the drum|rob fairbanks

An Extravagant Gesture of Love for Jesus

John 12:1-8 -  Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. 3 Then Mary took about a pint[a] of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, 5 “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” 6 He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. 7 “Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. 8 You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

I will be speaking at The Porch, here in Spokane on March 17^th.  They have asked me to teach from John 12.  The story is fairly familiar to most Bible readers. A few usual suspects: Jesus, of course, Lazarus, Judas Iscariot and the polar opposite sisters of Martha and Mary.  The center of the story captures Mary pouring out a seemingly inordinate amount of expensive perfume (pure nard) on the feet of Jesus. Crazy, right?

In looking at the story I'm struck initially by a couple of things.

The first is Mary's apparent imperviousness to the pressure to do domestic stuff with Martha. We know from their other encounter with Jesus (Luke 10) that Martha was quite a fastidious (and demanding) hostess and almost certainly wanted Mary to help with the service part of caring for Jesus. Mary, however, was resolved. She must have been incredibly focused on what she was about to do.

The second thing, however, is the difficulty of how to describe what Mary did. The common homiletical description is that Mary “worship.” For me though, that doesn't sum up what was happening accurately. It almost seems trite and a bit lazy to describe it that way. I was trying to think of several other words that described what she was doing. It very well could be called worship, but I think what was going on was more along lines of “adoration.” A definition of “adore” is, “To regard with deep, often rapturous love.” She was expressing adoration. I don't think she was thinking I'm going to worship Jesus, but she was simply expressing her love for him in the way that made the most sense to her.

So, what of it? What are the take aways?

1. It was sacrificial. It cost her a great deal. We see that in the response from Judas Iscariot in the text. It says that it cost about a years wages! That’s why Judas got so bent out of shape. It says that he was dipping into the community purse at his pleasure and when he saw this un-collected bit, he sanctimoniously weighed in, “We could use that for the, a-hem, the poor…and stuff.” Here's a question: When was the last time, in one sitting, have you committed the equivalent of a years wages (without any tangible ROI) as a gesture of love for Jesus? My answer, "A...ne-ver!"
2. The second thing though, it must've been awkward. Try to put yourself in the room...even as a back 
   row by-stander. I have a hard time conceiving of the scenario that took place without some feeling of awkwardness in the room. Though I am not one of those who believe anything weird went on between Jesus and the women around him, this event is incredible sensual (related to our senses). It may have been slightly more comfortable in their context, but can you imagine a group of people in the room and all of a sudden such an intimate act begins to happen? If I were there I would almost go, “Um, would you put your hair away? It's quite distracting! I'm trying to pay my respects to this guy and you're making a spectacle.”

Mary seemed indifferent to the excessive expense or the potential awkwardness. She simply loved...in a tangible way.

One other thing about this beautiful story though is it says that because of this self-effacing and astonishing act of Mary’s, the room, no the whole house was filled with the stunning fragrance of the perfume. I suppose that could be the missional element of the narrative. By a real person extravagantly adoring Christ, in a natural way, there was a beautiful fragrance that billowed through the entire house. Could that be a model for us? In our homes? In our churches? In our cities?

I’m afraid that many people I hang around with are more concerned about what others think of them than an unrestrained gesture of adoration of Christ. I’m afraid I might be one of them.

Listen Then Act

“Do not have your concert first, and then tune your instrument afterwards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him.” -Hudson Taylor

“But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” (Lk. 5:16)

I think the word “often” is there for a reason.

Catholic theologian and mystic Thomas Merton writes, “My life is a listening, His is a speaking. My salvation is to hear and respond.” What a unique and fantastic approach to salvation and communication.

For Merton, the goal of life is to listen to God and then act. Not just in his communication with God. His goal in life! Listen then act.

Just as Jesus did, we ought to listen to God and then launch into his mission, wherever that takes us. An yet, even after we’ve jumped into the mission we ought to pray more, we ought to pray often just as Jesus did for God is moving.

We make millions of decisions each day. (You’re making one right now by continuing to read this!) How many of them do you ask God to be a part of?

Listen then act. It will change everything. (Sounds like Jesus doesn’t it…)

Phil 

Slandering the world & the Christian name

    When introducing yourself as a Christian you may sometimes be greeted in a strange manner. Some people assume that being Christian also means you are an extremist. This is because some of the only interactions they may have had with a “Christian” is someone yelling about God's wrath, or picketing on a street corner. They think we all abide to some strict controlling cultist style life. However we know this to be false. We must do our best to correct this misled view of our collective group of believers. Religious extremists, cultists, and hate mongering groups are destroying the good name of Christ, by standing behind it while they speak nothing of the love and grace of God.

    One such group would be the Westboro Baptist Church, who interestingly enough has no association with the Baptist Church, nor should it even be considered a church. This particular gathering of beings is completely misled by their leader, and believe themselves to be spreading the word of God. This word however, is that God hates pretty much everyone, that he is destroying and will continue to destroy the world and everyone who does not agree with him. The list of people the WBC claims God hates consists of: Homosexuals, Transsexuals, Military, Muslims, Obama, Police, Government, Immigrants, and many more.

