Don't Just Do Something, Stand There with Jesus!

Dearly Beloved, 

In the gospel lesson appointed for this coming Sunday, Jesus and his disciples are gathered at the home of Lazarus a few days before Jesus's arrest. They are no doubt engaged in something that seems important, when Mary barges in with a jar of expensive and pungent perfume, anointing Jesus’ feet, and wiping them with her hair. It’s a scene of disorienting intimacy. The awkwardness in the room is palpable. 

Judas raises the obvious objection: why would we waste something so expensive on such a weird and frivolous act, when the money could be given to the poor? There is work to be done, good to accomplish in the world, forces of evil to overcome. Let’s get on with it. 

Like Judas, we often draw a hard line between action and contemplation. Especially during hard times, we tend to favor the former over the latter. Prayer is all well and good, we imagine, but action in the world is what really counts. We have to do something!

Mary’s interruption of a church meeting with an act of extravagant contemplation reminds us that the actions we take in the world will always be misguided unless they are grown in the soil of regular and intimate encounters with Jesus. Occasionally, we have to flip the injunction of “Don’t just stand there, do something!” to “Don’t just do something, stand there, with Jesus!”

Mary’s contemplative perfume is, of course, meant to transform the stink of death. And that’s where the false binary of prayer and action breaks down. We all know the world stinks of death, of injustice, of fear, and of suffering. The time we spend simply being with Jesus in prayer, and in our weekly worship, isn’t about accomplishing anything, or even making ourselves feel better. The time we spend in prayer is about being saturated in the perfume of God’s love, so that we render the scent of it wherever we go. Standing there, doing nothing with Jesus, is the only way we can ensure our acting in the world is really for Jesus, and not just imposing our own will. So beloved, in these late days of Lent, for the love of God, don’t just do something, stand there, with Jesus, until death’s hold on the world is fully and gloriously swallowed by God’s eternal Easter Day. 

Grace and Peace, 

The Right Rev. Craig Loya