Jack McKinney
March 25, 2007 – Fifth Sunday in Lent
Text: John 12:1-8
Wasteful or Wonderful? A Friend’s Final Gift
The very first ad hominem argument recorded in human history took place thousands of years before that Latin phrase was invented. Ad hominem, literally meaning “to the person,” is a form of argumentation where one debater attacks the other debater’s character in an effort to distract from the actual issue at hand. The earliest “imagined” ad hominem attack took place when the very first cave man and woman met back at the cave after a long day. The cave woman arrived with fruits and nuts after a day of gathering, and she expected to see the man with the rest of the evening meal from his day of hunting. Only the cave man had fallen asleep in the warm sun and never got around to the hunt. When he arrived back at the cave empty handed, having clearly been asleep all afternoon because of the imprint of a rock on the side of his face, the cave woman gave it to him good for neglecting his responsibility and foregoing the agreement they had for how the day was to be spent. And after hearing her argument for several minutes, the cave man interrupted and said: “Yeah, well you would have just burned the dinner anyway.” And that, my friends, is the original ad hominem attack.
Political discourse in this country has dissolved into a multi-million dollar industry of ad hominem attacks. If a candidate on the left suggests that poverty is an issue that we need to start addressing, partisans on the right respond by saying that candidate lives in a big house. What the size of a person’s house has to do with the issue of poverty is not obvious to me, but it is an effective way of interrupting the debate. Likewise, if a candidate on the right raises the issue of deteriorating family structures and the problem of absentee parents, partisans on the left respond by pointing out the candidate has been divorced. Again, I’m not sure what the person’s marital status has to do with the national issue of neglected children, but that ad hominem argument will stop the debate in its tracks. And this practice of attacking our opponent’s character and motives, without actually addressing the issue itself, is poisoning our great republic. It may be an effective political tool, but in the end it leaves us bitter and determined to get retribution. And, most importantly, the result of an ad hominem attack is that the issue itself never gets addressed with any seriousness.
In our
scripture reading this morning from John 12 we see a classic ad hominem
argument. The setting for this story is that Jesus and his disciples have
arrived at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. The two sisters and their
brother live in
This visit,
however, was different. Jesus has arrived in
Which brings me back to the ad hominem attack in this passage. Judas Iscariot, who was the treasurer for Jesus’ traveling church, immediately wonders why this valuable perfume was not sold and the proceeds given to the poor. And the editor of this passage, writing decades after these events had taken place and Judas’ betrayal was well established, inserts the following parenthetical ad hominem: “He (Judas) said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.” Ah hah! So we know Judas was not only the betrayer of Jesus, but also a thief who stole from the bank account, so the editor of this passage says to us: “Don’t worry about the difficult question this man is raising because he is a bad man.” Whoever edited this passage could have made a fortune as a political consultant in today’s world.
But what if we refuse to play along? What if we decide not to allow ourselves to be interrupted by this ad hominem attack on Judas? What if we take seriously his question? Mary has just poured out the equivalent of many thousands of dollars, money that could have been used to help a lot of needy people. Why would Jesus, a man who had demonstrated consistent concern for the most vulnerable people of his day, not scold Mary and remind her that this resource she has just used up in a few seconds could have been put to better use?
This is an interesting scenario for a church like Pullen to consider. As a congregation we are often asking how many of our resources we should use to help people outside of the church versus how much we should keep here to fund our internal programs. It is a question we will never really settle, nor should it be. It is critical that we constantly wrestle with the best use of our assets and ask ourselves if we are doing enough beyond the walls of our church. In that respect I think Judas’ question has some relevance for us as a congregation. Why not sell the perfume and give the money to the poor? It’s a legitimate issue to raise and it doesn’t help to blow off the issue by attacking the character of the one asking the question.
