Good morning…
“Dear Sue,” a loyal friend wrote yesterday. “You have been in my heart lately; with prayers for your Mom (and Dad) and for you as you stretch your own heart full circle. Today’s post from you with that wonderful jar image, and today’s message from Bishop Wright work together beautifully to illustrate the stark reality of our flawed and precious lives. All we grieve is an integral part of the journey. We have the perfect model for next steps in Jesus.”
******
April 4, 2025 Loss by Bishop Rob Wright
To grow up in Christ is to be able to face loss. We learn this at a dinner party. Jesus is there. Lazarus is there. He was dead, now he’s alive and eating dinner. Judas is there. He is a tragically conflicted man. Martha hosted and served. That’s what Martha loves to do. Mary is there. She’s at Jesus’ feet. Her devotion to Jesus makes people uncomfortable, then and now. She rubs Jesus’ feet with perfumed oil, because she knows in just a few days Jesus will be dead.
All the attendees knew Jesus didn’t have long to live. Still, each avoided the reality of this imminent loss in their own way: Lazarus with nostalgia. Judas with business. Martha with busyness. But not Mary, she acknowledged and faced the coming loss – it literally brought her closer to Jesus!
Fear, denial and refusal to acknowledge and accept loss is all around us. It’s in our politics, how we run our organizations and how we do family. We say we don’t want change, but it’s not change we fear, it’s the loss that change represents. Growing up in Christ is hostile to fear, denial, and the refusal of reality. And growing up in Christ is hostile to “suck it up-ism,” too!
Growing up in Christ acknowledges loss and grief because without its acknowledgment we aren’t engaged in real life. And if we’re not engaged in real life, the possibility of Christian maturity stalls, healing and innovation plateau and hope is anemic. To attempt to fend off reality is ultimately a foolish endeavor. Some things need to be fully relinquished.
Besides, real life is where Jesus does his best work. At the close of this dinner party, with a lynch mob assembling outside the door, what Mary embodied, Jesus now gives voice to: “…you do not always have me.” With those six words Jesus confirms the inevitable and sets his face toward the unavoidable. With those six words he invites the dinner party guests then, and us now, to walk with him through his loss of friends, certainty, dignity and even faith as a learning lab for our life.
******
Six days before the Passover festival, Jesus went to Bethany. That is where Lazarus lived, the man Jesus raised from death. There they had a dinner for Jesus. Martha served the food, and Lazarus was one of the people eating with Jesus. Mary brought in a pint of expensive perfume made of pure nard. She poured the perfume on Jesus’ feet. Then she wiped his feet with her hair. And the sweet smell from the perfume filled the whole house.
Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ followers, was there—the one who would later hand Jesus over to his enemies. Judas said, “That perfume was worth a full year’s pay. It should have been sold, and the money should have been given to the poor people.” But Judas did not really care about the poor. He said this because he was a thief. He was the one who kept the moneybag for the group of followers. And he often stole money from the bag.
Jesus answered, “Don’t stop her. It was right for her to save this perfume for today—the day for me to be prepared for burial. You will always have those who are poor with you. But you will not always have me” (John 12:1-8, ERV).
Processing the stark reality of our flawed and precious lives this Lent, what is one thing you are learning in the lab of life?
…Sue…
