you do what you can

 

THOUGHTS SPOKEN AT St PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN

and St PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN

FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT 

(and Annual General Meeting Day)

(April 6^th) 2025

 

Readings

Isaiah 43:16-21

Psalm 126

John 12: 1-8 

 

This is the feast of St AGM, so let me do no more than float a few ideas.

It’s kind of appropriate that, when our treasurer delivers to us a review of finances and a forecast budget, that we find a nameless woman. Nowhere does it say she is a prostitute, though that has become misleading folklore, and perhaps not unhelpful, for Jesus makes it clear that his redeeming love reaches to every nook and cranny of society.

What is this woman doing? As scandalous in her own century as it would be in our own, she is, as, dare I say it, the treasurer of Jesus’ own gang makes clear, profligate. A sheer, unbudgeted waste of money. I feel faintly absolved, for I emphasize from time to time, a) that I have zero, squilch, nada and nil understanding of money (which, though, makes me admire treasurers deeply), and b) God is not restricted to our strategic plans. A mess on the floor of someone’s house was not in the strategic plan launched by Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry.

We are incidentally left with that awkward capitalist manifesto with which John ends this scene. The poor you will have with you always. Is this an excuse to ignore all social justice? To fleece the vicar’s pocket more and more ornately as a sign of devotion to God? Nice idea, but prosperity gospel is a distortion. Let’s go there another time, but no, I can’t ask you to feather my nest as an act of devotion.

So … so what? This woman breaks all the rules, all the protocols of a carefully manicured gospel in this pivotal passage of John’s skilfully crafted account. Why?

Maybe Jon Bon Jovi was saying something similar when in the midst of the hell of 2020 he wrote

Although I'll keep my social distance
What this world needs is a hug
Until we find the vaccination
There's no substitute for love
So love yourself and love your family
Love your neighbor and your friend
Ain't it time we loved a stranger?
They're just a friend you ain't met yet

 

Or perhaps we can borrow from another, similar passage, Mark 14. There too a woman – not a bloke but a powerless and disregarded woman – performs a profound act of love, anointing Jesus. “Leave her alone, she has done the best she can,” says Jesus. You do what you can, to express love.

On this Feast of St AGM, on this 5^th Sunday of Lent, we are reminded that this is our task. As we observe our diminishing role in society, as we watch our dwindling resources, as we see the increasing difficulty of keeping parishes and dioceses afloat, we are called to do but one thing. We have encountered the radiant love of God revealed in Jesus and in our fellowship with those who love him. Surely we are called to pour out of our best, to surrender our safety nets and our nets of human strategy and find the craziest, beautifullest, most deeply human way to use what God has given us as an expression of our gratitude and love in return. You do what you can.