The Anointing at Bethany

Text:  Mark 14:3-9

And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head.  There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that?  For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her.  But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.  For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.  She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial.  And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

The Anointing at Bethany

            This may sound strange, but I believe Jesus was a socialite.  Do you remember the stories of Jesus attending weddings, dining with the wild guys, or fishing with his friends?  Certainly Jesus took time to pray and go to church - things we expect to find Jesus doing, but I think Jesus also liked to socialize.  We might be more comfortable with the term “fellowship”, but it’s the same thing really.

            In this morning’s passage from the book of Mark, we find Jesus at one of these social gatherings.  He is in the home of a friend in a place called Bethany.  We see him there, reclining at the table, perhaps enjoying a meal or engaging in conversation with those around him.  It is nothing out of the ordinary, simply Jesus socializing with his friends.  But in the midst of this social gathering, a woman comes and does something very strange.  She takes a flask of very expensive ointment, breaks the flask, and dumps it on Jesus’ head!  You see the ointment rolling down Jesus’ hair, covering his face, and spilling out onto his clothes. 

            Now I have never had something like this happen to me, but I can’t imagine I would be too enthused.  “What was that for”, I might ask.  “I hope you plan on paying for my dry cleaning!”  I don’t think this gesture would have set very well with me at all.  I don’t think I could possibly understand why anyone in his or her right mind would do such a thing.

            And I would not be alone.  Those gathered there with Jesus voice their objections.  They are not so much concerned with Jesus’ attire as I might have been, but they are nonetheless at a loss as to why just a gesture was necessary.  “What are you doing?  That ointment cost a fortune!  Aren’t we supposed to be caring for the poor, and here you are wasting valuable ointment!”  Like I imagine I would have responded, these observers are angry.  They are confused.  None of this makes sense.

But Jesus understands.  He knows this isn’t some wild expression of uncontrolled enthusiasm.  The woman isn’t engaging in some out of control party gesture.  She isn’t popping champagne like she won a championship game.  She is anointing Jesus body. 

Just before this text, in the first verses of chapter 14, we are told that it is around the time of the Passover.  Like a good gospel author, Mark is informing us that the climax of Jesus’ ministry is near.  Soon, Jesus will be tried, beaten, crucified, and buried.  Ultimately this is where the gospel is leading us.  So when we see the ointment poured out, we must hear Jesus explain, “she has anointed my body before the burial.”  Death is looming, and our initial anger, frustration, and confusion is met with the piercing recognition that Jesus is about to die. 

So is this story simply a foreshadowing of Jesus’ burial?  In a way yes, but I think there is more.  Why is it that there is so much objection?  Why is it that the woman’s act is met with hostility and anger?  Why does no one in the room seem to have a clue what has just happened, except for Jesus, and this woman? 

Remember how I said Jesus was a socialite?  Well, these parties and meals and conversations that Jesus was having, they weren’t always with the most affluent.  You might have seen Jesus at the country club, but you would have been far more likely to see him at the bar, or the homeless shelter, or the drug clinic.  Jesus has a strange affinity towards the outcast.  Keep in mind, all of this is happening in the home of a leper! 

This woman, is the only one who gets it.  How scandalous!  The only one who understands what Jesus’ ministry is leading to, is an outcast.  But so it is with Jesus.  The preachers, and the CEOs, and the attorneys are not likely to be the heroes of Jesus’ ministry.  He prefers the lepers, the women, and the outcasts.  And I think Jesus prefers these, because he recognizes what the world does not.  He sees those who have been neglected, rejected, ridiculed, and thrown to the curb.  But he does not look on these as we often do.  He looks on them with mercy and compassion.  Jesus looks on the outcast with love and affection, so much so that it is these that find themselves in Jesus’ inner circle, close enough to the Master to fully comprehend what is about to come.

  “You always have the poor with you.”  We still have the poor with us.  We still have the outcasts, and the ostracized, and the unwanted and the insignificant with us.  But how much different do we consider these when we recognize that Jesus made them his friends?  That these are the ones who get it?  

Fact or Fiction?

Delivered September 8, 2013

Text:  The Book of Jonah

            Matthew 12:40

For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Fascinated with the Improbable

            I don’t know if I am alone in this regard, but I have always been fascinated with the improbable.  Things that elicit responses like, “That can’t be true.”  “How could you possibly believe that?”  “There’s no way it really happened like that!”  Stories like George Washington tossing a coin across the Potomac or cutting down his father’s favorite cherry tree and then refusing to lie about it.  Or the story of the Trojan Horse, in which an army enters a city inside of a hollowed out statue of a horse and proceeds to take the city.  These kinds of stories excite me.  They are not so much impossible, but they are certainly improbable.  It is unlikely that these events occurred in the fashion that they are remembered.  They are what we call legends or myths, and they hold enormous depths of truth if we move past the simple question of fact or fiction.  I mention these types of stories, because oft times readers of the Holy Scriptures apply the same degree of skepticism to the Bible.

