Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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On International Sunday we remember the immortal words of the Kingston Trio:

They're rioting in Africa.
There's strife in Iran.
There's hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.

The French hate the Germans; the Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs. South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don't like anybody very much.

Sad to say, that song, thirty or forty years old, is fresh as a daisy -- could have been written yesterday. Change a few names: take out Iran, South Africa, Poland, perhaps. Add Bosnia, and northern Ireland, Rwanda and the rest of west Africa, and now Kosovo. Add a middle school in Jonesville, Arkansas, and certain areas of our major cities.

We Can't Seem to Escape Fear and Violence and Revenge

Somewhere in the music of the skies is a tuneless, tragic dirge, the bluest of all the blues songs, about how people can't stop hating and hurting each other -- about how we can't get along, about how national, racial, religious, and political differences (magnified by those who would exploit them) trap us in endless cycles of fear and violence and revenge. There has never been a time when all the peoples of the earth were at peace.

We Need to Learn to Love Extravagently

Cutting across all this endless anger and blood, and seemingly oblivious to it all, is this beautiful story of Mary with her perfume. (This is not Mary the mother of Jesus, nor Mary Magdalene. This is the Mary who lived in Bethany, outside Jerusalem, with her sister, Martha -- Martha, you remember, who insisted on washing dishes in the kitchen while the Son of God was in her living room -- and her brother, Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead. They are friends of Jesus.) In this story Jesus is visiting their home one last time, on route to his death in Jerusalem.

Mary appears suddenly and dumps a whole bottle of Channel No. 5, on Jesus' feet -- so much of it, John says, that its fragrance filled the whole house, and then she leaned way down and wiped his feet with her hair. By other accounts, a woman washes Jesus feet not with perfume but with her tears -- either way, something that shouldn't be wasted. Mary is criticized, of course, by the men (especially by Judas, as John tells the story). Men don't think with their hearts as women. They said what she did was recklessly wasteful. Jesus saw it as recklessly generous (like the love God has for us). He says to the grumbling disciples, "Knock it off! Can't you see she is anointing me for my burial?"

Like loved ones today, spending too much on a funeral, with grief and love clouding their judgement, and reasoning that this will be the last chance to express their affection, and they splurge in love -- as God does for us. Mary knows that her great friend Jesus will soon die. (She, apparently, has been listening to him, about what is to come, while the men, apparently, are still in denial.) She will never again sit at his feet, nor hear his voice, nor have him as a guest in her home. So she says her tearful goodbye in a wonderful way. (And, bless her enormous soul, she has been remembered down through the centuries for her deed.) She goes and gets the most precious thing in the house, and pours it over him. What good will it be to her once he's gone?

We Don't Seem to be Able to Do it All by Ourselves

How can we learn to express our love like that? It sets us up for criticism -- it raises up fears within and foes without. We think love comes naturally, just as we think parenting comes naturally -- until we try it. We're good people, aren't we? We should be able to love! We should be able, as citizens of different countries and members of different races, to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks, and not study war any more, but when we try it (try to overcome our differences) is it harder than we imagined.

The human race has been sliced and diced, chopped and cut into so many groups and sub-groups, that the differences between us have been blurred. We don't know who not to like -- a terrible predicament! Am I an African American first, or a woman first (in which case I have a few things to say about African American men)? Am I a U.S. citizen, or am I still fundamentally a person of my homeland? Is it my age that makes me truly what I am, or my religion, or my gender, or my ethnic background? We don't know who to hate! Maybe I think I don't like Hispanics very much, yet I eat a lot of Doritos in front of the television. I vilify the Jews while fixing a Rueben sandwich. The precious lines of difference are blurred. Yet we use the lines, the outward differences, to justify our hate.

Why? Because our nature is to hate, and the differences gave us a good excuse. That's the dark secret about us, and it's very international. Every one of us, no matter who he is or where he comes from, or what color or are or gender he might be -- we are all caught in the whirlpool of sin and death. Until we are rescued by Jesus. That is why all men love him, and why, wherever his name has been carried, honest people have seen his salvation and thrown aside their pride and begged him to stay. Because, without Jesus, we are lost in anger and greed -- blaming each other, other peoples and other races, for our own shortcomings and exploiting them for our own desires.

Jesus Shows us How to be Humble and Loving

I think Mary of Bethany knew that. O, to have Jesus enter our earthly house and never leave. He would bring peace within and without. He would raise our brothers from the dead. Of course, we would dump perfume on him, and never give it a second thought. He would lift our sights above the superficialities that divide us. He would show us our common poverty, and then he would make us rich with his love (reckless and extravagant as it is), so that we might find courage at last to be reckless and extravagant in our love. To overlook differences. To be patient with people not like us -- not to suspect them, and dislike them before we even know them. Not to be trapped in anger which is to be truly free.

Peace Begins Only With Repentance

This is not the usual optimistic clap-trap. I haven't said that men and women (of all nations and races) are basically good and only need understanding. I haven't advocated education (or even the good example of Jesus) as guides for overcoming differences. Just the opposite. I have said that, at our cores, we are prone to hate each other, and to use race and gender and nationality (and whatever else we can think of) as excuses for our hate. I believe it is only in seeing that, in repenting and turning to God, that we have a chance at love. World peace (and peace in our homes, and schools and neighborhoods, for that matter) -- peace begins with repentance, or it never begins at all. And repentance is always a "me" thing. If repentance is sincere, it's never you who need to repent but I who need to do so.

We can Rise Above our Differences in Jesus.

We can rise above our differences in Jesus. The differences (while they are precious to us -- our cultures, our ethnic backgrounds, our heritages) define us only at one level. (At that level I am a white man, fifty-eight years old, descended from English and German ancestors, heterosexual, American, a Protestant of Methodist persuasion.) These are the things that make us different from each other. What is it that makes us alike? That we all have ten fingers and ten toes? No. That we are all lost in sin and therefore subject to judgement and death, until Jesus comes to our house.