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Jay Weldon Burning Up the
Promises of Heaven I had a friend back in Atlanta who was an Episcopal priest. He had become a priest after his first career in geology ended. As such, he often related faith to rocks, sometimes quite appropriately and sometimes rather questionably. However, he created one metaphor about Holy Week that has stuck with me until this day. As a geologist, he said, he would go out on a team into the desert or mountains or to a quarry to look for large boulders. These boulders usually held secrets buried deep inside of them. When they would find a large boulder, the easiest way to crack it open was to find a large pit, or some sort of drop off. The team, together, would use all of their strength to push the boulder end over end until they reached the pit, and then with one last heave they would force the boulder over the edge and watch it fall and break into a million pieces. Holy week is like that. Palm Sunday, he said, was like finding the perfect boulder. There was some excitement, but it quickly turned serious when you began to think ahead. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were the times of sweat and digging deep inside. Finally, Good Friday was the point in which the boulder went over the side and broke into a million pieces. Something that once seemed proud and strong was now broken and insignificant. It seemed like a rather simple metaphor, but it really made sense to me. I don’t think that we have to think of ourselves as the boulder, that we should end up tattered and broken by the end of this week, but I think we are called to put ourselves into this, to devote ourselves completely to the one who said our faith could move mountains… and perhaps boulders! And it is also true that this is better done together. When I think about Holy Week, I think about how different it must have been the first time. We will never know what it was like to experience this day by day, minute by minute, not knowing how this was going to play out. We plan Easter Egg Hunts during Lent and announce them on Palm Sunday. Nobody leaves on Good Friday wondering whether they should come back on Sunday. In general, that is a wonderful thing. We are resurrection people. We are not reliving this week pretending like we don’t know where this is going. It leads us to a cross, but that only seems to matter so much because it leads us to an empty tomb. We are resurrection people, and we are not willing to go back to the other side of this. It does make me wonder, all the more, how it played out that first week for those who didn’t know. Our gospel reading this evening takes us to the scene of one of those places that first holy week. We see the stage being set with important characters, important background information about why Jesus would be killed, and most obviously we see the juxtaposition of Mary against Judas. In other stories, it is Mary and her sister Martha who are arguing about who should do all the work, but here it is a question of the expensive perfume that Mary has bought with which to anoint Jesus, as if she is anointing him for his burial. Judas complains because the money could have been spent on the poor. And in this strange reversal of roles, we see Judas caring for the poor and Jesus saying, “you will always have the poor with you.” Things have been turned on their heads. But there is one pearl that I glean from this story. As they sit there in Bethany that night, arguing about perfume and the poor and the plans people had to kill Jesus and Lazarus both, there was no resurrection. There were promises, but no fulfillment. There were visions of the Kingdom of God, but there was no reason to believe that hope in God would be related to having faith in the risen Lord. Despite that, and despite all the other things going on that night, Mary finds a way to appreciate Jesus for who he really was. While we cannot separate ourselves from the rest of the story, I wonder if we could ever do what she did—put all hopes of future glory aside and appreciate Jesus simply for who he was. He was a simple man who saw more hope for the world in a blind beggar made whole than in the powerful Jewish leaders who knew the law. He saw more hope in Israel in a society that loved its neighbors as itself than one looking down on its neighbors, even the most despicable of neighbors. He saw the full reign of God rooted and established in little children, never wanting rules and regulations and laws to keep the poor and outcast from the beauty and love of God. And even in that week, that first holy week, it was already true. Sometimes I think that Jesus went willingly to the cross because he was convinced that there was no other way to convince his followers that he was serious about his ethic of loving God and others above all, and if there were no other way to prove his love for the world, to inaugurate the kingdom of love and goodness and hope, he was willing to do whatever it took, even death on a cross. But on this night, Mary seems to understand. While Judas is counting the community change purse, while Martha is grounding out more pita bread, while Lazarus is still looking in the mirror to see that he really is alive, Mary devotes herself to Jesus, not because she is in it for a chance at eternal life, but because the fullness of life is sitting in front of her and she is devoted to that, to his goodness and love and hope of reconciling the world to God. I have seen this play out the other direction in my own life. I don’t know if it is a sign of the times or of our culture, but so many Christians have explained it so well and so poorly: we believe in Jesus so we won’t go to hell when we die. We are Christians so we can go to heaven. I’ve heard it from misguided youth, but I’ve also heard it from their parents. I have heard it from pastors and youth ministers and books. At the end of the day, there is one overarching reason to follow Jesus. We want to go to heaven. I don’t want to ask you to forget the hope that you have of eternal life. I don’t even want to ask you to forget the resurrection, I just want to ask you to follow Jesus because he was everything we wish we could be. He was the fullness and righteousness and love of God in a human being, and that alone should make us want to follow him. You all may remember the Beetles’ song Imagine. Imagine there’s no heaven. It’s easy if you try. No hell below. Above us only sky. Imagine, they say, all the people living for today. I would like to re-imagine their lyrics for a moment. Imagine all the Christians who follow Jesus, not in hope of some reward, but because there is no better way to live. Imagine all the people who honor God as creator and sustainer, who care deeply and genuinely for the poor and oppressed and outcasts, who live every day of their lives hoping to one day really love their neighbors as themselves, to still find God at work recreating the world every day. Imagine how the kingdom of God may really come. In the third century, a woman called the hag of Alexandria would wander the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, with a flaming torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. She would walk through the streets with her torch and water and cry out, “oh that I could burn up the promises of heaven and quench the fires of hell so that we may know which men really love God.” Amen.
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