March 13, 2016 – John 12:1-8
John 12:1-8
The Lady in the Van – Lent at the Movies 4: Extravagant Beauty
Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 13, 2016
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
I went to see the film The Lady in the Van this week.
Based on a true story that happened to the British writer Alan Bennett,
the film stars Maggie Smith as Margaret,
an elderly homeless woman who lives out of her van.
She is a wanted woman, wanted for an accidental crime she committed,
for which she carries tremendous guilt, and she’s looking for a safe place.
So she parks on the street in a London suburb and strikes up a relationship with
Alan Bennett – and tells him one day it would be better if she could just park her van
in his driveway – just for a few months till things get settled.
Well, she remains there for 15 years.
The film chronicles their relationship over that time, mostly rocky,
mostly uncomfortable, and which mostly occurs because of Alan Bennett’s
English sense of politeness and not wanting to make a scene.
Having a very poor person – and an eccentric, difficult one at that – live in your
driveway for 15 years is not easy for Alan Bennett.
Yet, being a writer, half of him, of course, is always thinking of how he can write about this
and use her as a subject for a play or a book – or maybe even one day a movie.
And so the years go by, and she stays.
Near the beginning we see Alan Bennett staring at a statue of Jesus on the cross
outside a church.
Margaret, prone to religious visions, comes up to him and asks, “Are you St. John, the disciple?”
And immediately we are reminded of John’s account of the crucifixion,
where Jesus looks down and sees two people who have not abandoned him:
his mother Mary, and his beloved disciple John.
In John’s account, Jesus looks at them and says,
“Woman, here is your son; son, here is your mother.”
There, at the foot of the cross, in the midst of difficulty, in the midst of suffering,
Jesus forms a new family, and joins two people together who now will be bereft.
And we wonder: what kind of family is going to form between this lonely homeless woman
and this writer who lives alone?
What will be born of this difficulty?
Much of the dialogue in the film is concerned with Alan Bennett’s and his neighbours
relationship to the poor.
Margaret is the object of curiosity and scorn.
She is the object of pity and charity.
They tolerate her presence because they are small l liberals and her presence and
the opportunity she affords to practice their charity eases their consciences.
One neighbour brings over some pears to Margaret, which is kind, but then says afterwards that
they are just “doing our bit for the homeless.”
And that is the problem right there: to them she is a “homeless person,” an object of charity.
She could be any homeless person;
there is even uncertainty as to whether her name is Margaret . . . or Mary.
She represents a category of people – and therefore is not really a real person in her own right.
She is difficult to be sure – and not easy to get to know.
But no one really tries that hard.
Even Alan Bennett wonders whether she is an object to write about or a real person to relate to.
And he is torn – and says at one point that he is simply too polite to ask who she is,
which is a pretty sad thing when you think about it.
Isn’t it the polite thing to do to ask someone who they are? And to get to know them?
And so the film chronicles his attempts to get to know her – even while repulsed by her.
The film is really about what it is like to live in close proximity to a very poor person.
Alan Bennett does more than most of us would –
and yet he clearly recognizes his own shortcomings in caring for her,
refusing even to admit that that is what he is doing for her to a social worker.
“She is there! I am here!” he tells her at one point, emphasizing their separateness.
And in fifteen years he recognizes that he only touches her once –
and that is to shake her in rage after she infuriates him.
In the Gospel story today, there is talk about “the poor.”
This is the scene.
The “Jesus Wanted” posters have gone up in Jerusalem: he’s a wanted man and so
hightails it to a suburb, to the little town of Bethany, to a safe place, to his friends,
and parks his van in their driveway so to speak,
and seeks solace, and comfort and friendship.
He has previously been to their home – presumably many times.
The first time we see him there we see Mary sitting at his feet in the posture of discipleship,
learning from her teacher as her sister Martha makes dinner!
The next time is when Jesus is called for when his friend Lazarus, the brother of
Mary and Martha, is dying.
Jesus arrives late after Lazarus is dead and four days in the tomb.
But Jesus raises him from the dead.
And now, this third time, Jesus comes to seek safety and consolation and a meal and
the consolation of his friends before he returns to Jerusalem.
And after he eats with Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus, Mary does something . . .
unexpected, something extravagant, something crazily generous for her friend.
She takes some oil, and rubs Jesus’ feet with it, and then wipes his feet with her hair.
