Anointed for death.........Ash Wednesday

Mark 14.3-9   NIV    courtesy of www.biblegateway.com
While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
 ⁴ Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? ⁵ It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages^[a] and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.
   ⁶ “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. ⁷ The poor you will always have with you,^[b] and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. ⁸ She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. ⁹ Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

This is not the lectionary assigned text for Ash Wednesday.  I chose this text for preaching reasons.  Throughout Lent's mid-week services,  we will be looking at stories of faith from the Bible:  Noah, Moses, Abraham, the Israelites and then Jesus.  I wanted to begin with an additional person who had an encounter with Jesus; I chose this text because the character is a woman and she is preparing Jesus for his death, an appropriate text for Ash Wednesday.

In the Ash Wednesday service, a cross is drawn on the penitent's forehead. (The ashes are made out of burned palms from last year's Palm Sunday.)  The presider says something similar to  'Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.'    This liturgical piece mirrors a passage in Genesis when God tells humankind that 'from dust you came and to dust you shall return.'

Ash Wednesday is a solemn day of remembering - remembering that we are frail and finite and that death alone is our exit from this world.  We receive ashes following an extensive time of confession and then we are joined into Christ in the meal of communion.  It is Christian ritual at its best.

So what do we do with this woman?  Well, in  spite of Jesus' promise that because of her actions she will always be remembered, she is anonymous in this story (as is often the case for women in the scriptures).  In Mark's version of this story, Jesus is at Simon the Leper's house while a plot to kill Jesus foments in the streets.  There is death all around, filling the air.  In fact, with the violent unrest currently in  the Middle East (think Libya) we might be able to imagine the tension of this scene with the appropriate Middle Eastern background.

Simon is a leper - a form of living death.  The woman is anonymous - another form of living death.  The onlookers add to the tension with their vocal opposition to her actions, to the waste of her act of anointing.  Then Jesus says what everyone else is only thinking....'she has anointed my body for burial.'  v8   Who was talking about burial?  Who was speaking about Jesus' death?  No one.   Everyone.

And death as end is all that they know.  Most of us look at death as not just an end, but the end.  Certainly those gathered in that room thought of death as end, and I would guess that many thought Jesus was in danger of becoming its next victim. 

So we have this intersection of opposites:  the scent of costly perfume poured out in an act of love and devotion while the scent of death wafts around their heads. 

We are caught at this intersection:  the reality of death in our lives and in the lives of those we love and the challenge of faith in this Jesus, this Son of God, this Messiah.  She anoints with oil but the sweet smell of death lingers.  There is no path around this dead end; we can only travel through it and we only do that with Jesus.  How hard to believe in the scent of life instead of the scent of death.

So as much as Ash Wednesday is about the reality of death it is also about how we are living our lives: poured out in love and devotion or ducking our heads thinking we can avoid the birds of death circling around us.  Living as if we believe in life or living as if we are held captive by death?

As a rule I am saddened by the scriptures' practice of leaving the women in its stories unnamed.  But perhaps this anonymous woman allows each of us to fill in our own story, our own profile, our own name as she anoints Jesus.  Then we can pray that in the face of all that frightens and threatens us, we might love, honor, and serve the Lord who will carry us home.