For Sunday, March 13, 2016 – John 12:1-8
Reading the gospel is a bit like reading life itself. On the journey we get to meet and learn from a whole bunch of characters, ourselves included. We can choose to breezily skim the surface of the story, picking up little scraps of wisdom to enjoy at our convenience, or we can dive in deep, immersing ourselves in new viewpoints and other ways of being, opening ourselves to transformation. To read deeply is to swim in mystery, to wrestle with truth, to be willing not to understand. To read scripture or life this way is to welcome complexity and be less afraid of contradiction.
Jesus returns to Bethany, to the home of Martha and Mary and Lazarus, his friends. They have been through a lot together. With Jesus they have become more themselves, icons of complexity and contradiction. In their stories we see them tired and excited, angry and hopeful, desperate and devoted, dead and restored. Martha, prone to anger when she feels the weight of doing more than her share, can still be counted on to serve. Lazarus, that living-dying-living man, suffers and survives and begins again. Romantic dreamer Mary can evoke Martha’s ire, yet how she excels in adoration! They illustrate the paradoxes inherent in a deeply lived story, the hope and desire and doubt and extravagance that weave in and through an authentic friendship with Jesus.
Judas Iscariot is a contradiction, too. Seemingly a friend of Jesus, yet about to betray him. Entrusted with the group’s money, urging consideration for the poor, yet pocketing coins for himself, Judas is no better and no worse than the rest of us who wear a mask of moral righteousness but fear being truly seen or known. Still part of the group, yet a shadow of his real self, Judas sticks around long after he has already wandered away. Martha, Mary and Lazarus read their lives in the light of complex relationship with each other and Jesus. Judas has not yet learned to read very well. How could he, there in the dark alone?
