Matthew 26:1-16

It was two days before Passover when Jesus became explicit with his followers. He had just finished a lecture to the crowd, the kind of talk a person gives when he knows there may not be any other opportunities, a talk full of last-minute reminders such as a person might give to the babysitter on the way out the door, the sort of instructions that mean the difference between eternal life and unremitting death.

There was urgency in his voice and in his message as he told the stories of the good and faithful servant, of the separating of the sheep and the goats. He hurried to be as clear as possible in his storytelling way.

And then it was time for dinner, time to collapse at the end of the day, to leave the crowds behind and gather with his friends around the table. This Jesus who so treasured his time away came to the end of his ministry surrounded by inescapable crowds, teaching non-stop with no time to simply retreat.

They must have had more questions for him. The disciples always did. Teacher, we didn’t quite get that story’s meaning? Who exactly are the sheep? It’s us, right?

While they continued to thrive on the excitement and danger of the day, a woman came to the table, a woman whose name we do not know according to Matthew’s gospel. She came to the table with a jar of perfumed oil, and she poured it on his head. It was the sort of perfumed oil handed down from mother to daughter over many generations, a family heirloom, and the only way to open the jar was to break it.

She poured out the whole jar, since there was no way to put a stopper in it or save it to use another day. She poured out the whole jar, because she somehow knew that Jesus needed it.

At that next-to-last supper, the room filled with the fragrance of the perfumed oil, intoxicating, overwhelming, lavish and unrepentant. You could not put it back in the jar, this display of love.

Jesus tells the disciples that she has done him a good service. She has prepared his body for burial, he tells them, and we don’t hear that they say anything else to him. How could they? They needed to pause and take in what he had said, to try and understand what he meant. They still did not understand.

And do we? It can be hard to hold onto the whole story. There are too many parts that makes us cringe and want to turn away. Judas would turn to earthly powers. Peter would draw a sword and later deny even knowing Jesus.
We don’t know this woman’s name. We don’t know if she followed the group with Jesus into Jerusalem, or if she stood at the cross. We only know she gave her all in that act of care and honor and devotion to the one who devoted himself to all of us.

"Wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world," said Jesus, "what she has done will be told in remembrance of her."

We all know people, women and men, who pour themselves out for others in the name of Christ. Most of them would rather we didn’t acknowledge or remember them. So it is perhaps not surprising that her story is hidden away in Holy Week, never to be heard on a Sunday except in its more embroidered version, where the house belongs to Lazarus and the perfume belongs to Mary and is poured onto Jesus’ feet.

A woman who we do not know, a woman without a name, stood behind Jesus and broke a jar and poured out the riches of her life on his head. She anointed him as king and prepared him for burial in the same act. She showed the love that others feared to show, at that next-to-last supper.

Dear friends,

Here is what I’m up to today:

• Writing tonight’s meditation which I hope to post later
• Performing my Admin’s tasks (including finishing Maundy Thursday bulletins and answering a million phone calls) because her son went to school this morning then promptly threw up
• Rejoicing that his father can take care of him tomorrow when there are two more sets of bulletins to run
• Talking with the organist
• Dreaming of the famous cake Easter eggs from my childhood
• Finalizing plans for Good Friday service
• Finalizing Good Friday and Easter bulletins
• Calling the spa where I have a massage scheduled Monday and turning it into a "Half Day of Self Care," including mani-pedi, massage and facial
• Continuing to say good-bye to people
• And, last but not least, wondering why an active church member who mistakenly schedules a Tupperware party for Maundy Thursday doesn’t re-schedule it or let invited church members off the hook?

Not sure why I’m bothering,
Songbird

Not ashes, but rain, and soon sleet and then snow await me today.

This makes it the second year in a row that I have not led an Ash Wednesday service. It feels like a huge gap, which is strange considering that I rarely even attended a service before I became a pastor. I suppose it became my touchstone for entering Lent in a deeper way than I had realized.

