AN ACT OF PURE LOVE

There is of course a lot in what Judas says. In today’s Gospel, John tells the story of how, at the dinner table in Bethany, just before the events of what we call Holy Week, Mary took a flask of expensive perfume, poured it over Jesus’s feet and wiped them with her hair.

We are told that the perfume was made of “pure nard”. Nard, the dictionary tells me, comes from the root of a variety of the valerian plant which grows in the Himalayas. Considering the cost and difficulty of transport in the ancient world, it’s hardly surprising that a pound of this perfume was worth three hundred denarii, something like a year’s wages.

So there was quite a lot in what Judas said:

Why was this perfume not sold...and the money given to the poor?

Mary’s dramatic gesture was indeed a preposterous waste of money.

But Jesus praises her for this waste:

Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.

And he goes on to make a remark about the poor that sounds almost rather dismissive:

You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.

This dispute is in fact a rather familiar one. I’ve just got back from a church meeting in Moscow. I haven’t been to Moscow for over ten years, and as everyone told me, it’s changed a lot. One of the most striking changes is all the work of church building and church restoration that has gone on. Everywhere in the city centre you see the golden domes of traditional Russian Orthodox churches, gleaming this week in brilliant spring sunshine.

It’s quite a stunning sight, and you can’t help wondering at the beauty of this new Moscow skyline; you can’t but be impressed by this extraordinary renaissance of Russian church architecture. But at the same time I found myself having distinctly mixed feelings about it and indeed conducting quite a debate with myself.

Here, certainly, is a church which is not afraid of what, in Western Europe, we would tend to call triumphalism.

Yes, it’s wonderful to see the revival of Russia’s deep-seated Christian heritage after a long period of marginalisation and persecution. But what does this expenditure of billions on splendid, church buildings say to a society that is now so marked by the gulf between the poor and the super-rich?

Does all this church-building proceed from genuine religious devotion, or is it also about the Church’s desire to re-establish its influence and its visibility in Russian society? And, considering that much of the money seems to have come from those who enriched themselves in the chaotic transition from communism to unrestrained market capitalism, is it about the need of the wealthy to atone for their misdeeds and to ensure that they will be remembered for good?

These were the questions buzzing round in my head as I returned from Moscow. And then I looked at today’s Gospel and remembered that whenever the Church spends money on art and beauty, people often react rather as I had, and object “why wasn’t this money given to the poor”. And the Church often points to this passage a justification for spending money on things which are not strictly necessary.

So what is this passage really saying?

Mary’s anointing of Jesus with a pound of pure nard is in fact an act of pure love. You can tell that because her gesture has about it many of the characteristic features of love: love is reckless, absurd even; and it does not count the cost.

Jesus receives Mary’s love in the spirit in which it is given. He has no time for the mean-spiritedness of Judas, his calculating attitude, his pure utilitarianism. Judas, in fact, is so like we are today in our materialistic society. He has carried out a cost-benefit analysis of Mary’s act and found it to be totally unjustified on any rational assessment.

Mind you, Jesus certainly isn’t saying that helping the poor doesn’t really matter that much. Sometimes this passage is misused to suggest that we should just sit back and accept the inevitability of poverty; that there isn’t really much we can do about it because poverty is always with us. In the preparatory meetings for the European Ecumenical Assembly in Sibiu, in Romania later this year, some delegates have apparently been arguing that the draft documents say too much about poverty, and that they should concentrate more on “spiritual” matters; and they’ve been trotting out this saying of Jesus that “the poor are always with you”.

I’m sure that’s a misuse of this text. What Jesus surely meant was that helping the poor is a permanent, ongoing Christian duty; but that doesn’t mean that it’s all you should ever do with your surplus. Sometimes, the sheer wastefulness of the loving gesture is justified. You can’t legislate for that kind of thing, you can’t lay down in advance when it’s justified and when it isn’t, but you can recognise a gesture of love when you see one, and you can interpret it as a kind of “sign” (as St John would have put it), a sign of the love of God.

The absurdity of gestures of love and devotion corresponds to the sheer recklessness of God’s love for us:

God, whose generosity is beyond all bounds;

God who gives good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over;

God, who allowed his only Son to give everything for us, even unto death.

It’s the same message in today’s Epistle. Rationally, Paul had all he needed, but he’s prepared to write it all off for the sake of knowing Christ. This passage from Philippians breathes the same spirit of “unreasonableness”, of being prepared to give everything for the love of Christ.

Lovers know about that sort of recklessness. Those who love are oblivious to rational calculation, they care nothing for the careful totting up of benefits and costs, they will not listen to those who ask whether their love is worth the price they have to pay for it. Literature and novels, but also real life, are full of the sacrifices people will make for the sake of love.

Well, I still don’t quite know where all this leaves those superbly expensive Russian churches, but I think the point is that everything depends on the spirit in which costly gestures are made.

To the extent that they are tainted by worldliness, by a desire to draw attention to ourselves, to make our mark on human society, they are worth little. But if they are truly motivated by love and adoration and gratitude, then certainly they are approved by Jesus.

St Paul said it all, really, in 1 Corinthians 13:

If I give all I possess to the poor...but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Whereas, if we are prepared to love, then we shall gain everything.