John 12:1-8

O Lord, we pray, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and the longing of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.

A few years ago a Sunday School class in the church that a friend of mine was minister at decided to present to the congregation a banner for use in the sanctuary. It was to be an Easter banner - and therefore he expected it's predominate colour would be white.

For two reasons he expected that - the first reason was that white is the colour of Easter - and it has been the colour of Easter almost since the day that the Church began - and the second reason was that he had just prior to the decision of the class to make up a banner put on a workshop for the Sunday School teachers and Bible Study class on the church year - and carefully explained out the colours and major symbols of each season of the church year.

You know how it goes - Green for Epiphany and the Season of Pentecost with symbols of growth and transformation - Red for Pentecost Day and celebrations of ministry with symbols of fire and of doves descending - Purple for Advent and Lent with symbols of crowns and trumpets for the first, and of crosses and thorns and nails for the other - and of course for Easter - white with symbols like butterflies and empty crosses and sunrises.

That is the way the tradition has come down to us, and that is the way that he expected the Sunday School class to work - the right way - the traditional way - the way taught to each and every one of us by our ancestors.

Anyway - to make a long story short, he found out a couple of weeks before the presentation was scheduled that the new Easter banner was going to be purple, and he was very upset by it.

How, he fumed, will the people ever come to understand the symbolism of the church, how will they ever celebrate the richness of church traditions and learn from them what it is important to know, if we don't present them in the correct way?

He really fretted about it until he remembered another banner from another church - it was a baptismal and confirmation hanging presented by the ladies one sunny Pentecost Sunday.

On it there was a purple dove flying over a light blue background, that dove was so purple it could have been easily mistaken for a crow and from that dove there dripped several drops of blood.

It too was something that didn't seem right to my friend - like the purple Easter banner, but do you know something? Out of all the banners that were hung in that church, and there were twelve in all in the sanctuary the one with the purple dove was the one that people looked at the most.

I could not stop myself from wondering about the love of God when I looked at how Jesus bled for us, about how, when we are baptized, we are baptized into his death, as well as into his resurrection, about how the Spirit lets us fly like a bird, and how that lifting up for us, that soaring, came at a price to our Lord; a price that he willing paid because of the incredible love that he had for us.

My friend was ever so grateful to the children and their teachers for that banner just as he ended up being grateful for the purple Easter Banner, both of them were impressive, and both of them represented the labour, the love, and the devotion of some very special people.

I tell this story today for a simple reason.

I tell it to remind each of you how easy it is to allow our sense of what is right and what is wrong to get in the way of our seeing and doing what is good and beautiful and loving.

Like Judas in the gospel reading today. It is so easy for us to criticize an act of love and of dedication, because it doesn't fit with what we think is the proper thing to do.

Leave aside for a minute the part of the gospel reading that suggests that Judas criticized Mary's act of love in anointing Jesus' feet with an expensive ointment because he was a thief - and instead think of his criticism of Mary's act for its own value.

"Why", he states, "Wasn't this perfume sold for three hundred silver coins and the money given to the poor?"

Why indeed?

When you look at the story of Mary anointing the feet of Jesus with an enormously expensive perfume and then wiping his feet with her hair from the perspective of the needs of others it seems incredibly wasteful, almost sinful.

Surely the best thing Mary could have done, if she was a true follower of the man who claimed he came to give sight to the blind, to heal the lame, and to set at liberty the oppressed, would have been to honour Jesus by giving what she had to the poor in the very way Judas suggests.

So it might seem - yet Jesus does not see it this way - instead Jesus approves of her actions, telling Judas that he should leave Mary alone, and let her keep what she has done as a precious memory, a memory of how she has in fact prepared him for his day of burial.

"The poor, Jesus says, "You will always have with you; but you will not always have me."

My brothers and sisters-Christ how often do we miss the opportunity to show love to someone, how often do we pass up the chance to care for someone because we are either too busy doing, or insisting that others do the right thing, the proper thing, first - OR - because we are thinking instead, like Judas was, of our own desires?

Love that is measured out, whether it be in time, or in our own internal sense of our available energy, is not really love at all.

Love always gives its best - and it does so at the moment of opportunity,it does so now, today, with the people immediately around us, and not at some future date, when the people we do care for may, in fact be dead and gone.

Love is an immediate thing, an extravagant thing, like that love showed by Mary, it is not dealt out a bit at a time and only to those who seem to us to qualify for it.

How often do we stop ourselves or someone else, from showing love to another person because we believe that someone else, or some other cause, deserves our attention more?

How many families have difficulties simply because everyone is so busy trying to be fair and share everything equally that absolutely no one ever has the feeling that they are loved fully - that they are special and unique and truly cared for?

We as the church are called to love God, and to love each other, we are called in that love, to serve God, and to serve the world.

We cannot do this if we are so intent on helping everyone that we forget to love the person next to us fully and deeply with all that we have.

We cannot love God and our neighbour as we are meant to if we end up cheating those closest to us of the love that they need in the name of trying to be sure that someone else gets what they need as well, even if the person said do not help, and just pray.

In Deuteronomy 15:, verses 10 and 11, it is written: "Give generously to your brother, and do so without a grudging heart, then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. The poor you will always have among you, therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and sisters and towards the poor and needy in your land."

Marvellous words with a marvellous promise, the promise that when we are not grudging, that when we are in fact open handed, or extravagant towards our brothers and sisters that God will in turn bless us - and not just in some things, but in everything.

This is the passage of scripture and the promise that Jesus alludes to when he says to Judas: "The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me."

My dear brothers and sisters-in Christ everyone needs to be loved. Everyone needs to be treated as special.

This cannot happen if we are glued to our measuring sticks of who should be cared for and of who deserves just how much of our giving; nor can it happen, if we feel that we personally, are called to take care of everyone equally - because this too involves measuring and judging.

We can only love in the way we are called to love, in the way that Mary loved, if we throw away our rule books and our measuring sticks, and love each person as fully as we possibly can, trusting, as we do so, in the righteousness of Christ, the saving grace of Jesus, to make it all come out right at end.

As long as we cling to the idea that saving the world is all up to us, that salvation comes because of what we do or what others do, we will be worried about our actions and our resources and our abilities, and we will end up failing to do as much as we are in fact able to do.

But when we begin to forget these things, when we stop counting the costs and considering the consequences, and look only to the love that God has for us, and to the incredible record of his faithfulness, then we will be free to love as extravagantly, as completely, and as humbly as did Mary on that day.

Extravagant love like that of Mary, is the kind of love to which we are called to. Indeed it is the kind of love that Jesus himself showed us, when he, on the day after Mary anointed his feet and dried them with her hair, he rode into Jerusalem and gave himself up to death on a cross so that we, utterly undeserving that we are, might live forever with him and with the Father above. AMEN