our withered hands and our withered souls. And then we’re supposed to eat.  We’re supposed to stand and stretch out and be healed.  The Sabbath is not a day when we show each other how much we have figured out.  The Sabbath is when we come, stripped of our robes and full of our doubts. We come, rejecting our week’s achievements and awards and raises and accomplishments.  We come holding our failures and our weaknesses loosely, as an offering to God.  The sabbath is when we come a little bit late for swimming lessons.

It’s when we take a step forward, amidst all the angry crowds and the scholars and the preachers and the people who have all the answers and seem to have it all together, and we proclaim that we don’t.  We step forward with our cheeks full of unmilled grain, waving our withered hands in the air to say, Jesus is lord of the sabbath, so I don’t have to be.  We can never be late for swimming lessons.  

The lessons will start when we are ready.  Ready to say we don’t know how to swim.  Ready to say that we need someone to teach us.  Ready when we strip ourselves of our pretensions, our expectations, our judgments.  Ready to jump in to that pool of grace, just as we are.

Thanks be to God.

Prophetic Mary Currency

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John 12:1-8
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ²There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. ³Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. ⁴But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ⁵“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” ⁶(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) ⁷Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. ⁸You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, on average, Americans spend $8,003 per year on their cars - buying them, maintaining them, filling them with gas.  According to the American Research Group, Americans spend, again on average, somewhere between $800-900 on Christmas presents each year. Weddings, on the other hand, average around $27,021, according to Reuters. And according to the CNN money calculator, I’m going to need 2.7 million dollars in order to retire at the age of 70.  When my son is old enough to go to college, somehow Dan and I are going to have to find a way to cough up about $240,000 - that is, if he’s ok with going to a public/state funded school and graduating in 4 years.  And just to raise our two kids, not including college, it’s going to cost us about $400,000 (babycenter.com). And that’s just until they turn 18.  

How’s that for quantifying your life? For making it all about finances and figures and economic exchanges? How often does our stress and emotional and even our theological energy concerning our lives involve these financial calculations?  It’s as if we weren’t people, but rather dollar signs walking around, some of us “worth” more than others.

In the Gospel of John, we have some numbers to crunch as well.

In Cana, Jesus makes approximately 180 gallons of wine - way more than could ever be consumed by the wedding party in one night - even if it was Saint Patrick’s Day and they were partying on the South Side.

In Galilee, more than 5000 people are fed.  And there are 12 overflowing baskets of bread and fish left over.

After a night of catching nothing, Peter encounters the risen Christ and collects 153 fish in his nets.

Wine, bread, fish - this is what Jesus “spends” his capital on.

And here, in our passage today, we have a bottle of perfume “wasted” on a pair of tired, swollen, callused, grimy feet - perfume worth 300 denarri - about a year’s worth of wages.

Can you picture the mess of it?  The oil dripping from his feet onto the floor, The eye-opening, overwhelming smell of musk and earth and leather filling the house.  The sensual, almost sexual, symbolism of Mary’s long black hair wiping his feet clean.  This is almost too intimate to watch. Like we are interrupting a tender moment between lovers.  

This is strange currency indeed.

John’s Gospel presents us with a new currency.  Not one of practicality and dividends and sequesters and trade deficits, but a currency of extreme extravagance.  The Gospel of John shows us a budget in the red - of overindulgence - of waves and waves of “too much” - culminating in Jesus’ very life itself.

But in all of these examples of extreme extravagance, in all this fish and bread and wine and grace, there is only one time where the expenditures go in the opposite direction.  It is in this simple and yet scandalous act of Mary that we see an example of extravagance not going from God to us, but from one of us back to God. 

This time, Mary gives “too much.” Here, Mary is the one to respond with an outrageous love that is irrational, irresponsible, radical.  

Mary has poured what is likely her entire inheritance upon the feet of Jesus. She’s blown her endowment. She’s burned up her retirement.

Not only that, but she has poured her entire identity over him - an identity not of a Jewish woman with some element of social status, but as a servant, humbling herself to do what only servants would do - wipe the feet of the guests who come into the home.  

And she has poured her whole body upon him, kneeling before him, using her hair - said to be “a woman’s glory” - to wipe his feet. She has poured her reputation out in front of all of the guests watching her as she performs this physically and emotionally intimate, scandalous, vulnerable act for all to see.

