John 12:1-8
12:1 Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.
12:2 There, they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.
12:3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
12:4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,
12:5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”
12:6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)
12:7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.
12:8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
In this passage, Mary shows extravagant personal care for Jesus, and Judas judges her. But Jesus refuses to accept that judgment, instead showing openness to Mary’s gift.
Through my lens as an international community initiative facilitator, I see Judas as arguing for an abstract, utilitarian form of care. In this kind of care, whatever is available should be sold and the money given to “the poor,” which is an abstract category—nameless, faceless, destitute people, people we don’t really know, perhaps don’t even see as fully persons like we are. There is a great tendency in charity to ignore the agency, the capabilities, and the full personhood of the intended beneficiaries. Those with resources to donate may feel that they know what the supposed beneficiaries need, and that “the poor” can’t make good decisions or see solutions to their own challenges. Whether or not we believe John’s parenthetical note discrediting Judas by saying he was a thief, there is the reality that when we give in abstract, impersonal ways, we don’t really know exactly what is happening and what the real results will be. It is clear that caring for the poor is not the problem here—that is why John makes it a point to clarify that Judas said this not because he cared about the poor. The issue at stake may be more in the manner of caring.
Anthropologist Lisa Stevenson highlights the differences between personal care and anonymous care. In personal care, it matters who a person is, whereas in anonymous care, it matters what the person is—what category or population the person fits into. In personal care, specific relationships and individual life stories are important. In anonymous care, rules, procedures, and categories define the right action.
Mary, in this passage, seems to be demonstrating personal care. She is responding to her relationship with Jesus, paying attention to who he is, and showing him that she cares about him specifically. She is moved by gratitude, as Jesus has recently raised her brother Lazarus from the dead. She is performing a gesture of affection and appreciation for someone who matters profoundly to her.
When I was eighteen, I went to Ecuador as a volunteer. I lived with a host family in a rural community and taught in the local elementary school. Before going, I had raised a little bit of money for side projects in the community. Because we were teaching environmental awareness, my fellow volunteer and I were interested in supporting environmental projects, and we spoke with my host dad about ideas. Since there was no garbage collection in the community, people often burned piles of trash and left the remaining pieces blowing around on the ground. The school produced trash, which had to be burned, leaving ashes and charred plastic bags lying in the area where the kids played. We read about trash ovens and thought an oven could be a great solution to this problem. We built a cinder block enclosure with a hole on one side where ashes could be swept out of it and into a hole we had dug to bury them. We even made up a song to teach our students the proper use of the new trash oven. For a while, my host dad went to the school regularly to burn trash in the oven, but none of the teachers or parents ever took an interest in it. Soon, it was forgotten and became just another abandoned pile of cinderblocks. Yet, after my four months volunteering, when I prepared to leave the community and return to the US, everyone was sad. People kept asking me when I would come back. They asked me not to forget them and to keep in touch. I realized that, regardless of the value of the “projects” I had tried to undertake, the relationships that had formed between my host family, between my students and me, and their parents, were something very special. I mattered to my new family and friends, and they hoped that they mattered to me as well. The trash oven, conceived in the abstract as a good idea, accomplished nothing, but the time I spent listening, paying attention, and responding to particular people in the community grew into beautiful relationships.
Eight years later, as I started The Tandana Foundation, I kept this lesson in mind. In contrast to many development organizations, I insisted on taking a personal approach, cultivating respectful relationships with community members and collaborating with them on initiatives that responded to their priorities. I cultivated deeper relationships with friends in Ecuador, slowly learning more about their lives and their priorities. I let go of the idea that I had solutions, of the notion that ideas conceived in the abstract could be applied indiscriminately to particular people in particular places.
Around the time I started Tandana, I decided that I wanted to get to know another cultural world, different from those I knew. I decided to go to Mali, in West Africa. I got in touch with a friend of a friend of a friend who lived in central Mali. I emailed him asking what he thought of my idea of living with a local family for about four months and volunteering in some way. He said, Sure, you can live with my family. So, I said, okay, and headed to Mali, having no idea whatsoever what I was doing. When I got there, the people I met started asking me what my project was. They were so used to foreigners coming in with a predetermined project—we’re building wells, or we’re doing a shallot gardening project—and then saying that their village or organization or family needed that project, because whether or not they actually needed it, they knew they could get some money out of it somehow. They expected me to be the same way, arriving with a plan already in place. When I told them I didn’t know what project I should do, and that I thought I should first get to know the communities and find out what they were working on and what they wanted to do, what resources they had, and what resources they needed, they thought that was great, but they also didn’t really know what to do with me, since it was so unusual.
