St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

Sermon by the Reverend Sarah Rowland-Jones, St George's Cathedral, Sunday 11 March 2007

Jesus Redefines Life and Death

Today is the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end.

Last week Canon Martyn Percy preached wonderfully about the parable of the prodigal son. He spoke of God's outrageous love for us, love that would make us think him soft in the heart, and soft in the head, if it were a one of us towards our wayward children.

Today we from being soft to the hard part, the crunch point. Martyn said that God loves us far more than is good for him. Now Jesus has to follow through what this really means.

Where does the journey to the cross begin? Certainly long before Good Friday, even before Jesus birth. 'Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free,' we sing in Advent, and the Old Testament longs for the future Messiah.

I wonder when Jesus himself realised that the path of the Messiah led not to earthly victory, but through the valley of the shadow of death.

The three synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – divide Jesus' ministry into two parts. First, starting in Galilee, comes preaching, teaching, healing and success. Then comes Jerusalem, characterised by opposition, rejection, suffering and finally death – though, as we who come after know, resurrection followed.

A turning point between the two phases of Jesus' ministry comes just after the Transfiguration, as Jesus and his disciples are on the road near Caesarea Philippi. He asks them 'Who do others say I am? Who do you say I am?' Simon Peter blurts out 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!'

Thereafter, say the gospels, Jesus 'resolutely sets his face towards Jerusalem'. He begins to teach that there he must 'suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, that he must be killed, and on the third day be raised to life.'

Simon Peter, horrified, responds, 'Lord, this must never happen to you!' Jesus turns and says those shocking words, 'Get behind me Satan.'

It seems that right through Good Friday, the disciples still thought in terms of a triumphant Messiah. They did not believe that God the Father would let his Son die.

But one person did grasp what Jesus taught. Mary of Bethany. Remember how she sat at Jesus' feet, listening as he taught. Remember her sister Martha complaining that Mary was not helping with the housework and hospitality. Remember Jesus saying that Mary had chosen a better way? (Lk 10:38-42) Mary listened as Jesus taught. She heard his words. She took them at face value. She accepted what he was saying. She believed him – on his terms.

Now, six days before the Passover, Jesus came again to Bethany. Martha, as before, offered hospitality. Mary, as before, sat at Jesus' feet.

It was the job of the lowest house slave to wash the guests' feet, dusty, dirty, sweaty and smelly after a long day on the road.

Mary came with a jar of nard – a precious, expensive, scented lotion (but don't confuse her with other women who washed his feet or anointed his head). Mary took the nard and poured it on his feet. She wiped them with her hair – shockingly unbound. The room was filled with a fragrance of unbelievable beauty. The men were horrified. How could she, a respectable Jewish woman, behave in such an inappropriate fashion? How could she squander such costly perfume?

Jesus understood her. Because she had understood him. She had heard Jesus speak of dying in Jerusalem. Now he had arrived on the outskirts of the city. The time must be coming soon.

Jesus knows this and Mary knows this. We know this too – because in the five verses preceding our Gospel reading, John has told us first, that the chief priests and Pharisees are plotting to kill Jesus, and second, that they had given orders that if anyone knew where Jesus was, they were to say so, so that he could be arrested.

It was the raising of Lazarus that was the final straw for the Jewish leadership. He not only comes to Jerusalem, he stays at Lazarus' house, a mere mile and a half outside the city walls.

So, on the Saturday night, after the Sabbath ended at dusk, a dinner is given by Jesus' closest friends. They know the risks are huge. And Mary, believing that Jesus has chosen to face death, has decided to honour him with the perfume used for anointing the dead.

I can only begin to guess what a tremendous comfort this must have been to him.

He had come to face certain death, and here was someone who loved him enough to support him in doing what he must do – even if it meant losing him. It is as though, in all that gathering of Jesus' closest friends, she alone has begun to understand the paradox of the cross. The disciples certainly have not.

