Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 21, 2010

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

OK, so we all need to do something. Right now. As fast as we can. We all need to stand up, walk out of this church, and never come back. Why? Because Glenn Beck, Fox News commentator and the pride (?!) of Mount Vernon, says we have to. He recently said that if your church preaches social and economic justice you must leave it. The term social and economic justice, he informed us, is code for Communism and Nazism. Communism and Nazism aren’t the same thing, but we’ll let that gaff slide for now. They’re both very bad things of course. Our problem is that the UCC is the social and economic justice church par excellence. Social and economic justice is a huge part of what the UCC is all about. Glenn Beck is of course a noted expert on all matters religious. I mean, he must be. He’s got a national TV show, so he must be an expert on whatever he talks about, right? He says we have to leave our church because it preaches social and economic justice. Which makes us Communists—or Nazis—or both, although how you can be Communist and a Nazi at the same time continues to escape me. But then, I’ve only got a Ph.D. in Russian history and not a TV show on Fox News, so I guess I have to yield to Mr. Beck’s superior knowledge. So—out you go! And I’m right behind you! I’ll turn off the lights and lock the door behind me, so don’t worry about that.

And Beck is right, isn’t he? I mean, consider this: I may disagree with him, but I’ve only got a Master of Divinity degree from a fully accredited seminary and not a national TV show on Fox News, so who am I to disagree with the Reverend Beck? And then there’s that story we just heard from the Gospel of John called the anointing at Bethany. In that story Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus with a jar of very costly perfume. One of the disciples—in John’s version of the story it’s Judas—objects, saying the perfume should have been sold and the money given to the poor. It should, in other words, have been used for an act of social and economic justice. And Judas is the betrayer, so Beck must be right. And Jesus agrees. He says no. Don’t use it to help the poor. They’ll always be around anyway, but I won’t. So Mary was right—and so is Glenn Beck. The church isn’t about social and economic justice. It’s about worshiping Jesus. Period. So what are you all still doing here? This church preaches social and economic justice. So out with you!

Now, of course I’m being facetious. I’m making fun of Mr. Beck, not that it takes much skill or imagination to make fun of Mr. Beck. He does an awfully good job of self parody, so to make fun of him all you really have to do is quote him. We know, as billboard in front of a UCC church in New York state reminds Mr. Beck, that Jesus preached social and economic justice. We get that, but there is still that story we just heard in which Jesus seems to dismiss caring for the poor. What are we to make of that story?

What we are to make of it, I think, is that it points not to indifference to the plight of the poor but to the centrality in the Christian faith of the confession of Jesus as the Christ. What is Mary actually doing here? She “anoints” Jesus’ feet with costly perfume. Why? Anointing a body with fragrant oils and spices was a burial custom of the time, but Jesus isn’t dead. He suggests that what Mary does is somehow connected with his burial, but he isn’t dead in this story. What she’s doing is engaging in a symbolic act. The word “Christ” comes from a Greek root that means “anointed.” To call Jesus the Christ is to call him God’s anointed. His being God’s anointed has a lot to do with his death, but the point for us right now is that in anointing Jesus Mary is symbolically confessing that Jesus is precisely the Christ. Mary doesn’t say Jesus is the Christ with words. She says it by acting out what “Christ” means.

With this understanding of what Mary has done in mind it is easier for us to understand the exchange between Jesus and Judas that follows. Judas says why wasn’t this valuable stuff sold and the money given to the poor? And all of us UCC social and economic justice types, despite some discomfort at agreeing with Judas, say Yeah! Why wasn’t it? But Jesus says leave her alone. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me. And all of us UCC social and economic justice types, despite some discomfort at disagreeing with Jesus, say What?! What does he mean? It sounds like he’s saying there will always be poor people, so don’t worry about them. Don’t bother trying to help them. They’re not your concern. I am. And Glenn Beck says See! I told you so!

Well, sorry Mr. Beck. That’s not what this story actually says. That isn’t what Jesus is saying here. It’s clearer in Mark’s version of this same story than it is in John’s version that that isn’t what Jesus is saying here. In that version Jesus says “For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me.” Mark 14:7 But even in John’s version, which lacks the line “and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish,” it is important to look at what Jesus actually says and at what he doesn’t actually say. He never says don’t care for the poor. We may read that in, but the text doesn’t actually say that.

Rather, Jesus is saying something very different. He is saying that the confession that he is the Christ, he is God’s anointed one, comes first. It comes before concern for the poor, before work for social and economic justice. Before, not in place of. The confession of Jesus as the Christ is the central act of the Christian faith. Everything else flows from that confession. Glenn Beck to the contrary notwithstanding, a commitment to social and economic justice flows from that confession. It flows from it. It does not precede it. It certainly doesn’t supercede it.

And that, I think, is a truth that Christian advocates for peace and justice need to remember. The Christian faith is first and foremost about faith in God in and through Jesus Christ. Social activism, the work for peace and justice that is the social aspect of Christian love, is really hard in a world like ours governed by structures that perpetuate and feed on injustice and war. That work is often frustrating, because those structures are so entrenched and so powerful. It’s so easy to burn out in that work. It’s so easy to give up.

That’s why it’s so important to keep Christ in the center. Christ in the center is a place of strength, comfort, and hope to which we can return again and again. When the struggle gets too hard we can withdraw for a time and rest in Christ. We can return to Christ regularly and often, every day in prayer, frequently in worship. There we can find the peace that the world so effectively disrupts. There we can find the hope that the world so effectively destroys.

That’s what the story of the anointing at Bethany tells us. Not that Glenn Beck is right. He most definitely is not. He obviously and undeniably is not. He’s wrong. He’s so wrong that I am tempted to call his absurd comments nothing less than demonic. They are at the very least profoundly un-Christian. Our call as Christians is to keep Christ at the center; and then to go out and change the world into a more socially and economically just place. No, Mr. Beck, we are neither Communists nor Nazis. We are Christians. We are Christians who have heard Christ’s call to do for the poorest, most needy, and most marginalized of God’s children what we would do for Jesus himself. We put Christ at the center. Then we strive to spread his love to all people, especially those who need it most. May God the Holy Spirit draw more people into that sacred and most Christian work. Amen.