Revd Janet Williams’ sermon for March 21st
Lent 5
Gospel Reading: John 12: 1-8

I don’t know how I knew. Perhaps it was some strain on his face when he arrived that evening. Or maybe I saw it in his eyes earlier, when he raised my brother from the dead.  He looked at Lazarus in his winding-sheets, and for a moment he looked haunted, as if he’d seen his own ghost. The others didn’t notice – why would they? They were caught up in the wonder of it, like children, as if something wonderful had been done just for their benefit, and they were stamping their feet with glee and crowding round Lazarus and babbling excitedly. All they could notice was what he’d done.

But I was looking straight at him, not at Lazarus at all. I was still angry – furious with him. We had sent word how ill our brother was, begged him to come quickly, knowing all along that he could heal him, avert the danger, save us from losing everything.  We women here are easy targets for the unscrupulous if we don’t have a man at home to protect us; our concern for our brother wasn’t just sisterly love, it was fear of what would become of us if we lost him.

But he delayed. He could have made haste; instead he wasted time. And what we went through -  desperately clinging to hope, wildly optimistic every time Lazarus’ breath seemed to grow stronger,  telling ourselves that it would all be all right, that we would celebrate the Passover as usual with our brother taking the father’s part at table, and he would tell again the precious stories of our people, and make us laugh when he grew over-pompous.  But every false hope died its own suffocating death as our brother gasped on his pillow; belief drained through our fingers as painfully as his breath from his body.  The dying took its own time, his and ours, and at the end our hope was dead bones, a shrivelled and stinking thing.

We buried our brother and spent days in the tomb of our own hearts, stony and bitter cold. Only then did he come, focused and intent – ‘Your brother will rise again’. And the great event unfolded – Lazarus emerging from his tomb, the unwrapping, the washing, the weeping and laughing.  And he, not thinking anyone was watching him, in a moment looked at Lazarus and flinched, as if he had suddenly caught the temperature of the tomb or – what? ­– seen himself in those awful grave clothes.

He didn’t stay long after that – he needed to get away. But tonight when he came to us there was something indefinably different, as if now he had set his purpose and would never flinch again. My imagination could not fathom it, my mind shrank away.   How could it be that no-one else felt it? Martha was busy as usual, Lazarus so delighted and proud, the others bustling and full of important plans. I alone wanted to cry out, what terrible thing have you set your will toward?  But I could not speak, I could not bear the words which would tell what I felt.
When my brother was dead we carried out all the customary rites. We bought the best oils and ointments we could afford, and when we embalmed him we rubbed nard in the hollows beneath his ears, under his fingernails, along his chestbone, between his toes.  It was a comfort to make him smell so sweet before we entombed him, to hold his flesh who was so sweet to us. Afterwards one whole bowl remained unused, and I had put it on the shelf.
As I felt the terrible will in my Master, my heart began to tear open again, and without really calculating I brought the ointment and sat in my customary place, at his feet.  While he rested, I took first his right foot and then his left into my lap and rubbed the ointment into his skin, around the heels, into the arching curves of his soles, between his toes.  As I anointed his feet, I learned them, their shape and texture, fixing the memory so strongly in my hands that I can feel it now, not with the distance of memory, but with the immediacy of presence. 
I rubbed them, in the way you rub a weary traveller’s feet, gripping and letting go, pressing and letting go, holding and letting go. 
And when I had rubbed all the ointment into his skin, I needed to wipe his feet dry. Yet I was clinging to him, to the comfort of being able to touch him, and I knew he was glad of it. He had settled, the muscles had softened in my hands, he was giving me this gift of holding him. I couldn’t bear to pick up a cloth to wipe him, it would have been a retreat from this gift of touch.  So I quickly loosed my hair and began to use it as a cloth.
The hair became a curtain; my hands, my hair, my face enclosing his feet. Who is to say whether in that suddenly intimate place I bent to kiss him or bathed him with my tears? Now the scent which was on his feet was in my hair, around my head, and the perfume lingered. I still seem to catch its scent sometimes in the evening.
It is enough. I have held my Lord’s feet in my hands. I have imprinted him on my hair, my skin. And now, he leads me into new places but I carry his shape and his texture into them in my heart’s memory. We have other feasts now, other meals, and each time I take the broken bread into my hands I receive again that gift of holding him. Holding him and letting go. Perhaps that is my whole story.