Mark 14:1-9

It was two days before the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.’

While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. But some were there who said to one another in anger, ‘Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.’ And they scolded her.

But Jesus said, ‘Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.’

I promise, I’m almost done inviting you to listen to Anderson Cooper’s All There Is podcast. So much of our midweek Lenten series on “grieving well” was inspired by the interviews, conversations, and insights from that show. I can’t recommend it enough.

And one of the ways of grief we didn’t cover on Wednesday nights over the course of the last five weeks seems so appropriate for today, I just couldn’t resist. It’s called “anticipatory grief” and it’s something I never really wondered much about until hearing Anderson’s interview with a film-maker named Kirsten Johnson, who actually made a movie about her dad’s dementia, as he was suffering, declining, and very literally preparing to die, long before he ever found himself in hospital bed or nursing home, even. More on that in a moment … but keep the notion of “anticipatory grief” in mind, if you could. In some ways it speaks for itself.

Today, this Palm Sunday, is a day full of symbols and story and looking ahead, because it’s all about what is to come in the days that follow Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. In many churches on Palm Sunday – and at Cross of Grace, many years – we simply hear the Passion narrative of Jesus’ last days and hours, leading up to his crucifixion and death. But there will be time for that, later this week. Particularly, on Good Friday, we’ll gather to hear about his last steps and last words, and last breath, even, on the cross.

So today, we’re just getting started – with the parade into Jerusalem before the big holiday for the Jews and now, even closer to the Passover, we find Jesus having dinner and being anointed with oil by this woman who seems to anticipate something others have missed … something Jesus understands … which is that his death looms. It is right around the corner and coming soon.

And, who knows why she understands and anticipates what others don’t? Maybe she was paying attention at that parade, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that donkey and those palm branches and cloaks were laid out before him.

Maybe she knew that he’d gotten the attention of the powers that be, that his challenge to the Empire would be his undoing.

Maybe she knew her scripture enough to recognize, in those shouts of “Hosanna,” that here was, indeed, this one who had come in the name of the Lord.

Maybe, as John’s Gospel tells it, this was Jesus’ good friend, Mary, Martha’s sister and the sister of Lazarus. And maybe she came with the oil because Jesus had told her; given her the inside scoop. Maybe she had a plan to show the others something they hadn’t been able to catch onto yet. I wonder, if maybe Jesus had even asked her to do just that. Or maybe her moment of anointing was a surprise – even to Jesus – that set his final days on a new course, in a way that surprised even him.

Whatever the case, the point is clear. Jesus was about to die. This woman knew it. Jesus knew it. And, I think, it was time for the rest of the crew to finally get with the program, and to understand the fullness of what was coming.

But that’s hard news to hear, right – that the end is near for those we care about? that death is coming for those we love? It’s easy stuff to deny, isn’t it? We’re inclined to pretend and to live otherwise, as much and for as long as we’re able, a lot of the time. We are hangers on, “tooth and nail” kind of people, most of the time, when it comes to death and dying.

But, whether he was ready for it or not, I think that’s the blessing Jesus received from this woman who anoints him today. I think she reminded him – and anyone who was really able to hear it, that his death was pending … on the way … imminent. And her anointing becomes a blessing – a teachable moment – Jesus, himself, uses to prepare his people for the truth and fullness of what was to come.

See, in all of that grumbling about the perfume and about how much it cost and about how much it could have done for the poor, Jesus seems to be unfussed. Because, back in Jesus’ day, this kind of anointing with perfume was done when someone died. They anointed the body with oils as a ritual sort of cleansing, as a spiritual sort of preparation for the afterlife, and, quite practically, I imagine, to keep the smell to a minimum once the bodies were left to decompose in those family tombs that got used from one funeral to the next.

All of that is why Jesus doesn’t bother with the others when they pretend to care that the money from that perfume could have been used to help the poor. He tells them to back off, to leave the woman alone, and to let her do with her perfume whatever she wants to do with her perfume. “You’ll always have the poor with you,” he promises. “You will not always have me,” he warns. “You will not always have me.”

Kirsten Johnson, the filmmaker Anderson Cooper interviews about this thing called “anticipatory grief” – the one who made a movie about her own father’s decline into dementia, dying, and death – hosted a funeral service for her dad, while he was alive and still well and able to experience it, himself.

In the family’s church, with all of their loved ones gathered, people who had known him throughout his entire life came and spoke and said what they would want to say at his actual funeral, when the time came. Only, he was able to watch it, hear it, experience it, on this side of heaven. What a gift.

What if, in that moment with Jesus over dinner, that woman was giving her version of a eulogy? Offering him the gift of her anticipatory grief … sharing the depth of her love for him … anointing him as cosmic royalty in the eyes of the creator of the universe … showing whoever was paying attention that nothing was or is or could be more valuable than the kind of love he came to share – not her perfume or her paycheck or her pretending that everything was just fine.

At that funeral that wasn’t really a funeral, for the man with dementia who wasn’t dead yet, a woman stood up and said, “as long as my memory lives, the memory of him will live in me.”

And I wonder if our lesson for today, if our invitation as we enter into yet another Holy Week, is to anticipate the grief that’s on the way in the days to come. And I don’t mean in a long-suffering, masochistic, self-flagellating kind of way. I mean, in a worshipful, awe-inspiring, reverent, hope-filled kind of way that might change our lives – and change our way in this world – if we let that kind of grief have its way with us more often than we’re inclined, so much of the time.

I mean, if we lived every day like Jesus’ sacrifice was just around the corner, instead of just one Holy Week out of 52 in every year… wouldn’t things be different for us, as his followers? And then maybe the world could be different, too?

Would we be more grateful for what we already have and stop coveting the green grass on the other side of every fence?