    While we would all very much enjoy to shut this group up permanently, our response to them must not be one of equal disprovable as they preach. That would be fueling their fire, as much as it pains me to say, we must react to them in a loving nature, kill them with kindness, in order to prove them wrong. 

Joshua

Hugging Jesus

    I had a dream when I was child that I will never forget. I was walking on lush, green grass when upon looking up there stretched a perfect, blue expanse of sky like I had never seen before.  Then I saw a man walking towards me, I knew it was Jesus.  At this point I got pretty excited, understandably!  I started running as fast as I could to reach Him, and He started running towards me.  He knelt down to me and said a simple “I love you very much” and then He hugged me.  I don’t remember His face, only His eyes.  They were dark and beautiful, telling of everything He is-Savior, healer, lover of our souls, funny, strong, man, God, King, the list goes on and on and on.  When I looked in His eyes I felt stronger and taller but at the same time a complete vulnerability, that my heart was wide open.  What surprises me about this, looking back years later, is that it was not kindness in Jesus’s eyes that I saw.  Instead, I stared back at a fierce, passionate love that so far extends the kindness which we have been conditioned to expect from our white, blue eye, brown hair-with-a middle part Jesus.  What a one dimensional view of His personality!  I woke up stunned and incredibly loved, feeling an unexplainable peace and joy.

    This world does not need any more of these scenarios depicting either a “white, middle-class, nice Jesus” or a “white, middle-class, unforgiving Jesus.”  What is needed is the “wild terrifying, fascinating, dangerous, Middle-Eastern Jesus” (Michael Frost).  Why would I expect a tame, predictable Savior, or one who is “safe?...Who said anything about safe? Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.” (C.S. Lewis)   I am tired of trying to be ‘safe’ in the way I do church and life for that matter.  I want to be all in, to be a part of this awesome Body of Christ, to love the Church, to kill the institution, to dream. To love furiously, with a reckless abandon without a thought of self-preservation.  To be about the Church, we must first be about Jesus and who He truly is, allowing Him in to compel us and change us so that we can further the Kingdom in awesome and radical ways.

Jamie

I know who you are

My mom has had cancer for almost five years.  She prays that she will live to see her three daughters get married.  Last summer, the first one of us daughters had her wedding in our front yard.  My mom wept: It was like God was giving back, gift-wrapped, her deepest desire that she had surrendered fully to Him.

 

One of our friends who had been battling brain cancer died last week, leaving her two sons without a parent.  One of her sons has Asperger’s syndrome and will need to live with and be cared for by her other son.  She told me once her prayer to see her first grandbaby…God didn’t grant her request.

I don’t know why God hasn’t healed my mom from cancer, and I certainly don’t understand why He would take this mother away from her young sons, never realizing her dream of seeing a grandbaby

Yet “sometimes the only way to understand is fall on your knees and say you don’t…Because God knows sometimes there is suffering beyond our knowing.

When we want to know answers, God simply wants us to know Him.

The answer to our suffering is so incomprehensible that it has to be incarnated — the Word must come to us as flesh…He came – because in all our pain, we don’t want some answers like we want a Someone”

                ~Ann Voscamp.

J.J. Heller echoes this belief in her song lyrics: “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I know who you are.”

Yet again, we hear the reverberations of this faith in the powerful words of Oswald Chambers: "Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.”

This I know with all my heart: The character of God is trustworthy and steadfast.

                And I know He knows our pain: He loved enough to lose a child so we could live.

“Since the children have flesh and blood,
[I] too shared in their humanity –

so that by [my] death, [I] might break the power of him who holds the power of death—
that is, the devil—

and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

~Hebrews 2:14-15 

“There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.” ~ Corrie Ten Boom

Jessica

Thankful

Today as I sit in my house in Portland, sipping coffee, and listening to the sweet sound of rain fall on the ground outside, I am thrust into waves of peace. I am reflecting on a month of learning, laughter, increased friendship, sorrow, and deep joy. The past three weeks I got to spend listening to amazing classmates (who I now consider friends) discuss and grow in what it means to be the church. I again learned that there is no perfect church, mostly because there is no perfect person. And in my most vulnerable moments, I have to remind myself that the church is people. Beautiful, broken, alive, and challenging people. 

We read the Gospel and understand maybe a tenth of what Jesus was trying to teach and model to us. Reading through Mark 10 and 11 a few minutes ago, I am in awe of how little I seek the Kingdom of God and instead seek the opinion of the world. How often do I stop and listen? How little do I remind myself that joy is a gift and a choice? How terrible am I at thinking of myself as a little child, hopeful that God redeems and saves? How often do I care more for my possessions than I do for my present relationship with God? 

All of these questions I examined this past term and found that there is no greater answer than the person of Christ. And for me, that begins by being thankful and being disciplined enough to listen wholeheartedly to God. So today, I don’t have any huge theological answers to how the church should function better, serve God more, or be wholly united. But I am able to live into the posture of being thankful. Thankful for a class who tested me, encouraged me, and put up with me. Thankful for a Creator who is infinitely more able and loving than I. 