The liturgy I prepared for this evening focused on entering a time of journeying with a very human Jesus. As Congregational UCC people, or for me as a former Southern Baptist, the rituals of Lent feel a little foreign. But the idea of making a conscious effort in a certain direction is very, very familiar. Noting its beginning, marking ourselves with the ashes of last year’s palms, can remind us that the cycle of journeying goes on throughout our lives.

Or in T.S. Eliot’s words, which like Lent come back to me again and again:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

My travels on this rainy Ash Wednesday morning took me to the gym for my third and final orientation session. At three appointed hours over the past five days, I have arrived to be led through the use of the weights and received consultations about cardio machines and been instructed in the Zen of the stretching routine we are to do at the beginning and end of each workout. I am an especially good girl under these kind of one-on-one circumstances, the best and most agreeable pupil any trainer could hope to meet. I arrive on time, I do as I am told, and I strive to succeed at extending my arms properly or flexing my toes correctly. (No, really. There is this thing called a Toe Press. Who knew?)

After today, there are no appointments to bring me to the gym. I may go whenever I like, which means I have to make an appointment with myself, rather than with Niffy or John or Patty.

It will be harder.

And that’s Lent. We may go to church on Ash Wednesday and feel reverent or penitential or (I admit it) slightly pleased with ourselves as we receive the mark of the ashes, the sign of our essential dustiness, the reminder of the courage and, yes, passion of Jesus for being one of us and taking every step of his journey into and through the human condition. We may feel the emotion on this day, a day when we have made an appointment to face ourselves.

But tomorrow there will be no special service, no appointment to explore the idea one more time.

The shape of our Lenten discipline, at least for Protestants of my general variety, is entirely up to the individual. You may have a Lenten lunch or study to attend, but going is a choice.

Once you choose, though, the good news is you’re not alone. If I cannot remember how high I’m supposed to lift the overhead whatchamacallit, there will always be a staff member around to answer my question. I just have to ask.

And if we want to walk the Lenten road, we do not have to walk it alone. We can walk it together: in our worship, in our reading, in our prayers. We can walk it with Jesus, hearing the old stories, of desert and temptation, of a woman at a well, of weeping over a friend and making a blind man see.

On this Sleet and Freezing Rain Possibly Followed by Snow Wednesday, I will not mark the foreheads of the gathered body, but I will mark the day and commit to the road ahead. I will listen for my own old stories and live my new ones. I will press my toes and raise my arms and bow my head and listen for the One who walks beside me.

(This was a children’s story for Christmas Eve that I wrote in 2004. I told it in a gorgeous twig manger, constructed by a couple
at Small Church. We used it for the pageant and could not bear to take
it down, so I designed the Christmas Eve service to make the most of
it. The children came and sat with me in the empty manger, on the big
pieces of star-patterned red velvet we had used as capes for the wise
men. It is a total conflation of the gospels, so a warning to all you purists, as if I had written it based on Christmas pageants of my childhood! If you want to borrow it, send me an e-mail.)

It was late at night, and it was dark as could be in little Bethlehem.  They didn’t have any street lights, and there were no cars, with their headlights, to show the way. 

The only light came from the moon and the stars.

On that night long ago, there was a very special star shining.  It came to shine its light on a little stable.  Inside the stable there was a cow, eating straw from the manger.  In a coop there were chickens, clucking and searching for the last bits of feed on the dirt floor.  Up above in the rafters lived a pair of doves, billing and cooing in their cozy nest.  It was cold outside, but inside among the animals it was comfortably warm.

They were just getting sleepy when their master came to the door.  Behind him were a man and a woman and a little donkey.  “Do you think you can make her comfortable here?” he asked the man.

Soon the man and the woman settled on a bed of clean straw, and the little donkey ate some hay.

Then amazing things began to happen.

The woman gave birth to a little baby, and the star shone brighter.

The man wrapped the little baby in a blanket and gave him back to his mother, and the star shone brighter.

The chickens stopped their gathering and settled on their nests.  The cow lowed peacefully, and her warm breath brought more heat to the midnight stable.  The doves cooed a lullaby for the new baby.