Having said that, I recognize that Judas’ question isn’t seeking to contrast how we support the poor over against how we support church programming. It’s actually far more dramatic than that. He’s asking if it is right or moral to use something of great value in a personal gesture as Mary does in this text. Couldn’t she have washed Jesus’ feet without using the perfume? That way she could have served both purposes—blessing her beloved rabbi and selling the perfume to help the poor.
This story shines a bright light on the fact that the “right thing to do” is not always clear. Surely our faith and ethics should draw us toward compassionate action toward the poor. As President Kennedy said in his inaugural address: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” As Christians we know that our faith calls us to a compassionate response to those struggling for the basics to survive. As human beings we are often moved to generosity by the suffering we see around us. We get that. We may not always respond to what our faith and conscience call us to do on behalf of the poor, but we understand that generosity to those with less than we have is a fundamental part of living a moral life.
In fact, if truth be told, we are sometimes better at caring for the anonymous poor than we are at caring for those closest to us. We can expend a great deal of energy denouncing the indignities on those who have too little, or volunteering to help those who need a helping hand, and in the process of being good Christians deny our affections and attention to our loved ones. That point is made clear in this paragraph from Mary Gordon’s novel, Final Payments. In the following quote we hear the novel’s protagonist, Isabel, suddenly coming to a new understanding of what the story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet means to her:
“It is one of the marvels of a
Catholic education that the impulse of a few words can bring whole narratives
to light with an immediacy and a clarity that are utterly absorbing. ‘The poor
you have always with you.’ I knew where Christ had said that: at the house of
Martha and Mary. Mary had opened a jar of ointment over Christ’s feet. [N]ard, I remembered. And she wiped his feet
with her hair. Judas had rebuked her; he had said that the ointment ought to be
sold for the poor. But,
And until that moment, climbing the dark stairs in a rage to my ugly room, it was a passage I had not understood. It seemed to justify to me the excesses of centuries of fat, tyrannical bankers. But now I understood. What Christ was saying, what he meant, was that the pleasures of that hair, that ointment, must be taken. Because the accidents of death would deprive us soon enough. We must not deprive ourselves, our loved ones, of the luxury of our extravagant affections. We must not try to second-guess death by refusing to love the ones we loved in favor of the anonymous poor. (Mary Gordon, Final Payments, Ballantine Books, 1979, pp. 298-299.)
The last lines of that quote have stuck with me all this week. “We must not deprive ourselves, our loved ones, of the luxury of our extravagant affections. We must not try to second-guess death by refusing to love the ones we loved in favor of the anonymous poor.” All week I have been asking myself, “Do I do this? Do I deprive myself and my loved ones of extravagant affections because I’m so focused on wanting to save the world?” And the answer, regrettably, is yes. I do this all of the time. Not because I’m a bad person. And not because I don’t love my family. I withhold the luxury of my extravagant affections because I too often give in to a set of faulty assumptions. Assumption one: the people I love know I love them, I don’t have to show them all of the time; Assumption two: the work I do is important and God wants me to focus on the people in the world who need my help; Assumption three: the moral life is simply about serving those in need, not lavishing my loved ones with affections.
And that is why Mary’s example in this text is worth our attention. In an act of extravagant love she anoints Jesus, her beloved rabbi who will soon be gone, and she does it by pouring out her most valued possession. Was this the right thing to do? Was it the moral thing to do? Judas’ question is not illegitimate, but I think it misses the point. Mary’s gift to her friend is full of love, grace, and blessing. It is generous and extravagant. And what could be wrong with that?
In the history of this church there have been hundreds, if not thousands of sermons admonishing us to care for the poor, to live simply so we will have more to share, and to dedicate our lives to advocacy on behalf of the most vulnerable people in our society. I pray there will be many more sermons in that vein in the years to come, and I intend to give a few of them myself. But today, in honor of Mary of Bethany, let me simply ask us: When was the last time we showed extravagant love to those closest to us? Such gestures are never frivolous or wasteful. Indeed, they are an indication that we understand the extravagance of God’s love to us.