We cannot tell how much Mary, who had sat at his feet and listened, had actually grasped. But she had seen Jesus raise her brother from the grave. She knows he has some authority over death – though she cannot guess what exactly this might be. But she is prepared to trust that, to quote the prophet Isaiah (43:19), he is 'about to do a new thing.'

Jesus is about to redefine life, and death.

And so Mary was able to let Jesus face his death, and even offered her encouragement and support to him, to pursue the way he had chosen. She saw that he was not afraid of death – and so she was not afraid either. Not thinking of her own impending loss, she generously pours out her perfume, and her love, for Jesus.

Death is awesome and fearful for us all.

But unlike Mary on that Saturday dinner, we are Easter people. We know what happened. We know that after Good Friday comes Easter Sunday. We know that after death comes – not total annihilation, but new life, risen in Christ.

This enables us to become those who sow in tears, knowing we shall also reap in joy.

Therefore the message of the cross is that we need not despair, we need not be afraid – neither for ourselves, nor for those we love.

As you may know, my husband, Justus Marcus, who was the Bishop of Saldanha Bay, died in 2003 of smoking-related cancer, at the age of 48. Justus said that after it became clear that the cancer would kill him, he found himself identifying more closely with Jesus, setting his face to Jerusalem and death. He found it incredibly deep and enriching to draw close to Jesus, in his mortality.

Yet we also had friends who, a little like the disciples, could not accept Justus would die. This meant that they were unable to walk with us and support us. And they were unable to engage with the profound encounters with God's grace that we were having. They were unable to share the comfort and strength we found.

Death comes to all of us – our own deaths, and the deaths of people we love. How can we cope with the incomprehensible reality of death? How can we receive God's peace, his care, his strength, his love, in facing death? How can we best support one another in this inevitable part of life?

How can we hope to have the assurance of which Paul writes to the Philippians, (3:10, 11), “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in death, if somehow I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.”

We have to be honest about the reality of death – we must embrace the inevitability of our own mortality.

We can do this, if we, like Mary, spend time sitting and learning at Jesus' feet. He is the Lord of life who has broken the power of death. We can put our hand in his, and he will walk with us through that dark valley. He is the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. This is the message of Lent and Easter.

I thought a lot about Mary of Bethany as I watched Justus dying. How could I help him? Honesty with each other and with God was for us the key – and that allowed me to share in his deepening relationship with the Lord and Saviour as he was preparing to meet.

We had no pretences – as a priest I find it hard when I am with someone who is dying, and the family say 'they don't know – we are telling them they will get better.' Generally, I find the person does know, and wants to face openly what lies ahead. It is the rest of the family who refuse to face the truth – and this pretence is an unspoken barrier to real closeness in those last weeks or days.

The example of Mary and Jesus also helped me to let Justus go – to 'give him permission to die.'

When someone has no choice but to die, it is so hard for them when others try to hold them back. It can make the dying person feel very guilty, even if there is nothing they can do about it. And this becomes another barrier to honesty and sharing precious time together.

Jesus wants us to redefine life and death, and face it, as he did, as Mary did – with apprehension, true – Jesus' wrestling in prayer in the garden of Gethsemane was not acting; but with courage, and faith, and hope, because he has overcome the power of sin and death.

So today is the beginning of the end, the calm before the storm: dinner with friends on Saturday night, before Sunday morning's triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey, which we shall celebrate next week, Palm Sunday; and then the gathering momentum of Holy Week, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday.

But today is also the beginning of the beginning, the new beginning that Jesus makes. And it is the beginning of the end of the end, because death will be overcome. Death will not result in annihilation. Death will no longer be the end Jesus will bring an end to the end.

This sets us free, we, as Paul writes to the Philippians (3:14) 'press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus' for 'Christ Jesus has made us his own' (3:12).

Therefore, for us, as well as for Jesus and Mary, today is not only the end of the beginning, it is the beginning of the beginning and the beginning of the end of the end.

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