And the star shone brighter.

The little donkey curled up close to the manger, where the mother laid her baby, and his body gave warmth, too.

And the star shone brighter.

They all heard a sound of people approaching and looked to the door to see a group of shepherds, grown men and young boys, crowding around, some carrying lambs.

“We came to see the one who will save us, the baby born tonight.  We came because the star is shining here!” they said.

And the star shone brighter.

The shepherds knelt down to gaze at the baby, and the young lambs toddled to the manger.  An old shepherd with a rough, lined face smiled at the same time tears rolled down his cheeks.

And the star shone brighter.

Later three tall men in beautiful robes came to see the baby.  They had traveled a long way, riding on their camels.  “We come to seek the newborn King,” they said, “and we have followed his star to this place.”  They knelt before the manger, and gave the little baby precious gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

And the star shone brighter.

The animals wondered why all the people came.  They wondered why all the people were talking about a king.  All they could see was a little baby.

The baby was Jesus, and he was God’s son.  He didn’t come flying down to Earth like a superhero.  He came just the way we all do—as a little baby.  He was God’s child, and so are you, and you, and you, and so am I.  He came to be born in a humble stable, a place that wasn’t fancy or important—a place where the animals lived.

The shepherds who came to see him were poor and rough, and the Wise Ones were rich and fancy.  It didn’t matter that the people gathered at the manger were different.  All that mattered was that they knew Jesus was special.

Tonight we gather at the manger for the same reason: we know that Jesus is special, and we know that it doesn’t matter to Jesus how different we are.  He loves us all: rich or poor, tall or short, dark skinned or fair skinned, old or young, happy or sad.  Whoever you are, wherever you live, you are one of God’s people.  And when we say that Jesus came to save us, we are saying that he came to show us how much we are loved by God.  Everyone, everywhere, is invited to gather at the manger. 

And when we do, the star shines brighter.

I don’t know if it’s my age, or the age of my children, but I can’t muster much enthusiasm for the gift-giving side of Christmas this year. No one in this house suffers from a lack of necessities or even small luxuries. Sure, a new sweater might be nice, and I have a book in mind for each one, as I always do. Usually when the children ask, I can give them a short list of things I might like to have myself. I have loved to open little presents in my stocking, and I’ve been known to say it’s not what they give me but the idea they are thinking of me that really matters.

But this year is different, and for the past few weeks, I’ve had a sense there is something else I want this Christmas, though I could not have told you what it might be.

It’s possible I feel differently because I *am* different this year. My head is clearer. I have a better since of who I am then I ever have before. When I find myself in a situation where my buttons are in danger of being pushed, I’m learning how to take a breath and wait to see how things turn out instead of arriving at the conclusion far ahead of the reality.

"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn’t come from a store."

I knew that already, of course, in my sane mind, but some part of me still craved the excitement of giving and receiving gifts that were just right.

This year, I wanted something else. But what?

It’s an emotional season, and I never know just what will strike me.

In the car the other day, I listened to the King’s College recording, "Noel: Christmas at King’s," which is odd and gorgeous and as over-sized as the delay between the organ and the choir as the notes of "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" roll out of pipes and throats. 

It almost amused me, until it caused me to gasp.

I was in the parking lot of the grocery store when I heard the words that spun my head, and there could be no more ordinary, human place, a store near both the poor and the not-so-poor of City By the Sea, a place where some of the more diverse elements of our modestly diverse small city shop together for their everyday needs.

And in that ordinary place, I listened as if for the first time to these extraordinary words:

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see:
hail, the incarnate Deity,

Those are the fancy-pants words, the ones that always leave me wondering what the people in the pews on Christmas Eve think they are singing about, if they even pay attention. But wait for it, here comes the part that stunned me.

pleased as man with man to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.

And for the first time in years, I didn’t get hung up on the exclusively male language for humankind, because I heard the word "pleased" instead.

God was "pleased" to live among us in Jesus.

I can hardly take it in, but I do believe it was exactly what I wanted, and needed, for Christmas.