Mary has rejected a calculus of reasonable currency, and has embraced the currency of God - the currency of ridiculous abandon, of illogical trust, the currency of a bottle of perfume poured upon tired, dirt-crusted, callused feet.

And Judas immediately jumps in to criticize, saying what I have often said in judgement about how others - individuals and organizations - use their money.  

I criticize them for poor choices - why invest in those homeless drunks who are going to spend their money on booze and gambling?  Why do they feed this jerk who left his last temporary housing situation because there were too many “blacks” living there?  Why do they give this woman yet another chance after she has returned to the halfway house past curfew and reeking of pot smoke?  Why expand food stamps and cash assistance to those who keep having babies for the sole reason of getting even more assistance? Whose idea was it to offer parenting classes to the parents who have a history of abusing their children? Why “waste” this money on perfume, or a family vacation, or the Deacons Dinner, when we could have given it to the poor?

We think in the currency of the kingdom of “us”.

But Jesus, thinking in the currency of the Kingdom of God, responds to Judas, saying, “leave her alone. It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial.”

“Leave her alone. It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial.”

A bunch of things are going on here in this simple statement.  

According to Jesus, Mary hasn’t squandered her perfume; she has saved it, for this exact moment.  

She is offering her whole self to Jesus.

And this offering is in preparation for Jesus’ burial.

But what gives?  Jesus isn’t dead yet.  How is this in preparation for his burial if he’s not dead?  Why rush to the sad ending?

I think that this is a prophetic offering.  She knows, at some level, what will happen to Jesus.  And strangely, she knows that this death is worth an entire bottle of pure nard, her entire inheritance, her entire self. Somehow she trusts that this ending that is the worst of all endings is worth it. She is prophesying.

So often, we think in “Judas currency.” We think of what is practical, what is logical, what makes sense to us in or particular situation, and what seems like the “safe” choice. We do this with our money, yes, but we also do this with our emotional, personal and relational investments.  

It is easier to write a check to the food bank than it is to volunteer a few hours on a Saturday and actually look someone in the eye as you offer them a box of food.

It is simpler to stay behind the counter and poor soup into bowls at the soup kitchen than to go out to the people, to talk to them, to risk the awkward silence, the misunderstood gesture, the “offensive” odor of their clothes or breath.

It’s easier to collect socks and blankets and drop them off at the shelters than it is to brave the cold to bring lunches and conversation to the people living under the Birmingham Bridge.

It’s simpler to maintain your close relationships with a few friends, never reaching out to someone who may have a different perspective on life than you.

And this is not to say that writing check and serving food and collecting socks and maintaining friendships aren’t important - all of that is.

But I think we are being called to think in “Mary currency.” To think in “prophetic currency.” 

What would a “prophetic ministry” that uses “Mary currency” look like?

Mary currency is a currency of vulnerability and heart.  It’s a terrifying currency. An extravagant currency.  A currency with unpredictable outcomes. A prophetic currency that involves our entire selves.  A currency that puts its trust in things that don’t make sense - that puts its trust in the soon-to-be dead feet of a Jewish peasant who proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God. 

Isn’t this the kind of currency we think in when we decide to get married, or have children, or quit our jobs to go back to school for a more fulfilling career? This currency involves terrifying risk, terrifying trust. Imagine if I gave up on life, or if I didn’t have my child because it “costs too much.” Life, real life, always costs too much.

But we do these things because they are an offering of who we are. We do them because we know it’s worth the risk, even if it fails.  We do them because it is a true expression of who God made us to be.  It’s an offering of our whole selves, our whole lives, and an offering that commits itself to the hope that no matter what death may come from it, new life will spring out of it.

Isn’t this the kind of currency we think in when we choose to live a life of faith - a faith in a God we can’t seem to see or touch or directly experience in an absolute way? 

It’s the kind of currency that says it’s not about “fixing” the poor or solving a problem, or squirreling money away in a rainy day fund, but a currency that gives its whole self to the one who served, identified with, and ultimately gave his life to the poor. It is prophetic currency that trusts in a Jewish peasant with a questionable background whose death would somehow, strangely, paradoxically, give us new life.  This is a currency that fills the entire room with the beauty of its fragrance.  It’s a currency that is potent and intoxicating and a little bit scandalous.

For this prophetic, Mary currency and the courage to use it, we say, 

Thanks be to God.