April 6, 2025 • Lent V
The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity • Paris, France
Text: John 12:5: “Why was not this perfume sold for three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor?”
Unless you have intentionally been keeping yourself from the news, or hiding under rock, you probably know that this has been a banner week for economists. Just about every major media outlet has been on a hunt for some economist or other, and preferably a collection of them, to give their opinions about tariffs and the global economy and what is happening to the stock market. By now I think every economist on the planet has had at least their three-minute-sound-bite of fame on some media channel or other, giving their opinion on what it will all mean.
You might think that your bishop finds himself in a vocation somehow insulated from such things—but you’d be wrong about that. In just the same week that all this turbulence is happening, The Economist came out with an article under the title “Even Priests Need The Free Market: What Clergymen can Learn from Economists.” And from that title we can at least learn that The Economist has not yet caught up to the fact that the church ordains women.
In case you’re intersted, the article is a survey of recent research on the relationship between economics and church growth, and what it basically argues is that if you want to grow the church you need to try new things on the inside, and that the single best way to encourage innovation in the church is to give churches tax breaks. Which may explain a lot about the challenges churches face in Europe.
We are living in days of heightened awareness about matters of money. High politics is having a pretty immediate effect on low finance. It’s not just the headlines that are disturbing, it’s the impact of the headlines on our bottom lines that has us anxious.
And that is no less true of the church. We are having to ask hard questions about the way we use the resources you entrust to us. We get no help from any government; we depend on your contributions, and the generous support of our friends abroad, and the gifts given by those who sat in these pews years before we did and contributed toward building up the endowment that earns income for us. And we know that all of that is sensitive to what is going on in the world.
So we are looking hard again at what we do with what we have. And in a moment when it feels everything around us is changing at an increasing rate of speed, we are more than willing to question not just the wisdom but the morality of things we disagree with.
To say it differently, we theologize material things, things with price tags, in an effort to hold back the forces of change. We don’t want to argue budget lines against budget lines; we want the high, hard ground of righteousness.
Judas Iscariot is something of a poster child for that human tendency of ours. He is in the midst of change he cannot understand and will not accept. The people around Jesus are under an intense amount of pressure. Remember, this strange little story about Mary anointing Jesus’ feet isn’t just dropped down in John’s gospel at random. It’s a story within a much larger and hugely significant arc in the drama.
In the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is often anxious that his followers not put it around that he is the messiah. Indeed in Mark’s gospel the scholars identify this as a key theme—the “messianic secret” that Jesus asks his disciples to keep.
The Jesus of John’s gospel could not be more different. From the very earliest moments the Gospel of John, Jesus is very clear about who he is. In fact the tension in John’s gospel builds and builds with each next one of those statements.
He tells them “I am the bread of life,” and sets off a huge controversy among his followers about just who it is he claims to be. He tells them “I am the light of the world,” “I am the gate for the sheep,” “I am the good shepherd.” Each one of those statements comes in the wake of something Jesus has taught, or done, that stirs up anxiety and tension among the people around him; it makes some come running, and others walk away.
One of those statements has come just before the story you heard this morning. And it is the one that will push the whole story toward Jerusalem, and toward the crisis of the challenge to the authorities that Jesus is. Because right before this story, this domestic idyll in a little house in Bethany, Jesus had raised a man from the dead–a man who is now sitting right there having supper with him.
As he walked toward that tomb, Jesus had said these words to Lazarus’s grieving sisters: “I am the resurrection and the life.” And then he had shown them and the whole crowd exactly what that meant. Lazarus walks out of the tomb. And the news goes through that village like lightning.
The controversy about who Jesus is has reached a fever pitch. We could just as well say, the controversy about the Way of Love has reached a fever pitch.
Judas has been along all this time, hearing Jesus say more and more things, and watching more and more and more people come to him.
Maybe Jesus is turning out not to be the leader he hoped for. Maybe he was looking for a different movement. All we know is, at just this pinnace moment for the victory of Love over death, just at the moment you’d think the whole group would be struck with awe, Judas turns sour.
There’s a delicious detail in the story that John tells, an unusual line that seems to be the thing that sets Judas off. Did you catch it? “The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” This was no mere dabbing behind the ears. This was no spritz of cologne. We’re meant to understand that this was a profligate use of an expensive luxury. And finally Judas lashes out. I thought we were supposed to be about helping the needy. I thought we were supposed to be about feeding the hungry. Why didn’t we sell this expensive luxury and give it the money to the people we claim to be helping?
It’s a fair question, don’t you think? We’ve asked the same question of ourselves here, from time to time, all throughout our history. The only problem is, it’s the wrong question.
It’s not the wrong question because Judas has shown himself to be the economist in the story. It’s not the wrong question because Judas is showing himself here to be the sort of man Oscar Wilde described when he defined a cynic as a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
It’s the wrong question because Judas isn’t actually interested in the answer. And if we are honest with ourselves, when we ask questions like this we aren’t, either.
What Judas really wants to know is, can’t we stop all this change that is happening around us? Can’t we settle down this fervor around Jesus? Can’t we cool it on all the love talk? More specifically, are we really supposed to give our worship and our loyalty to this one person among us, and all that he represents? Are we really supposed to be so devoted to this person that we sacrifice so much for him?
For Mary, the answer is obvious and compelling. Any doubts she had about whether the love Jesus has shown in the world was worth her love in return have been utterly extinguished by one overwhelming fact: her beloved brother had been dead, and is alive again. Something about Jesus is completely transparent to God’s purposes, somehow the closer you get to Jesus the more you are caught up in God’s hopes for how we will live; and the value of that is surpassing to her.
This drama about the right use of resources comes between two resurrections; of Lazarus, and of Jesus. We are meant to understand that they are brought about by the same hope, the same force, the same extravagant love God has for us. God does not economize on love; it is the highest value in kingdom Christ comes to build. Christ does not economize on the work of redemption and reconciliation; nothing is held back, and no one is counted unworthy.
It is the extravagance of Christ’s love that brings that man back to life, because Jesus loves as God loves; and for Mary the only possible response, the only right response, is extravagant giving in return. Judas imagines that he has received nothing from Jesus except a dusty journey; Mary knows she has received everything from Jesus. And so she gives in the same way.
And what about us? What about our cathedral parish? I don’t mean to leave you with a counsel of profligacy. Of course we have to be responsible stewards of what we have been given. But don’t forget that the lesson of the story is not about the perfume, it’s about the difference that gets made in our lives by the extent to which we’re willing to see, really see, all that God has done for us. When we are willing to see that, as Mary was, our response will be as Mary’s was, too. Amen.