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Judas Iscariot, as revealed in the gospels, is an enigma. In the Gospel of John, Jesus addressed the twelve disciples and said that one of them, Judas, was a devil.
But in the Gospel of Luke within the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus addressed him as a friend. Within the Gnostic Gospel of Judas,
although Judas Iscariot is the one who betrays Jesus, he is also the main character and hero of the gospel. He says to Jesus, "I know who you are
and where you have come from...And I am not worthy to utter the name of the one who has sent you." And in today's reading
although he is described as a thief who stole from the common purse, when he witnesses what appears to be a waste of good money,
he advocates on behalf of the underprivileged, saying a much better use would have been to give the money to the poor. It's really not an unusual statement at all.
It's the sort of thing I would expect the Treasurer of any Board of Directors to say. Treasurers who live close to the church budget
have a much keener sense of where funds need to go. And so when someone designates an offering to be used to redecorate the Sunday School room,
the Treasurer can usually be seen grinding her teeth in frustration because she feels a better use for the money might be to pay the electricity bill. Treasurer's are like that.
They tend to be very frugal and will usually be heard to protest what appears to be the frivolous use of the church's money. And Judas Iscariot was no exception.
In this morning's text, Jesus is hanging out at the home of his good friends, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus just a verse or two after the raising of Lazarus from the dead.
Martha, as usual, is making sure everyone's needs are taken care of. Lazarus is probably still trying to figure out what to do with his second chance on life.
But when Mary enters the scene, she causes quite the controversy. She carries with her a bottle of costly imported perfume made from the spikenard flower
which grows in the Himalaya Mountains. It’s not just a small one-ounce bottle like today's Clive Christian No. 1, which sells for a whopping $2,000.
No, it's a pound of the stuff, with a price tag attached to it that would equal an entire year's salary! And she breaks open this liquid gold
and pours it all over Jesus’ feet, of all things, and then in a bold and *** display, wipes his feet down with her hair. Whether this was an act of divine worship
or a demonstration of gratitude for bringing her brother back to life, no one knows for sure. What we can be sure of is that it was an act of love.
But surely, considering the crowds of followers he attracted, Jesus would have been accustomed to passionate displays of affection like this one. And considering how, with his own words,
he proclaimed his earthly mission to address the needs of the poor and oppressed, why would he reject Judas's seemingly unselfish plan for the money to go to the poor and, instead,
accept Mary's sensual display of intimacy? Well, if we realize that it must have taken a very, very long time for Mary to acquire enough money to purchase the perfume in the first place,
I think we may have a clue. She didn't just reach into her closet and grab hold of some stuff she had bought at the market just the week before.
Mary must have scraped and saved for years and years for this moment. Whether or not Judas or anyone else in the room approved of Mary's behavior,
her actions were anything but casual or offhand. I imagine this prophetic moment to be the result of years of planning and strategizing and even more years of scrimping and saving.
Both Judas's and Mary's use of the money were honorable. Mary's idea was to use the money for an act gratitude and worship, anointing Jesus in a prophetic act,
giving notice of his impending death. Judas's idea was to feed the hungry and tend to the needs of the poor and impoverished population.
The defining difference between the two is Mary’s action reflected her life mission and not anyone else's. As noble as it would have been to use the money to feed the hungry,
that was not Mary's life mission. She knew what she had been created for, and it was to honor Jesus. Judas wanted to impose his own mission upon Mary and that's just not the way it works.
In his book, "Enough," Adam Hamilton talks about the idea of living toward what we have been created for. He describes how Barbara Glanz,
a motivational speaker who conducts workshops for large companies, one day was speaking at an event for the employees of a grocery store chain.
She talked to them about how they saw their life purpose, suggesting that their work was more than stocking shelves or ringing up customers' food purchases or delivering supplies.
She told them that every person they met was an opportunity to bless someone, to live out a higher calling or mission. One of the employees, nineteen-year-old Johnny,
who had Down syndrome, took her words to heart. He went home and tried to think of ways he could be a blessing to others. Finally, he came up with a plan.
Each night he would search the internet for a positive saying that would encourage people. Then he would print out 300 copies and carefully cut the saying into individual strips.
The next day, he would put one of the sayings into the grocery bag of each of his customers while telling them, "I put a saying in your bag. I hope it helps you have a good day.
Thanks for coming here." A month later, the manager noticed that Johnny's line was much longer than the others. Even when he announced
that there was no waiting in lines 2 and 3, no one budged. People wanted Johnny to be their bag boy. He touched them and filled them with hope. Johnny got it.
He was pursuing a mission that was bigger than his personal satisfaction. In this morning's text Mary has also gotten it. She was willing to invest her money
into saving toward something bigger than her own satisfaction. In his book, Hamilton asks readers, "What about each of us? Are we pursuing a mission
that is bigger than our personal satisfaction? Can we articulate this mission and its relationship to our faith? [And] does the allocation of our time and money reflect that mission?"
He points out that "money should never be an end in itself. Rather, it should be a means for accomplishing an end – specifically, for accomplishing our life purpose."
Each of us has a mission in life. We may not know what it is, but we have one. Each of us is called to be a blessing to others. How we do that varies from one person to another.
We have a life purpose that is greater than our own self-interests, and how we spend our God-given resources reflects our understanding and commitment to this life purpose or mission.
In his book, Hamilton gives some guidance to readers to help them discern how they can use their time and finances to accomplish their own life purpose. But from the book's outset,
he talks about the need to make this a personal commitment and not give into the temptation to judge others, as Judas judged Mary in this morning's text.
He says, "We are in a position to judge only ourselves. We know how much money we make and how much we give a way. We know how much we may need something
or how much we may not. We know when it's okay to splurge and buy something we don't really need because there is balance in our lives,
and we know when it's not okay. We know these things about ourselves," he writes; "we do not know them about anyone else – even though we may think we do."
And so my message for you today is to spend some time – maybe with the guidance of this book I've mentioned – to discover your life purpose
and take a look at whether or not the way you spend your time and money is a reflection of that life purpose. Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
And I believe that is true. It was true for Mary in this morning’s text. And Jesus was honored by that and accepted her gift, as a result.
I think it is just as true for you and for me today. May you find joy in how you are called to bless others. And may the way you use your resources reflect that calling. Amen.