What's Your Story?

The Reverend Scott Homer

In the name of God Almighty, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Have you ever thought of your life like a story? Sometimes we look at our lives as a story. Sometimes somebody will say to us, “So, what’s your story? Or someone will ask, “may I tell you my story?” Sometimes you hear about somebody who lived a fairytale life. Sometimes people live a horror story. So, what is your story?

The Gospels, in fact all of the Scriptures, tell a story. They tell the story of God’s Salvation playing out in the lives of God’s people. Of course, the story of God’s is an immense story that begins with Creation and ends with the world restored and God’s kingdom come. God’s story is so big it looks like a tapestry because within this one overarching story describing God are hundreds, even thousands of micro-stories, and they all fit into the larger tapestry giving it color and variety. The little stories are stories about real people’s lives as they are being lived out within God’s story. Have you ever thought about your life that way? We tend to think that we are living independent and free—that our story is ours and ours alone. We want to believe that it is our choices that determine our destiny. We want to believe that the things we face in our lives today, the successes and failures, are results of our own decisions…but our destiny is not of our own making. Our story is not ours alone. Our destinies belong to God. Our lives are played out within his reality, according to his rules and our past, present and future are all part of God’s larger tapestry. Our salvation belongs to the Lord—it is Jesus’ work , Jesus’ power and Jesus’ compassion. And the essential task of the human life is to acknowledge this fact, not just here between our ears—but most especially to close the 18 inch gap between our heads and our hearts and to love the Lord with all our hearts.

The Gospels are full of micro-stories, stories about real people and what happened to them when they found themselves caught up in God’s story. All these little sub-stories come together to form the rich and ornate tapestry we call Holy Scripture—God’s story. The Scriptures were written for our instruction—in order that we might know God, know our salvation, and know the joy of a life lived in the assurance of God’s grace and mercy. In the Gospel this morning we see no less that four sub-stories. There is Lazarus, Martha, Mary, and Judas Iscariot. Each story is compelling. Each holds important lessons for us but I want to focus on just two of the four. I want to look at Mary, Lazarus’ sister and at Judas Iscariot a disciple of Jesus. Let’s begin with Mary.

Mary is passionately in love with Jesus—and I wish it went without saying that I don’t mean that in a sexual way. Our culture has become all twisted about intimacy. We confuse intimacy with sexuality treating the two as if they are the same thing. So, if we say someone was intimate with someone else we all conclude that they must have slept together. Why can’t we conceive of a friendship that is so close that the people know everything about one another and yet allow that it may be platonic? This confusion has caused and will continue to cause huge problems in our society and in the church. It is why we see so many stories about clergy sexual misconduct. It also explains why the congregations where sexual misconduct has occurred are so reluctant to seek healing. It seems like such dangerous ground. It explains why those same churches are unable and unwilling to develop any real community for years afterwards. After all real community depends upon intimacy and if intimacy and sexuality are the same thing then intimacy means sin and if we want to avoid sin than we must avoid intimacy at all cost. The result is that isolation, and maintaining distance from one another, is the only viable option. Thankfully, intimacy is not the same as sexuality. We can be kind and gentle and genuinely open and passionate in our love for another human being without demanding that sexual contact be a part of it. It is not a hypothetical possibility. It is a genuine reality—and that is the first thing we observe in Mary’s relationship to Jesus. Her love for Jesus demonstrates the sort of love that ought to characterize our relationships--intimate with one another in ways that are God honoring, that respect one another and that bring blessing and health to one another. We need to learn how to have these sorts of relationships even if it is a challenging and risky enterprise. Otherwise how can we claim to love one another as we love ourselves? And so, as I began to say, in our Gospel this morning we see that Mary is passionately in love with Jesus.

Mary’s love for Jesus was passionate. I did a little research on the cost of perfumes nowadays and I found that the most expensive perfume in the world is Perfume No. 1 by Clive Christian. You can purchase it at Neiman Marcus for $2350. We are told that the perfume Mary bought was worth 300 denarii. In today‘s dollars that would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $18,000. And she doesn’t place a drop behind his ear and save the rest. She just slathers it all over Jesus’ feet and uses it all up. You would have to be pretty fond of someone to do that. And Mary slathers that perfume on Jesus feet with her own hair—so close, so intimate and personal, so much passion for her Lord.

Of course Mary has seen Jesus for who he truly is. She has seen the corpse of her dead brother and she has seen her brother resurrected. She watched as Jesus called her brother out of the tomb and she witnessed Jesus’ resurrection power, first hand. She has seen salvation and his name is Jesus of Nazareth. And so, quite naturally, she gives herself totally to honoring him, and perhaps most remarkably of all, she does so openly and in public. She is unashamed. She is unconcerned with what others might think or what others might say. She loves her Lord and her desire is to honor and bless him. Mary devotes herself whole-heartedly—body, mind, and spirit—to worshipping Jesus.

