Mark 14: 1-11
Mark 14:1-11
Crowds and Remembering
Mobs, crowds and a plot to kill is what we read about in this story. Doesn’t that sound much like what you see and hear about when you watch the television news? We hear about mobs storming their countries capital. We see others taking down statues and burning cities. We hear about protest groups fighting the COVID restrictions, mask mandates and vaccines. We hear about undercover mobs that control and plot against the ordinary man and woman and their families in conspiracy theories. We also get two conflicting messages that adds to the confusion. The one is that society is too divided and individualistic. We should stand together and seek unity. The other is that crowds are dangerous. They lure innocent well meaning people to do illegal things with dire consequences. They make us sick even when we gather for prayer. They make intelligent people dumb enough to drink the cool aid and to become puppets of evil people.
The result of all this is that people get dismally confused. Unsure when to follow their own mind and when to listen to the wisdom of the crowds. Unsure who to trust, who to join and what to protest. Unsure what group’s version of the truth to embrace and what groups to be rejected. This confusion paralyses people and turn them into disgruntled Facebook warriors. People full of hate and opinions that they spew on the internet for reaction. The price of this option is high to individuals and society. We lose community, trust, engagement and authenticity. We become lonely and isolated clinging to a poor substitute to true intimacy and love with social media.
In this story we read, it looks like the mobs win. A mob is a group that plots violence against someone. The mob here plotted violence, timed it right and their plot succeeded because we know Jesus ended up on a cross. At the end of this story, we read that even one of Jesus’s closest allies break ranks with Him. It almost seems like this story tells us that the bad guys, who always think they are actually the good guys, wins at the end. It often feels like that when we watch the news also-that the bad guys win. We don’t like that. We want to be the good guys and we want to win.
But if we make this conclusion that the bad guys win, we omit an especially important part of this story. An unnamed woman enters the scene, not with power but in vulnerability. Not manipulative and secretive but humbly yet openly. She does something that the crowds think is foolishness-Jesus’s disciples express outrage at what she does. She is labeled as a time and money waster.
But because we know the Easter Story, we also know that Jesus’s story doesn’t end in defeat on the cross. It ends in victory and glory and He gets to have the last say over even death. We know what Jesus says about this woman is what weighs more. And Jesus vindicates her. He says that she will be remembered honorably in contrast with the mob who will be remembered only with distain.
This must mean that this woman and what she does should in some way be emulated by people who live in a world full of vocal crowds with strong opinions. Let’s see what she can teach us…How do we beat the crowds? How do we join the right ones? How do we stay out of the wrong ones? How do we win the culture wars Jesus’s way?
Choose proximity and presence over opinion
What we all do is this: We crown some people good people in our minds and we declare other villains. We base these labels solely on the opinions we happened to bump into. We cannot help to do this by default and it only becomes a problem when we do not go further. When we make up our minds and become closed to deeper understanding and firsthand experience. If we do this the heroes in our lives can commit any atrocities and we will still think of them and trust them like heroes. And the villains can change dramatically and do extraordinarily good things but we will remain closed to receive that from them. And both will make us feel good about ourselves but no one will really change us for the better.
The Bible always reminds us that all have fallen short of the glory of God. That people we see as good also fail morally and make mistakes and people we see as bad also sometimes do very unselfish and virtuous deeds. But there is also another way that can help us to balance the scales. It is called physical presence or proximity. This is one of the areas where the woman’s behaviour contrasts that of the mobs. They remained distant and in conversation only with those that agreed with their opinion of Jesus. She put her body in the presence of Jesus. Maybe she also first got attracted to Jesus by what she heard second hand. But she progressed and took the risk to see for herself.
Put your body the best you can in situations and among people you believe Jesus to be at work. It is always risky. It is always easier to watch from a distance so that you can opt out or move closer when you change your mind. But minds doesn’t get chanced by distance. It gets changed by proximity, engagement and spending time in the presence of someone. I know that it is difficult to do that during this pandemic but may this pandemic experience and the longing we feel for physical proximity and engagement, increase our resolve to commit to it when the pandemic is over.
The ones who based their opinions of Jesus on the crowds turned out to be wrong about him. The one who based her devotion on more than opinions but first-hand experience and her proximity to Him and the space He found Himself in, turned out to be right about Him. Don’t like or dislike Jesus based on the opinions of people you like or dislike. Jesus once asked his disciples who the people say He is. But then he asked them the more important question: Who do you say I am? Psalm 34 says; O come taste and see that the Lord is great. It is a individual as well as a communal invitation. Taste, not reading reviews of others that have tasted! A testimony can only be true and of value when it is personal yet also in community.