Thankful.

Katherine

Move It! ‘Cause you really ‘ought to

    There is something heartfelt and immediately piercing about praising God with
movement. There is a part of ourselves, our physicality, that we have neglected in our
worship. And because of it we have lost touch with our emotional souls; our movement
and our emotions are intricately linked. It is hard to lie and keep the world out when you
are engaged in authentic movement. I have found that some of my most honest and
vulnerable moments have been when I have used movement as a form of worship.
    Our bodies, our movements, I think, are that last piece in our worship; the piece
that connects it all together. I cannot express how freeing it is to use dance and
movement to pray and worship God, and at the same time, I cannot express how hard it
was to get to that place. It is not natural for us to be open and vulnerable with each
other. It is not natural to be uninhibited in our emotion and movement. So we have
learned to worship unnaturally: keeping everything inside locked up tight. But I don’t
think God wants us to worship only with our voices; I think we glorify Him most when we
are authentic and honest with each other. And I think that we could do that better if we
all learned to move a little more; to dance a little more. David danced, after all, as did
Jesus. So why can’t we?

Zach

The Church: A Banquet for Your Friends or a Refuge for the Poor?

Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:12-14)

             The great eighteenth-century hymn writer and ex-slave trader John Newton marveled at the far-reaching impact of these words spoken by Jesus in Luke. “One would almost think this passage was not considered part of God’s word, nor has any part of Jesus’ teaching been more neglected by his own people. I do not think it is unlawful to entertain our friends” he says, “but if these words do not teach us that it is in some respects out duty to give preference to the poor, I am at a loss to understand them.” Looking at the current state of the American church, one can’t help but wonder if the “luncheon or dinner” Jesus was referring to could be what we call our church service today. We spend so much time catering our churches to our friends, brothers, sisters, relatives and neighbors, that we completely disregard those Jesus is calling to invite join us in our “banquet.”

            It’s not that Jesus commands us, his Church, to disregard those who we consider being friends, peers or of high economic status, for Jesus himself often ate with his peers and people of wealth. However, his mission was still for the poor. Jesus commanded that his disciples should share their homes and build relationships not with people of their class or higher, people they could profit from or that would pay them back, but with people who were poor and without influence. I believe he is calling his church to do the same; to be for the poor, with the poor, and in pursuit of the poor.

            Although I am unaware of any churches that actively turn the poor away, I am also unaware of many that actively seek out those in extreme poverty as being a part of their community. Most church facilities and services seem to be catered more to the middle-class who drive in from their different neighborhoods to come together with like-minded, similar looking people of their social class for once, maybe twice a week, fellowship and teaching. Although I’m sure many of these churches do really wonderful things to help the underserved and poor, it’s not as easy to make the case that they are designed “for the poor.” The Bible speaks of God as being “a refuge for the poor” (Isaiah 25:4; Psalm 14:6). Therefore the Church, as the body of Christ, is called to stand with the poor as a physical and spiritual place of refuge for them in this world. Is your church a banquet for your friends or a refuge for the poor?

Melissa

Food and Family

    I walked in the front door of my church at 9:55 and headed to a college bible study class. We pored over Romans 6, prayed together, and dreamed about how to serve our church body and the surrounding community. Then, at 11 we wrapped up and joined the congregation in the sanctuary for worship and the sermon. We sang, heard the message, and prayed together, and if the church part of my day had ended here, I wouldn’t have been disappointed in any way. I had learned, praised, and fellowshipped with my church family and now I would head back out into the world renewed by some time with God.

BUT WAIT! DID SOMEONE SAY IT WAS POTLUCK SUNDAY?!?!

    Heck yes! We all headed for the food and sat in the church basement as delicious scents wafted by. I sat at the table with older couples, young families with toddlers, teenagers, and widowed grandmothers around me, and we ate homemade lasagna, meatballs, salad, and cookies, laughing and talking about whatever we wanted. I heard stories about war, about shoveling the snow, about grandchildren and children, and I told about my family, my home, and my hopes. And as I sat there I realized that it was in this context that I truly interacted with this new family of mine. Yes, we had all listened to the sermon together and spent this Sunday and others sitting in adjacent pews exchanging hugs and handshakes, but here we could love each other in a tangible way over a good meal.

    As I left, an older woman I had been talking with walked out with me. She had told me about her husband who had recently died, her daughter who owned a bakery, and her beautiful granddaughter, and as we pushed past the door she turned to me. “I’m going to be your grandmother here in Spokane, Katie,” she said as she hugged me. We said goodbye and all I could think about was how much love she held in her heart for a college girl she met barely an hour before. At times it is easy to forget that our one to three hours on Sunday isn’t always true fellowship. When we invest in the lives of those around us and love our many brothers, sisters, and grandmothers we experience the joy of family. That is why I love the Church; they are my family in the best sense of the word.

Kate

Eucharistic Mess

Jessica