Mary is a challenge to us. She causes us to wonder about ourselves and the ways we pull back from giving ourselves completely to the Lord. What would it look like for us to give ourselves wholeheartedly, unashamedly to Jesus? How much money would we be willing to spend in order to bring honor and glory to him? Are we prepared to be embarrassed for Jesus? Would you risk other people thinking less of you in order to please the Lord? And how about the church? What would our corporate worship look like if we worshipped like Mary worships? What would the world around us think if we behaved like Mary? I don’t mean for us to just look at this negatively. I believe that we are called to worship like Mary and I believe that the world would be impressed. People might even be inspired to come and see what all the fuss is about.

Now the real conflict in our story this morning comes when Judas responds to what he sees Mary doing. Judas is not impressed. In fact, he is rather unhappy about this display of love for Jesus. Judas Iscariot also has something extraordinarily important to teach us. Judas, we are told, had already determined to betray Jesus but he couches his complaint in practical terms. He is shocked by the squandering of a large sum of money. Surely that money could have been put to better use.
It is essential that we recognize the role that money played in Judas’ betrayal of Jesus because in some really frightening ways our view of money mirrors his. Judas seems to think that his welfare, and the welfare of those around him, depends upon the amount of money in his purse. He claims to seek wealth in order to care for the needs of the less fortunate but he actually want the wealth to serve himself. Plainly put, in Judas’ mind, salvation has little or nothing to do with Jesus. Salvation is having enough money in the bank to handle life’s adversities. That makes Judas the most American of all the disciples. After all, don’t we believe the same thing?

Bad health? Your healing depends upon owning health insurance, disability insurance, and having sufficient money in the bank. Old age? Your salvation depends upon having adequate retirement planning. Premature death? Your salvation depends upon having sufficient life insurance in place to sustain your family. I am not condemning any of that. I’m just pointing out that it is contrary to what God’s story tells us.

This is not the only instance where we see Judas’ greed. Later, when Judas betrays Jesus to the Sanhedrin he does so by selling Jesus to them for thirty pieces of silver. Our Lord was betrayed by a man who trusted in money rather than the Lord. Jesus might have been betrayed for any number of other reasons liked religious zeal, or political persecution but the Scriptures are very specific on this point. The Lord wants us to know that thing that caused the Son of Glory to be killed was love of money over the love of the Lord. As we talk about stewardship issues over the course of the year I pray that we will all heed Scripture’s warning and recognize our own vulnerability to the seduction of money in our lives. Money can not save us. Only Jesus can save us.

Let me try and tie this all together. We began by talking about the overarching story of God. It this story, the story we call Scripture are lots of sub-stories, like those of Mary and Judas. These sub-stories do not have a life of their own. They only exist as a small part of that larger story. Mary understood that her story was completely and utterly dependant on the larger story. Judas did not—at least not until it was too late. Mary understood that her brother was alive not because he was wealthy, not because he could afford the best doctors, not because they had made the right decisions and the right choices over the years. Mary knew that Lazarus was alive because Jesus said so. And although Judas must have witnessed Lazarus rising from the dead, somehow or another it didn’t touch him. The reality of what had happened didn’t make any sense to him. He still thought that somehow or another his life was independent of God. He still thought his salvation depended upon his own ability to make the right moves and access the right tools, and to have enough money in the purse. For Judas, in spite of all the miracles he had witnessed, Jesus was still just the son of a Jewish carpenter. Judas took offense at Jesus and at all the attention that he was receiving, and he chose to betray the Son of God and his only hope for salvation.

We have been trained since we were babies to believe that we create our own story through the decisions that we ourselves make. If we are wealthy it is because we made wise choices. If we are poor it is because we made poor choices. We act as though we are the masters of our own destinies but we are not. Lazarus did not die by choice. He was not resurrected by any choice of his own either. We don’t either. St Paul tells us in chapter 14 of Romans, “7 For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; 8 for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.”

Each of us is a sub-story of the one great story. Our lives are small but important parts of this great tapestry that we know as God. God has caused the Light of Christ to shine in your life. He has blessed you by allowing you to read the story and to determine your part in it. Abandon yourself to God. Devote the rest of your life to him. Rejoice in worship. Celebrate in prayer because in Jesus your story has the most blessed and joyful ending. In fact, in Jesus the story never ends because in Jesus love triumphs and joy is eternal. What’s your story? Amen.