[Uucf-bible] ***SPAM*** commentary on weekly lectionary excerpt from John:

[RevRonRobinson at aol.com]

As part of a recent emailing from my local church about some of our  
upcoming activities and issues in our wider community here, I wove in a  
commentary from the lectionary reading for this coming week from the gospel of  John 
about Jesus, Judas, Mary, Lazarus, and Martha. I thought I would pass it on  
for Lenten reflection and conversation here. Please feel free to share on 
this,  on the virtual monastery reflections and archives on the website for 
the UUCF  and to pass on others you come across here as well as we move 
through Lent and  toward Holy Week and Eastertide. 
 
If you would like to read more from which this following excerpt came  you 
can go to my Planting God Communities blog at 
_www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com_ (http://www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com)   or to 
receive emails from our church just let me know. 
 
One of the common texts from scripture for this coming Sunday has in  part 
this, from the gospel of John: 
"Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus,  
whom he had raised from the dead. 2There they gave a dinner  for him. Martha 
served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3Mary took a 
pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed  Jesus’ feet, and wiped 
them with her hair. The house was filled with the  fragrance of the perfume. 
4But Judas Iscariot, one of his  disciples (the one who was about to betray 
him), said, 5“Why  was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and 
the money given to the  poor?” 6(He said this not because he cared about the 
poor,  but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal 
what was  put into it.) 7Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it  so 
that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8You  always have the poor 
with you, but you do not always have me.”"
 
So there you have human nature, I suppose. There is Lazarus, raised from  
the dead, sitting at the table with Jesus, eating with Jesus, in his own 
home,  but no one says a word about how amazing that is, no one is still going 
on and  on about this transformation, this renewal (it isnt a resurrection of 
course,  not in the same vein as Jesus' later, but that's another 
commentary); it is  still so amazing and yet everything has gone back to the relative 
status quo so  quickly. Maybe it is one of those cases where to look at the 
transformed one, to  notice her or him, would put your own need of 
transformation into stark relief  and you can't stand that; maybe we just have to 
have that status quo,  homeostasis, restored. Lazarus quietly a miracle in the 
presence of the miracle  maker and what does our Judas side fixate on, to 
complain about? Mary's  hospitality to Jesus. Can't have that either. 
 
I know there is that troubling passage. Jesus has a way of troubling  
things. The poor will always be with you; but he won't be. That social justice  
side of us, God forbid I sound like Glenn Beck, wants to say thank god for 
Judas  naming the elephant in the room; but then the even quieter side of us 
wants to  say, there goes Judas again; yes we know there is always something 
we need to do  better for others, but there are times when the best, most 
immediate way you can  change the world is to fill that world with the 
fragrance of perfume,  unexpectedly (especially if you have a still raised from the 
dead Lazarus in the  room, the real elephant in the room nobody is 
mentioning). Hmm, like putting  your own oxygen mask on first before you can help 
others breathe in emergencies? 
 
So here in our own area where we live and be the church in the poorest  
unhealthiest part of town we have "the poor" with us always; someone gets a  
job and moves on somewhere else into their own place and their rented house 
goes  empty then someone else moves in, paying or not. It is so easy to think 
of  people as "the poor" without names and histories attached; I don't want 
to pick  on poor Judas, Lord knows history has done that enough, but he 
reminds me of  someone making a site visit here where we are, talking of 
statistics and  stereotypes. He reminds me of me too. Meanwhile there are the 
miracles with  names, Lazarus and Jesus, one getting attention and one being 
ignored, in his  own home. 
 
Funny what people see and don't see, fixate on and ignore..... 
 
....We had a young man shot in front of the Chicken Hut in a crowd of  
people out after 2 am when the dance clubs close, and that is tragic, and mob  
mentality set in and people wouldn't talk to police, again, and got in the 
way  of the first responders, again, and much was made in the media and online 
of  people walking up to place their orders with him still lying wounded or 
dead.  And that shouldn't be. And yet that is what people see instead of 
seeing what  the people here see and don't see everyday. You have heard me 
before: a litany  of things absent, so that the Chicken Hut, small as it is, 
becomes a gathering  place for young people who want to continue being 
together but have no where  else to go; Lord knows all the community centers we 
just closed in our lowest  income areas couldn't be opened and adopted by 
churches and businesses to  offer midnight basketball, a place to crash, etc. 
There are no movie theaters,  few if any places like Chicken Hut to go to so 
that the one place gets the crush  of people, and it isn't like they could 
have gone home and ordered in pizza to  unwind cause you can't get pizza 
delivery. But the commentators don't see all  that, or all the other aspects of 
the lives of those making bad decisions for  sure. Did I just call them Judas? 
Sorry Judas.
 
 The attitude is that if you are living here in the first place you  get 
what you deserve; if you are out on Memorial Drive on the southside at that  
time and something like that happens it is a terrible commentary on society; 
but  when it happens here, well then it is a commentary on the individuals 
involved  and doesn't have anything to do with society because that's what 
they get for  living here; the goal is often to help people get on their feet 
so they can  high-tail it to the other side of town or the suburbs, onward 
and upward, let  those behind suffer because they didn't get on their feet 
fast enough. It is one  of the stories of the history of how this zipcode 
became to be struggling and  abandoned. It is one of the reason why we have 
added a Fourth R to our list of  the 3Rs of Community Development and Spiritual 
Life: remember the original 3Rs  are relocation, redistribution, and 
reconciliation; the fourth R is Retention;  as we improve the community we do it 
with and for the residents who are here,  and so they won't have to move even 
when the neighborhoods are raised from the  dead around them. 
 
Even Jesus would soon, he was saying, be one whom they would not see  
anymore. Pay attention. Jesus was a peasant, as poor as they come, without even  
a home of his own so he made his home with others. Pay attention. See him. 
Jesus  saw the Roman crosses lining the roads around Bethany, talk about your 
fragile  gang-ridden neighborhoods with occupying forces and not much 
property value; he  knew he could be gone at any moment, and so did Mary, who 
brought a glimpse of  anointing to Jesus while he was alive, a small measure of 
the healing and  anointing and life he had helped initiate and brought 
everywhere he went. Judas  might have spread the value of that perfume around to 
so many of "the poor" that  none got but a fractional amount so he could 
say he had helped such and such a  number of "the poor." Mary started with the 
poor in front of her who had a name  and a need. Hers was a miracle too, 
such a fragrance, such an act. Lazarus was a  miracle. Jesus was a miracle. 
And don't forget to see Martha serving up the  miracle in the background; no 
complaints from her in this story; I like to think  of her as in her groove 
here, like some Top Chef, living out her passion feeding  and orchestrating 
the community life happening all around her. 
 
So many miracles, it's hard to see them all. So many miracles, it's hard to 
 see at all. 
 
blessings, Ron Robinson, Turley, OK, The LivingRoom Church at and as A  
Third Place Center