            Events like the creation story in Genesis.  People say things like, “You can’t possibly believe God created the entire world in only seven days.”  Well, maybe, maybe not, and if you were paying attention, He did it in six.  Or how about the miraculous accounts in Exodus.  “Do you seriously mean to tell me that God split the Red Sea in half so that the Israelites could walk across it?”  The Bible is full of these kinds of stories.  But the one I want to focus on this morning is that of Jonah and the Great Fish.  Amongst the stories of the Bible, there is not one that has received more attention, or more skepticism, than that of Jonah.  You can go into any children’s wing of any church and see a mural, or a quilt, or some sort of decorative hanging depicting Jonah and his whale friend.  We like to tell that story.  We are fascinated by such amazing stories. 

            At the same time, there are skeptics.  Many in the church even who would suggest that it just couldn’t have really happened that way.  It is far too miraculous to be true.  I have always found it interesting that this is the part of the story that we get hung up on.  Remember, Jonah goes to Nineveh, preaches a seven-word sermon, and before he has made it a third of the way across the city, word reaches the king and the entire city repents.  That’s a miracle!  A group a pagan sailors experience a great storm and through it turn in prayer, sacrifice, and repentance to the God if the Israelites.  That’s a miracle!  A fig tree pops up over night and is then struck down the following day.  That’s a miracle too.  And have we forgotten that in the midst of all of this Jonah and the Creator of the Universe are having a conversation like old buddies gathered around the dinner table?  The whole book is full of miracles.  So what is all this business about a fish?  Well, as much as I would like to draw our attention away from what I consider only a partial component of the overall masterpiece that is the book of Jonah, I have neither the energy nor the ability to alter the thinking of the masses.  Jonah is, in the minds of many, the story about the guy and the whale, and so that is where we will focus our attention this morning.  Let’s look at the question everyone asks when they think of this text, “Jonah and the Great Fish:  Fact or Fiction?”

Historical Context

            Now Jonah is a prophet.  We know this for two reasons.  One, his book is located within a section of the Hebrew Bible that is called the “Minor Prophets”.  The second reason, and one of the reasons the book is placed in this section, is a reference we have from 2 Kings 14:25:  He (Jeroboam II) restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher.  That’s just about all we know about Jonah.  He was a prophet, he prophesied around the 8^th century B.C., and he was apparently from a place called Gath-hepher.  His name, in Hebrew, means “dove”, and he apparently doesn’t want to go to Nineveh.  And there is a very good reason Jonah doesn’t want to go to Nineveh.  Remember this is the 8^th century B.C. we are talking about here.  The Northern Kingdom of Israel has been over thrown by the Ninevites, and in 701 Jerusalem is sieged by the Assyrian king Sennacherib.  Why does all of that matter?  Well, Nineveh is the capital city of Assyria.  What God just asked Jonah to do is go into the capital city of the nation his people are at war with and tell them how miserable they are being.  No one is volunteering to go into Kabul, Afghanistan and tell the people they need to repent from their wickedness.  But that is what Jonah is asked to do.  And he runs.  He runs, perhaps out of fear, but as we discover in the final chapter, more out of his disdain for the Ninevites.  Jonah knows God is going to spare those who repent, and if he doesn’t go, then they can’t repent.   

            So Jonah flees to Joppa, and sets sail for Tarshish, a city located on the western tip of modern day Spain.  In that time it was the end of the know world.  Jonah literally plans to go to the ends of the earth to avoid preaching in Nineveh.  But God isn’t going to let him off the hook that easy.  When the ship gets out to sea, God tosses a great wind into the seas and a storm ensues.  The people begin frantically tossing their belongings overboard, but to no avail.  Finally, after being awoken from a nap of all things and having his sin exposed through the casting of lots, Jonah explains the situation and asks to be tossed into the sea.  With no other options, the sailors oblige, and Jonah falls to a watery grave.  Miraculously, this is all it takes to calm the storm, and the sailors are spared.  And then comes the great fish.

Rethinking the Whale

            It’s kind of like that scene out of Pinocchio, where Geppetto, and Figaro the cat, and Cleo the fish have all set up shop in the belly of Monstro the whale.  It’s not a good life, but they get by.  For so long that was the image that I had in my head when I heard or read the story of Jonah.  But when you read chapter two, the prayer that Jonah screams from the belly of that great fish, things appear a little different.  He doesn’t speak of the belly of the fish, but the belly of Sheol.  That is, the land of the dead.  Jonah was dead for all practical purposes, both in the sea and in the belly of the fish.  It is only when the great fish spits Jonah out onto the land that he receives his salvation.  Did you know, that in ancient times, the understanding was that, after death, it was a three days journey to Sheol, or the final resting place of the dead?  Interesting then that Jonah spends three days in the belly of the great fish.  We might think of the great fish as a sort of shuttle between life and death rather than some life saving device.  The great fish, is Jonah’s grave, and it is only when he repents and turns to God that he is resurrected from this underwater tomb.

