There Will Always Be Enough Love If We Give It Generously

Monday of Holy Week

During the winter, I generally try to work out a few times a week just to maintain some semblance of health and fitness. I often ride a stationary bike in our basement and catch up on movies I’ve wanted to watch. One genre that I watch is action movies. Most of them follow a predictable pattern. The hero goes through a series of trials and tribulations at the hands of an adversary – which then usually culminates in a final showdown between them.

If Holy Week were an action film, we’d be moving close and closer to the showdown between Jesus and the forces that oppose him. He is now in Jerusalem for the Passover and has made his stand (on Palm Sunday) on behalf of the kin-dom. The authorities and religious leaders got his message loud and clear, and the gospel reading for the day would be like a flashback scene as to why the authorities want him gone.

But first, our first reading from Isaiah 42 – often known as the “Song of the Suffering Servant” – is a passage that we hear quoted in the Christian scriptures and came to be viewed by the early Christian community (who were Jewish) as speaking about Jesus. Isaiah 42 tells the story of a gentle and compassionate liberator who would free the people.

I just want to highlight a few verses from it.

Isaiah 42 opens with the words, “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased, Upon whom I have put my Spirit…” Does this sound familiar? These are the words we hear in Matthew 3 right after Jesus’ baptism and are meant to echo this passage.

The passage goes on to say that this liberator will “bring forth justice to the nations, not crying out, not shouting, not making his voice heard in the street. A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench…” The messiah spoken of  in this passage won’t be loud and boisterous – drawing a lot of attention and headlines. This messiah also won’t “break a bruised reed” or quench a “smoldering wick” – meaning that they will be a person who protects the vulnerable and attends to those barely holding on.

Finally they will be a non-violent freedom-fighter who is here to “open the eyes of the blind, bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.” We will hear these words echoed in Jesus’ mission statement in Luke 4 as he equates liberation with concrete acts of justice and raising the consciousness of the people.

Isaiah 42 is really an important passage for us to sit with, in part, because Jesus was seen in light of it. But, maybe more importantly, this was likely a passage that Jesus himself read and tried to embody in his own life. Which is why it might be important to just read slowly during Holy Week and ask ourselves, “What might this passage mean for me in my life now? What is this passage calling me to?”

In the gospel from John 12, Jesus is at a dinner at Martha and Mary’s house (where he had recently raised Lazarus), and Mary takes out a jar of expensive oil and anoints Jesus’ feet with her hair. Judas takes exception and says, “Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days’ wages [almost a year’s pay!] and given to the poor?” Jesus responds with an often quoted and easily distorted line from scripture, “Leave her alone…You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

It’s important to pause here for 2 reasons. First to explore Mary’s actions and Judas’ protest. And secondly to reflect on Jesus’ last line about the poor.

The gospel writer wants us to see and feel a distinct difference between Mary’s response and Judas’. I am not sure what Judas was responding to and/or why he said what he said (the gospel does indicate that maybe he was trying to be seen as generous but was really just being performative). Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt, he was probably thinking rationally about what could be done with the money from that perfume instead of “wasting” it on Jesus’ feet.

But Mary seems to understand the extravagance of God’s love in a way that Judas does not. Not only does she break social norms by letting her hair down in public and starts touching the feet of a man, she is giving back to Jesus what he has given her – a love that does not hold back. A love that does not calculate.  A love that crosses boundaries. A love that overflows. 

And Jesus does not refuse it! He lets himself take this love in. I have written before about how important it is for us to follow Jesus’ lead in this respect and let people pour into us as well. I know that I don’t do well with this, and it is a spiritual practice that I am trying to embrace. But Jesus leans in and models for us to just say, “Thank you!” when people love us, hold us up and care for us.

Judas, of course, says that he is concerned about the poor, and Jesus says that “the poor you will always have with you.” I have written more about this in other blogs, but here’s my take on the main point Jesus was making: be generous to who is in front of you. Jesus was in front of Mary, and so she tends to him. And tomorrow someone else will be in front of her, and she will have the opportunity to serve that person tomorrow.

Jesus is reminding us that the possibility of helping someone else does not supercede the actual helping of someone right in front of us. Yet this happens so often in our spiritual lives. We guard resources, we withhold love, we limit generosity for an undetermined future that may or may not arrive – leaving the person in front of us wanting. Jesus reminds us that there will always be enough energy, time, resources and love when we learn how to let them flow freely (remember the story of the loaves and fishes in all four gospels).

As we enter into this Holy Week, may we be on the lookout for who and what is right in front of us. May we respond with generosity – breaking social barriers if we must. And we need not announce our actions or try to make a big splash. We just need to humbly let our extravagant love flow out to those who might be barely holding on in our midst.