Missed By One Week

Here's a little bit on the 5th Sunday in Lent. . . 

(for posterity donchaknow)

I fully intended to post something each week of Lent
Heck. . .
Good intentions and all that. . .
Which is what Judas would contend he had. . .
I found this a difficult text. (of course, they ALL are) with not much help from commentators
This was good
From a sermon by Kathryn Huey, who writes at the UCC web site. . .

she begins. . . 

Remember way back at the beginning of Lent, weeks ago, when we began our Lenten journey by reflecting on the story of Abraham & Sarah, sort of a "remembering who we are" by remembering "whom we came from"? Today, we turn full attention to who Jesus is, & our teacher in today's text from the Gospel of John is Mary of Bethany, a woman, which happens so often in the Bible, especially the Gospels, where the women – the last & the least – seem to hit just the right note, to get it, while the Apparently Chosen –the Apostles & other disciples – stumble & blunder their way along, trying to figure everything out.

and this was nice from BBT

Whatever Mary thought about what she did, and whatever anyone else in the room thought about it, Jesus took it as a message from God - not the hysteric ministrations of an old maid gone sweetly mad but the carefully performed act of a prophet. Everything around Mary smacked of significance - Judas, the betrayer, challenging her act; the flask of nard - wasn't it left over from Lazarus' funeral? - and out in the yard, a freshly vacated tomb that still smelled of burial spices, waiting for a new occupant. The air was dense with death, and while there may at first have been some doubt about whose death it was, Mary's prophetic act revealed the truth.

She was anointing Jesus for his burial, and while her behavior may have seemed strange to those standing around, it was no more strange than that of the prophets who went before her - Ezekiel eating the scroll of the Lord as a sign that he carried the word of God around inside of him (Ezekiel 2), or Jeremiah smashing the clay jar to show God's judgment on Judah and Jerusalem (Jeremiah 19), or Isaiah walking around naked and barefoot as an oracle against the nations (Isaiah 20). Prophets do things like that. They act out. They act out the truth that no one else can see, and those standing around either write them off as nuts or fall silent before the disturbing news they bring from God.