Would we give more generously, out of our abundance, as Jesus commanded? Or would we keep giving from what we have leftover or saving and striving for a day that may never come?

Would the extent of our social activism be limited to our social media feed? Or might we get out and do more with our hands and with our feet and with our voices and with our votes?

Would we save our greatest expressions of love and devotion for the funeral, or would we say more of those things face to face with words and actions, instead?

Would we ask for forgiveness and offer it more often and with more integrity?

Because the reason we can be honest and real and even embrace the grief that has or will come to us all, is because of the good news we share as children of God, as followers of Jesus, as the baptized in Christ, headed into this Holy Week.

See, this grief we anticipate – ours, Christ’s, that woman who made the movie, or the one with the perfume – none of this grief wins the day. It doesn’t last forever. It invites us to anticipate, too, the new life that follows. Our grief is evidence of the deep, abiding love God has for us all. And it calls us to more of the love, joy, grace, guts and faith with which we’re called to live on this side of heaven and for the sake of the world, our God so loves.

Amen

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

‘Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

‘And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’

Some years we need Ash Wednesday more than others, it seems to me. We always need it, don’t get me wrong – this day that marks the beginning of this season; this season when we lament and repent; these days when we acknowledge and confess our sins; when we are reminded of our mortality by these ashes on our heads; when we hear this simple, profound – sometimes sad and scary – promised refrain: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

But this year … today … because of all that’s transpired and is still unfolding in Ukraine, I hear those words … that warning … this ominous, woeful promise – “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return” – and I think, “No kidding.”

As we watch, again, but somehow anew, this war unleash itself with all the fear and anxiety and uncertainty that that kind of violence and evil and inhumanity and sinfulness heap upon our hearts and minds and souls and spirits… with all of that swirling around and within us, this very timely, obvious reminder is hard to deny, difficult to dismiss, impossible to ignore: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

And many of us don’t need the global calamity of a war to find this reminder timely. “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” It comes by way of the diseases that sicken us – “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” (No kidding.) It comes by way of the sins that burden us – “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” (No kidding.) It comes by way of the grief that has found us this past year – “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” (No kidding.)

These reminders of my mortality are relentless and many, these days. I’m not sure I need this smudge of ashes on the ever-increasing real estate of my forehead to be reminded, yet again. Thank you very much. (My oldest son turned 18 today, which is its own kind of mortality reality check, I have to say.)

But last night at 11 o’clock, I was watching Anderson Cooper, live from Lviv, Ukraine, interview Clarissa Ward, live from Kyiv, Ukraine. (These journalists who hurry into war zones are a special kind of crazy courageous, if you ask me.) Anyway, at 11 p.m. here, it was 6 a.m. there – and already Ash Wednesday, in Ukraine. And Anderson Cooper and Clarissa Ward were having perfectly ashy conversation, if you will.

They talked about the war games of closing off air spaces and attacking civilians; about sanctioning oligarchs and elites; about marching, launching, upping the ante in this “continued bloody onslaught”; about striking and hitting civilian targets; about how all of this could or would likely get much worse, sooner rather than later; that we are facing a potentially major humanitarian disaster in the days ahead. Another reporter, Jim Sciutto, even got Biblical and called it all a “David and Goliath conflict,” in which the math does not add up in support of the Ukrainians. And, of course, it’s all layered with the not-so-existential-again threat of nuclear war.

“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” No kidding.

But just as Clarissa Ward wondered about the what, the when and the how of a 40-mile column of tanks and armory and heavy Russian weaponry cutting off and laying siege to the capital of Kyiv – where she was standing as she spoke, remember – she said without a hint of irony – “and God only knows what will happen next.” And just as she said it … no kidding … the church bells somewhere near to her location started to chime, as if the Holy Spirit herself had blown in to affirm the truth of what she had just said: “and God only knows what will happen next.”

I’m not saying it was a miracle. The clock in that church’s bell tower had just struck 6 a.m. But it was Ash Wednesday, remember. Which is why it got my attention, moreso than it did Anderson and Clarissa, I have to say. They didn’t miss a beat.

But those church bells ringing, on Ash Wednesday, in the midst of that conversation – and all of their grim reporting – in the very valley of the shadow of death? – sounded like a measure of truth and hope to me … and, I hope … for anyone else who heard them ring, on their TVs, or in their homes or hospital beds, in their bunkers or bomb shelters, in their tanks or trenches, too. “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

See, these ashes we wear on our foreheads and these words we hear from Jesus and the promises we read in Scripture remind us that we need not fear the sin and death that send us running and reeling, dodging and denying, scurrying and scared and sad so much of the time.

Instead, in the midst of it all, Jesus calls us to tend our faith. We practice our piety, faithfully and quietly – not before others, in order to be seen by them. We give our offering without expecting applause or accolades for being generous. We pray, we fast, we worship, we learn, we serve.

And there’s more. We love our enemies and we pray for those who persecute us. We love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, minds, souls, and strength. And we love our neighbors as ourselves, too. All of which is a little easier, I think, when we remember more often that we are all dust – each and every one of us – and to dust we shall return.

And we live this way, with hope, in spite of these ashes and all they represent – but because of them, too, these damned ashes. Because it is by way of ashes … dust … dying … and death that God does God’s best work, remember.

Our God looks forward to repairing what is so broken in our lives and in this world.

Our God has plans to redeem the ashes and the stain of our sinfulness.

Our God promises to breathe life into the dust and dirt of our dying.

Because our God makes beautiful things – even out of the dust from whence we’ve come and of the dust we will one day be again.

No kidding.

Amen

Palm Sunday's Anticipatory Grief

Ashes to Ashes. No Kidding.