How many of you have DVD players? I got one recently, and I entered a new world of movie-watching that I never dreamed possible. If you think it doesn’t make any difference whether you get a movie on VHS tape or a DVD, then you don’t know that the DVD version has special features you can access in addition to playing the movie. Some have mini-documentaries on the topics of the films. They have subtitles in other languages available at the press of a button. Some have interviews with actors, or with the real-life people the actors are portraying.

One feature is the director’s commentary. This feature plays the movie from the beginning, but with a voice-over of the director making remarks on the decisions about the film, “Oh, we shot this because . . .,” or “notice the lighting in this scene,” and so on. It can be very annoying after a while, and my problem is that once I turn that feature on, I have no idea how to turn it off. It’s like working with a computer—sometimes you set something accidentally, you have no idea how to turn it off, and the best thing you can do is shut the entire machine down, and hope when you turn it back on, that setting will be un-set.

When we read the Gospel of John, we’re getting more than just the story, and more than just the events described the way they are in the other gospels. John is the director of this version, and he puts in his commentary in careful detail. [this concept adapted and the following few paras directly from Thomas G. Long, “Gospel Sound Track” The Christian Century, March 14, 2001]

Notice the whispered asides. "Look closely,” John says in the beginning of the scene, "there’s Lazarus! He was raised from the dead in the last scene." Or he anticipates the dialogue, "Keep your eye on Judas! He’s about to betray Jesus! Judas talks a good talk, but everything about the way we shot this scene emphasizes that he’s the villain."

Do we really need this voice behind us constantly anticipating every plot move? Does the director think we’re not going to understand the great themes of his work?

John wants to make sure we get the themes and the messages that the scenes portray. According to John, we need to be able to look at events unfolding around us but also to look through them, above them and beneath them to perceive what the story is really about. The wine is in the water, the light is in the darkness, the Word is in the flesh.

John thinks we need two sound tracks: one to give the basic story and the other to explain God’s deepest truth about the story.

John wants us to go to this ordinary dinner party in Bethany, but not to miss the hint of resurrection we can see in Lazarus, who just happens to be present.

John wants us to hear Judas’s pious remarks about caring for the poor but also to notice in his words the deceit that lurks so cleverly in every human heart.

He wants us to see Mary not just as a waitress but as a prophet. He wants us to see her anointing of Jesus not as a mere impulse of emotion, but as a costly act of worship. Jesus is not merely eating and drinking with friends -- he is the lamb at the Passover feast, and John wants us to smell the fragrance of the perfume that fills the house as the aroma of impending death.

And we are invited to do the same. Living as Christians is an invitation to have a sacred commentary running throughout all of life. We can read beyond the ordinary scenes and characters to the great themes of the kingdom of God. There is nothing accidental or insignificant about the lighting or the costumes or the perspective of each scene. Everyday places and circumstances become profound scenes of extravagant love, humility, generosity, if our settings are tuned to the explanations the Gospel provides for our lives. If we listen for the Director’s commentary, we hear themes and purpose that we don’t want to miss.

It would be so much easier to explain this story away. It is a unique event. We don’t sit at the feet of a real physical Jesus. We are not being called to go out and spend the price of a new car on something that ends up being only decorative, or symbolic. Are we?? John Calvin, the great pastor and teacher of the Reformation, has a miserable time interpreting this scene in light of the issues of his day. While trying to condemn the excesses of the Roman church and simplify worship, . . . well, let’s just say this passage doesn’t help. . . . uhhh, I guess that was just a one-time thing.(clearing his throat)

Even Jesus seems to agree. The poor will always be with you, but I’m here for a short time. And since you and I missed that time in history, there’s no way to recapture what happened between Mary and Jesus, so it doesn’t mean much for us.

This is a tough statement from Jesus: the poor will always be with us . . . so we shouldn’t care about whether or not 300 denarii are spent towards their relief? That doesn’t sound like the Jesus I thought I knew. What Judas says is more like what we’re expecting. Judas spouts all the right words; at first glance he appears to truly care about the poor.

But Judas is using “those poor people” as a smokescreen. He doesn’t necessarily care about them; I think he’s just uncomfortable with what Mary’s doing. He’s using what he thinks is a safe sentiment to avoid what’s going on right in front of him that is decidedly unsafe—one person making a passionate, intimate gesture towards another person. It’s embarrassing to witness this real passion, real humility, real extravagance. Wouldn’t you be embarrassed if I started doing something weird with my hair in the middle of our service?

Jesus knows that Judas doesn’t get it, and I think Jesus is saying that for people like Judas, there will always be “those people” to talk about. There will always be “the poor,” or “the criminal,” or “the foreigners,” or “the liberals,” or “those people.”

But in the kingdom of God, the person right in front of you may inspire in you so clearly God’s love and truth that you can no longer speak or think in polite generalities about “those people.” Rather, you may be moved to the kind of passionate acts that would get you thrown out of any respectable person’s house.

One week after the odor of the prodigal son’s pig pen has dissipated, and our nostrils are now filled with the stench of a whole jar of perfume spilled—his waste and extravagance have been trumped once more by another prodigal act.

Mary is responding to God incarnate, to his own words about what his own suffering and death will mean for all people when he is arrested, beaten, and executed on a cross in the very near future. These are not polite generalities to Mary—she has experienced quite recently the grief at her brother’s death and the indescribable response she must have felt when he returned to life at the word of her friend Jesus. She can’t hear Jesus talk about his own death in generalities. It is real and incarnate right in front of her.

The poor will always be with us. And we will always be tempted to respond to them as “the poor.” [arm’s length] Jesus Christ is always before us, in our presence. And we will always be tempted to respond to him with our religious generalities and from a sensible distance.

We have been offered the chance to live in the kingdom of God and have an intimate, passionate relationship with the Way, the Truth and the Life, the Living Water, the True Vine. We have chances all the time to respond to God in the flesh.

I invite you, as we approach another year’s observance of the death and resurrection of our Lord to be present, really up close and personal, with the One who is present, up close, and personal with us. Amen.

(Comments to Elaine at elainebowen02@YAHOO.COM.)
Melrose Carmel Presbyterian Church
Melrose Park, PA (suburb of Philly)