The Rest of the Story

And the story continues.  Jonah gets up from his projectile travel and makes his way to Nineveh.  He finally does as he is called to do, and he has the most successful prophetic career in all of Scripture.  You remember Jeremiah and Isaiah, prophesying on and on with little or no response.  Then here comes Jonah, the most reluctant of Biblical heroes, and all he says is "In forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown."  What happens?  One third of the way into his sermon the entire city has already repented.  God has a sense of humor. 

            Amazingly, Jonah is not happy with God’s forgiving of the Ninevites, and he expresses this disatisfaction by saying that it would be better to die than to see the Ninevites repent.  Strong words for a man who was days before standing at the gates of the underworld.  He then exits the city, storming off I imagine, and takes a seat to the east.  Here he waits to see if God will change His mind.  As he sits, the suns beams down, and Jonah experiences a certain discomfort.  So, to ease his burden, God causes a plant to grow and shade the prophet.  Jonah is comfortable now, and kicks back to see what happens.  Maybe he is still holding out that God will bring destruction.  But then the dawn comes, and God sends a worm to eat the plant and thus remove the relief of the shade.  Again, Jonah prays that death would come, for it would be better to die than to live in this discomfort.      

            God then asks Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry?”  Jonah responds, “Yes, I am so angry I wish I were dead!”  The prophet has lost his cool.   But God pushes further.  “You are going to get this upset because I have destroyed your plant, but you have no problems with the destruction of an entire city and all of its people?”  And there the story ends, with a profound question from a loving and compassionate God to a reluctant and ornery prophet.  We are left to answer the question, and I think we all know the answer.  When you choose to forgive, you are never far from the heart of God.

Theological Implications

            A story like this is a pastor’s dream.  You could preach a million and a half sermons on these four chapters.  For example, we could talk about the human tendency to follow God on our own terms, or the downward spiral that comes when we fail to answer God’s call in our lives.  We could speak of repentance, as the sailors, the Ninevites, and Jonah himself experience God’s grace when they confess and repent.  There is God’s grace to be considered, and the extension of that grace to all who accept it.  So, with all of this, why is it that we become so fixated on the giant fish?  Surely there is more to this text than a giant fish!

            When we explore a Biblical text, it is vital that we draw out every component, focusing on the plethora of theological dynamics at play.  What does the text say about God?  What does the text say about us?  What does the text say about the relationship between the two?  There is a great deal to be discovered.  But if we wish to focus solely on the fish, or prioritize this event or dynamic above all others in the text, let us do so for the right reasons.  Earlier I posed the question of “fact or fiction?”  I spoke of my own fascination with the improbable and the prominence that the Jonah story holds in our own Old Testament canons.  This is all well and good, but for relevance in my life, I turn to another Prophet, one far greater than Jonah.  I turn to Jesus.

            Did you know that Jesus preached on the book of Jonah?  His sermon was short, and no one who heard it understood, but we can understand.  Jesus is responding to a Pharisee who demands a sign, and He tells him, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign, and no sign shall be given unto it but the sign of the prophet Jonas.”  He goes on to say that like Jonah in the giant fish, the Son of man shall spend three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.  Remember what we learned about the giant fish?  It isn’t a lifeboat, it’s a grave.  And after three days and three nights Jonah is thrown from that grave back onto the earth.  The giant fish is important, because it points us to Jesus.  It points us to the tomb. 

            In seminary, we are often taught that the incident with the giant fish is a minor detail, and that it isn’t really vital to the overall story of the book.  And, if we were reading this text completely independent of Christ, I would have to agree.  But if we take Christ with us, and if we trust His teaching and His prophecy, then what He preaches, so must we.  What He focuses on, so must we. 

            The problem with out prioritizing the giant fish is not in the prioritization itself, but in the reasoning behind it.  If we read Jonah because we are excited by the improbably, or because we want to answer the questions of historical fact or literary fiction, we have missed the point.  For a Christian to read the story of Jonah and not hear the words of Jesus in our ears, “three days and three nights”, is to miss the greatest prophecy Jonah ever shared.

            To conclude, I would like to read a quote from Dr. M.R. DeHann, who wrote extensively on the book of Jonah.  He writes, “Jonah was dead for three days and three nights, and then was resurrected and sent forth to preach.  This is the miracle in Jonah, as a perfect picture of the Gospel of the Death and Resurrection of Christ.  And so all the discussions about the story of Jonah, and the attempts to prove the narrative only obscure the central message of the book – the Gospel of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.”

            I hope you will read Jonah.  I hope you will read the Old Testament.  And I hope in its pages you will see our Lord and Savior.  The questions we ask about history and genre have their place, but may they never distract us from the One who fulfilled all that is contained there in, and the One we take with us as we explore those ancient pages.