Fifth Sunday of Lent

Philippians 3.4b-14; John 12.1-8

Turning our heart to God has been the enduring theme we've been thinking about during these weeks of Lent, the theme of repentance. We've looked at belief and doubt, and what it means to stand firm and keep on going in our repentance. Last weeks readings about the Prodigal Son and what St. Paul says about being a new creation when we are turned to God helped us go a bit deeper into what repentance means. And I think that this week's readings help us in the same way.

When we change in any way, whether it's to get rid of an old habit, or take on a new exercise regime or diet, or whether we move job or move house, there's a sense in which we leave the old behind. And that's always difficult. Often when we've made the move we can look back and think how good things were, how settled we were in that old life. The old life brought us many benefits of one kind or another. And even though the old life had its drawbacks here and there it suited us for a while. It was a bit like that with the Hebrews when they came out of Egypt and suddenly found themselves in the wilderness with all its deprivation. Even though they'd been hard pressed under Pharoah's task masters and suffered under a brutal regime, they looked back when things got hard for them again and with rose tinted spectacles thought how good things had been in the past. At least they had food and drink and shelter in the old life. So they tended to look back and put a rosy glow on even the bad stuff.

When St. Paul became a follower of Christ he found himself under all sorts of hardships and pressures, even from Jesus's other disciples from time to time. He writes about all his troubles in his letters. And he could look back and think how good things used to be in the past, especially how secure his place was in religion and in society. He was a Pharisee and a Roman citizen. So he was in the elite in both worlds; in both religious and secular societies. But he says an interesting and most important thing in what we've read this morning, in this letter to the Philippians. He says that no matter how good his old life was, none of it compares with what is promised by being a follower of Christ. In fact he says that he counts his former life as rubbish (our translation is being polite when it uses the word 'loss') compared to the value of knowing Jesus Christ. He wants to know the power of the resurrection of Jesus in his life and he'll not stop turning to Christ and following Him until he's reached that goal. It's interesting that he seems to have brought the same sort of zeal he had as a persecutor of Christ to being a follower of Christ. He wasn't going to let anything stop him or get in the way of him following Jesus Christ as fully and as faithfully as he possibly could. His dedication to Christ was total. The turning of Paul's heart to God through Jesus Christ was total.

There's a passion in that writing and in that approach; the passion of total dedication, the passion of the fearless crusader for Christ. In the passage we've read from St. John's gospel we see another sort of passion but a passion that also shows, I'd say, a total dedication and love. Mary has brought this costly perfume to anoint Jesus and does so in this very sensual way, anointing his feet then wiping them with her hair. You can guess the sorts of comments that people would make as they witness what's going on and especially from the disciples. Only one comment is recorded and that is the one made by Judas, but it doesn't need much imagination to know what the gossip would be like after this incident. And gossip always leads us away from the truth, always. That's why St. Paul puts gossip alongside murder in his list of sins. Gossip is one of the most effective tools of assassination. And what the gossip leads us away from here is this act that shows total love for and dedication to Jesus, that is the feminine balance if you like to the masculine protestations of St. Paul. Mary and Paul are both, equally and in their own ways totally dedicated to Jesus Christ. Both had put their former lives behind them, both counted their former lives as loss for the sake of following Jesus Christ.

Jesus is going to challenge us all very soon as we move closer to His death and resurrection over the next two weeks. He's going to challenge us to take up our own cross and follow Him. He's going to tell us that those who say they will follow Him, or are followers of His, are of no use to Him if they keep looking back. And it doesn't matter if that former life that we keep looking back to was a good life or a life filled with sin, whether it was a life of comfortable luxury or hard and deprived; what's important is the new life we talked about last week when we read that when we are 'in Christ', when we are baptised into His name then we are a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. When Jesus asks us to take up our cross and follow Him, He asks us to leave behind all that's gone before and start out on a new life with Him. And that new life is a life of total love and total dedication to Him, above and before all else; hearts turned totally to God in repentance.

We see Paul do it and we see Mary do it. If they can, we can, otherwise Jesus wouldn't ask us. But that will be the challenge for us as we travel with Jesus to the cross and beyond. Only in travelling it will we know if it's worthwhile. That's why it's a journey of faith.