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Reflections from your Pastors
March 12, 2024
The Woman with the Alabaster Jar filled with Spikenard (Nard)
This past Sunday was a most beautiful Gospel. If we believe that God is calling us into Love,
then this story is an example of the intimacy Jesus is calling us to with the Divine. Which
manner of the Divine we gravitate towards is purely individually ours.
In the opening we get a glimpse again of the Jewishness of Jesus. The story opens with Passover only two days away, the separation of men and women, the purity of alabaster and the best of what there is to sacrifice in the perfume, Spikenard. The characters are minimal: men at Simon, the Leper’s house, for a meal; Jesus; and an un-named woman. The central characters are Jesus and the un-named woman. It seems that if the host, a minor character, is named, then the intruding woman, who has in her possession an expensive alabaster jar containing precious Spikenard, should be named. We may call her by the name, Baby Doll. The
history of Baby Doll, is of a woman, very sick in hospital. After some conversation, we are about to pray. In answer to a question, she replies that God calls her by that name Baby Doll. We could interpret this to be God loving her as the beautiful child that God always wanted, as God always desiring to be in deeper relationship with her more. Her beloved.
Back to Jerusalem, Jesus’ popularity by now is dangerously high. He has great influence over people and the crowds have grown to over 5000 without counting women and children (loaves and fishes). He will be martyred during Passover. He knows this.
Baby Doll is compelled by love to anoint him. She knows that his death during Passover means that he won’t be anointed at the time prescribed by Jewish law. So, while knowing that Jesus is dining with the men, she goes anyway. She knows Jesus. She knows their love for each other drives her. She brings her best jar and her best oil to anoint him. It can only be the best for he is the Son of God, the Messiah.
Her heart is filled to breaking over his pending torture and death. He is anxious and tense. She knows. His heart and her heart have met in the liminal space, the space between here and there, the space between the cells in the trees, the space between the stardust and the black hole, the space between the birthing child and its first cry.
She has come to pray over him and anoint him. She has come to give him rest in his deepest self as she sets him awash in Spikenard, the best oil. She helps him be still amid the beauty of the earth in this oil. She restores her own inner eye as she anoints him.
Of course, she is harshly rebuked by the men but Jesus silences them. He says: ‘She has done a beautiful thing for me…she anointed my body to prepare my burial.’ This beauty of the anointing is an intimacy of the union of two God-sparks; an intimacy that we can only feel with our hearts open.
Our intentions and motivations during lent, our small and deeply chosen single effort every day, can open us to this same intimacy with God: a restoration of the inner eye, the breathing in of the beauty of the earth, the soul-heart to soul-heart touching. It may be time now this Lent to look inside ourselves and find that yearning for love that drives us into the heart of God, and then, let us anoint one another, figuratively and literally. If we spend time with another who we
feel a closeness with, anoint that person. If we feel the spark of the Divine in our pet, anoint that pet. When we open our hearts together, we can touch God through each other in a deeply loving way. Let us be transformed by the Holy Spirit this Lent.
In the anointing we are released from ourselves to love,
Pastor Jane
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