Finally, my host arranged for me to visit the village where he had grown up. He told them I hadn’t come with a project but just wanted to meet them and see what the village was like. The evening after I arrived, representatives of the village association came to visit me and expressed their three top priorities. First, they wanted to repair and deepen a well that had collapsed. Second, they wanted to create a grain bank to help work toward food security. And, third, they wanted tools to facilitate the erosion control work they were doing in their fields, which would conserve water and soil, increasing their harvests. They were very clear on what they wanted to do and were already taking the steps they could with their own resources to make these goals into realities. At the time, I didn’t know how to help them with any of these projects, so I said, “uh, May God help you with this.” I didn’t want to raise expectations without having a way to fulfill them.
Over time, I got to know some of the residents of the village better, and I found a grant opportunity for water projects. I worked together with Moussa, who has been here and spoken with you all, to write a grant application for the well, learning all the details of the project and the village in the process. We didn’t get the grant, but after I returned to the US, I was able to raise the funds to restore and improve the well, and the following year I went back to the village with this good news. Residents of the village were so happy that someone had responded to their priority that they organized a big celebration with singing, dancing, and drumming. They shot off rifles with homemade gunpowder and drank coffee and tea. Perhaps Judas would have told them the celebration was extravagant, but it was very meaningful to them and to our relationship.
Later, Tandana began to partner with another village that was even more remote. We collaborated with women in the village who wanted to create a cotton bank to have control of their own stock of cotton that they could make into cloth and sell to generate income. When this goal became a reality, several women involved commented on how refreshing it was to be seen as capable people and cared for as partners in a relationship. “Yippee!!! What a good wind has brought us happiness this morning! Finally, thanks to the partnership with The Tandana Foundation, we are now recognized by the organizations that support development. Before this, we were lost and unknown to development partners,” said Sata Lafia Samakan. Her neighbor, Kadia Samakan, added, “We are now considered as women capable of generating income.” Finally, they had been recognized as people with their own agency, abilities, and goals and invited into a respectful relationship.
BUMC has been a wonderful partner to Tandana over the years. You have helped restore a well, start a school garden, protect a community garden, start our women’s literacy program, start a cotton bank, create an indigo bank, provide furniture for schools, support residents in digging stock ponds, and more. For the last four years, you have been helping women’s associations start businesses, so they can increase their income and gain financial independence. And, you have not done this in an abstract way. You have also written personal notes of encouragement to them, in their own language, Tommoso. You have created a personal connection, showing them that you care and that they matter to you.
I want to share a video of the ceremony when 15 women’s associations received their startup funds this year. One of these funds came directly from your Christmas offering last year. Do you remember taking a big group photo here in the sanctuary, and then writing notes on cards that Samantha made with the photo? Keep an eye out for those cards in the video, so you can see how meaningful your connection is.
(video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYp4cqcv5GM
This year, through the Christmas offering, you will have an opportunity to help another women’s association start a business. This is a chance to show them that you care about them, that they matter in a world that often makes them feel forgotten.
In thinking about the story we read from John, I also want to look at Jesus’ role. Here he is, someone accustomed to giving selflessly all the time selflessly, accepting an extravagant gift with grace. How many of us feel a lot more comfortable giving than receiving? Do you have a hard time receiving special care or a major gift?
Both giving and receiving are integral parts of respectful relationships. Jesus has given an unbelievable gift to Mary and her family by raising Lazarus from the dead. And surely he did this without any expectation of receiving something in return. But Mary, out of gratitude and affection, chooses to anoint Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume and wipe them with her hair. And Jesus doesn’t judge or scold her. He doesn’t take away her opportunity to express herself through this extraordinary gesture. He just receives it openly and gratefully.
In the Kichwa culture of the area of Ecuador where we work, there is a concept called randi-randi, which means something like giving-giving. It expresses mutuality and the willingness both to give and to receive. It means I will help my neighbors when they are building a house, and then I will also accept their invitation to a party for their child’s baptism. At Tandana, we have learned that randi-randi is important in our collaborations with communities, also. When our health care teams visited communities to provide medical and dental care, residents often came together to offer lunch to our team. They cooked potatoes, fava beans, and corn that they had harvested from their own fields and offered it to us in huge bowls. It was very important for our volunteers to accept this generous gift with gratitude, eat the meal with enjoyment, and take any leftovers home. Esthercita, a nurse friend of mine, told me about another medical group that had refused to eat the lunch offered by a community and how offended local residents were. If we refuse to accept gifts, we are denying the mutuality of a relationship, essentially saying that what the other person has to offer is not of value, that only we have something worth giving. Truly respectful care requires that we open ourselves to receiving what others offer us, as well as giving what we feel moved to share with them.
Perhaps the hardest gift for us to accept is the most extravagant gift that is God’s grace. We think we need to earn God’s love, or that we don’t deserve it and can never accept it. But for all of us, it is a gift freely given, and we just need to accept it openly.
As we approach the Advent season, we can cultivate an openness to receiving gifts and let go of the feeling that we must only give. We can cultivate relationships of personal care, showing others that they matter to us and that we respect their goals for their own lives. And we can let go of an abstract sense of utilitarian duty and of the idea that we know what is best for others. Above all, let us open ourselves to receiving God’s grace together. Amen.