I gave a talk at church today

 I thought I would share it here for anyone interested. I tend to be VERY off the cuff when I speak so this doesn't line up perfectly with what I said, but it should be most of it. I may come back later and clean it up a little so it's more like a post and less like a bunch of notes... but probably not. Hope you enjoy!

Good morning my fellow siblings in Christ (be like I hope the zoomers can hear me ok)
Hello everyone it has been a year. Are y’all good? Do we need to take a collective deep breath? I hope I don’t need to detail the griefs we are all collectively carrying at the moment (I think we’re familiar), not to mention all the personal sorrows of which I will never know that are surely being borne by those among us today. For all who are struggling, I’m here to say I see you, I love you, and I hope that you can find comfort in what I’m going to talk about today.

Now I think some of you might respond to that by saying to yourselves “well, I’m ok, I’ve managed to get through this unscathed. I don’t know anyone who’s died, I haven’t lost my job” etc etc. I want you to know that my words are for you too. When we are baptized we covenant to mourn with those that mourn and I think a lot of us have been doing quite a bit of that.

Sisters and Brothers, Have you heard of doomscrolling? It’s this cool and super great bad thing that I do all too often where I check the news and try to consume all the badness in the world as if that’s going to help anything. For me I have felt really helpless to do anything that matters so I try to be aware of everything so I can feel like I’m at least doing something! I’m sure I’m not the only one here who is in more or less the same boat.

With all of that as prelude I want to turn to a story in the New Testament that has been on my mind a lot lately. It is recorded in one form or another in each of the four gospels, but I want to look particularly at the version we find in Mark (ch 12). Let me read it for you:

3 And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as [Jesus] sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head.

4 And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made?

5 For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her.

6 And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me.

7 For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.

8 She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.

John refers to this woman as Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus so for the sake of simplicity I will too. Let’s dig into some of this and talk about what I found really interesting about this.

-the disciples are mad about what Mary did and Jesus reproves them
To give a little context, The spikenard she used to anoint Jesus was worth somewhere between a month to a year’s worth of wages, which is a lot of money! You can kind of understand where the disciples were coming from.

Have you ever done this? Seen someone doing something good but feeling like they are doing it wrong, or not doing it the way you would like it to be done? Or even doing something that in the moment looks stupid or wasteful and you can’t even see how it’s a good thing only to later learn that they were doing the best possible thing? Have you ever judged that person for not being good the way you think they should? I SURE HAVE so I hope we can take this and try not to be so quick to judge in the future. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” (Isa. 55:8)

-Next observation: what she does did not seem to change any outcomes. Jesus still dies, nothing she does can stop that, I mean it’s literally God’s plan.

So often it can feel utterly fruitless to even try to make a difference in the world. When we face a problem that exists on a global scale, like this pandemic, or like climate change or poverty, it is so hard to feel like anything we do matters or that we have an impact at all.

It helps me to think of how some caves are formed. As water seeps through rock it slowly carves away spaces which becomes the cave. Sometimes I think about how every choice I make is like one drop of water in the cave. By itself it’s not remarkable, but when you consider that millions of drops of water created this big ole cave you recognize what impact it has. The lesser is to the greater what the greater is to the whole, which is to say each of us can be one drop of water, by ourselves our actions may not seem significant, but when a lot of us act together we can just make a big freaking cave.

(Segue into:) There’s a moment in The Lord of The Rings that has given me a lot of comfort in this regard. Do I need to explain what LOTR is about? Basically our boy Frodo has an evil ring and he needs to drop it in a volcano. Frodo is talking to Gandalf and says “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” to which Gandalf replies “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil.”

Christ is the ultimate force for good

And so with that said, if you have made efforts to social distance, if you have stayed home when you could have gone out, if you’ve worn a mask or sacrificed in other ways to keep strangers and loved ones safe, if you have done what you could, these are Christlike actions and I promise you that your actions have saved lives.

-what she does is make him the messiah.
This leads to my next point. Mary’s act here is more than maybe we realize. This is the moment that Jesus becomes the Christ. The word Christ comes from the greek “khristos” meaning the anointed, and is the greek form of the Hebrew word Messiah. Thomas Wayment sums up succinctly what that means in his New Testament commentary “Jesus is anointed in preparation for his burial, thereby making him the Anointed One or Messiah (see v 12)” She might not be able to stop the pains Jesus will suffer, she won’t be able to stop the state from executing him as a criminal, but she has performed a sacred act. She has done what she could.

-she hath done what she could so you do what you can
And with that I want to invite you to do what you can. People might be critical, people might not understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. They might judge or reject you, but still I implore you to do what you can. If you’re at a loss for what that could be, I invite you to pray and ask what it could be.

But here I also want to add: don’t do what you can’t! It’s ok to unplug from the grief of the world for the sake of your mental health. Imposing a digital sabbath or taking a break from social media or news websites is not only ok, it’s probably necessary every once in a while.

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

― A.W. Streane

[testify]