It is at the same both extravagant and intimate – and very touching:
Jesus is clearly touched by her action.
All four Gospels contain a version of this story, and in Mark’s version which is
very similar to John’s for once, Jesus says that Mary has done for him
“a beautiful thing.” A beautiful thing.
Judas notes that this jar of oil is an import from India and that it could fetch 300 denarii.
That is about a year’s wage for a common day labourer.
I figure in today’s money that is at least about $15,000.
That’s pretty extravagant.
Judas says that the money could have been given to “the poor.”
But Jesus refers to Deuteronomy 15 where it says there will always be needful people.
He doesn’t complete the quotation, which goes on to say that therefore you must
be generous to them – it’s a divine command.
And I think there is also an unspoken criticism of Judas’s reference to “the poor,”
as if “the poor” were just this faceless group it feels good to talk about helping.
Jesus rarely speaks in such generalities,
and prefers to relate to specific poor people in his ministry, one a time,
feeding specific hungry people and healing specific sick people who
do not have the means to access quality health care.
You will always have specific poor people to help, Judas, Jesus seems to be saying.
but you won’t always have me – Mary is doing just what I have done: she is being
extravagantly generous to the specific poor person right in front of her right now.
Indeed, for John, Mary is a model of discipleship, and here is extravagantly generous to Jesus.
For Jesus, we know, is one of the poor.
He was born among the very poor, he ministered to the very poor,
and he himself was poor – there is never any indication in any of the Gospels that
Jesus owns a single thing.
He does not even carry coins or money and has to ask for one once in order to make a point.
In Jesus, God completely identifies with the poor: Jesus is poor.
And he is not only poor, he is a hunted, wanted man by the authorities.
And so he comes to his friends’ house and there Mary doesn’t engage in a polite,
small l liberal discussion about the poor.
She doesn’t talk about how she wishes the poor would
move on from their middle class neighbourhood.
She doesn’t speak about the poor in abstract generalities.
She suddenly sees the person in front of her and realizes that yes, Jesus is her teacher,
yes, Jesus is her friend, but also . . . Jesus is poor.
Mary has come to love a poor person.
And so she gives him a present that is literally fit for a king, because in the ancient world
they anointed kings with costly oil: she rubs his feet with $15,000 worth of oil.
And it’s beautiful.
And Jesus says, “That was the right thing to do.”
That is an extraordinary thing to do for a poor person.
Alan Bennett would be the first to admit that it is a far cry from what he does for Margaret.
And yet, is it not more than most of us would do?
A strange kind of relationship is born between the two in that difficult circumstance.
And the night before she dies, he does come to know her about as well as he can,
before it is too late – for he realizes, I think, that he will not always have her.
He realizes that she is not just representative of a category of people but that she is a real person.
And as she lays sick in her van, he stands at the back door, and reaches out, and takes her hand.
There is, though, still an incompleteness about it.
The next morning, as the doctor, priest, and undertaker come to remove her body from the van,
he notes that they finally do what no one had dared do – not even him – in 15 years:
they go into her van, they go into her home.
Yah: 15 years seems like a long time to have a homeless person live in your driveway.
And yet, in some ways, it was only a little while – it was tragically not long enough.
Mary of Bethany sets a high bar for us.
She sees Jesus and she does an extravagantly beautiful thing for him.
She even anticipates Jesus’ own action of washing the disciples’ feet in a few days’ time,
something he says we all ought to do for one another: Mary’s already done it!
She sets a high bar in our care for one another.
And yet, as this lovely little film reminds us, even our less than perfect attempts have
a kind of beauty about them, as anyone who’s ever attended or helped host
one of our Community Meals can attest to.
There, our members serve of their very best, a hot homemade meal to real people
we have come to know and love.
It’s not always easy – but there is a kind of extravagant beauty about it that happens
every other Wednesday right here at Sargent and Victor.
More than once I have heard someone say after eating, “That was beautiful.” And it is.
Mary gives her extravagant gift to Jesus on this day, and six days later, Jesus will give
the most extravagant loving gift of all: his whole life, to us, in love.
And at the foot of the cross he will form a new loving family between Mary his mother and
the Beloved Disciple.
And now this morning comes again to give us the extravagant gift of a meal,
to all who hunger for new life, and hope, and forgiveness, and love, and inclusion.
So come, and eat, for this too is a beautiful thing Jesus does for us.
And together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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