Choose sacrifice and service over Safety and popularity
What you sacrifice to, tells what you worship. The trail of your time, money and thoughts leads to the gods you worship. The chief priests claimed to serve God, but they were fixated on the crowds. How the crowds would react and what they wanted, determined their actions. They were also fixated on their own comfort and safety in doing this. If Jesus really was God’s enemy, then surely he would have kept the crowds from turning on them. And if he chose not to, shouldn’t they have made the sacrifice they were supposed to make, joyfully?
With the woman it was way different. Anything you own that is worth a year’s wages is something you treasure and safeguard. Especially if you are a woman at a time where it wasn’t easy for a woman to earn income. In the book of Ester, we read how women in line to be chosen as queens were pampered and treated with expensive oil. This woman sacrificed what was precious and personal and she did so lavishly and generously. She shows in so many ways what true sacrifice and service looks like. It must in some way look and feel like giving away a part of your life. It also involved risk. She must have been aware beforehand that what she did and the way she did it would be looked down upon by others.
What you sacrifice will either be overlooked or looked down upon. Therefore, you are set up for disaster if you value your sacrifice for Jesus based on how well others will think of you and reward you for it. You must value it according to how precious to Jesus it is. Sacrifices feel worthwhile when they are based on a focus on what it would mean to God instead of how it would be received by people.
It is truly what we give away by putting it in God’s hands that makes us rich. What we cling to, what we do not put in Jesus hands, works against his kingdom and ultimately also against our well-being.
I can lose everything if I sacrifice! Yes, but we also cannot love without sacrificing and taking that risk. And when the sacrifice is for Jesus it might still be scary, but it will always bring intimacy, the kind that is more precious than any sacrifice we ever make. You cannot lose with God.
Being For…more than being against
All people have things and people that do things that they are against. But we are in trouble if we are driven and defined by what we are against more than what we are for. And it seems to be popular to identify mostly by what you are against rather than by what you are for. The only thing we achieve when everybody does that is that we all end up mad at each other.
In every story there are round characters and flat characters. Round characters are characters that develop in their character, characters that are being transformed for the better. Flat characters are characters that remains untouched and untransformed by what transpires. The chief priests in spite of their elevated status, comes from this story as flat characters. They were against Jesus. It was the time of the feast of the unleavened bread. A time where one reminded oneself what you were for and more importantly, what God was for. Priest’s job was to remind people of what is good and worthy, not to be fixated on what and who they are against.
Of course, your life story is one where you want to be identified as a round character at the end. You want people who look at your life story to say this man or woman changed for the better through all the challenges, joys, heartaches and triumphs of his/her life. So what makes one a round or a flat character? One thing is that round characters focus on what and who they are for in stead of what and who they are against. And when it comes to people it is dangerous to be for or against them because as I have said the ones you are against might surprise you and the ones you are for might disappoint you. But Jesus is the person where it is ok to be for. When I am for Jesus, the person, he shows me what things to be for.
Somebody who is against racism might be little different from somebody that is a racist. But somebody that is for making friends from all backgrounds is way different and better than them both. I could be vocally against greed and yet fail to be generous. I could be in theory against exclusion and yet not practice hospitality. I could be against the forces of darkness…and yet keep my light hidden. Be very careful of people that are so disgruntled and against things, that you can hardly gather from their words and deeds what they are for.
In the movie Chocolate the pastor who was always told what to preach decided to be courageous enough to say what he feels God has put on his heart to say. He said the following in his sermon.
“I think we can’t go around…measuring our goodness by what we don’t do…
by what we deny ourselves…
what we resist…
and who we exclude.
I think we’ve got to measure goodness …
by what we embrace…
what we create…
and who we include.”
Don’t fixate on how you can defeat the enemy. Fixate on how you can lift Jesus up and how he defeated the enemy (and you will do both.)
Close
The good news of this story is that the bad plans of the priests could not outwit the good and bigger plan of God. Also, the huge sacrifice of this woman was met and raised by the much greater and more precious sacrifice Jesus was to make on the cross shortly after.
The bad against you and in you and how it plots for your demise still cannot outwit the good plans God have for you. And the sacrifices you make for God has already been matched and exceeded by the one Jesus made and his grace for you.
The feast of the unleaven bread was all about remembering. As people celebrated God’s saving acts in history, they remembered that God is good and celebrated that He still provides for them. As they remembered the were also re-membered as a body of God’s people, Israel. Jesus was to confirm and enrich this feast and what it says about God in a -way nobody could even imagine. And remembering Jesus and his sacrifice at Easter helps us to be re-membered as part of his bigger and better body, the church. And whatever other crowd you support and listen to the church is the one you want to stick with.
Remember that.
Amen
Gabriel J Snyman
March 28th 2021