The Gift of Love

• Easter Sunrise Service at 6am. Regular Easter Service at 9am.
• Lenten Fridays with INC continue this Friday at the Orange United Methodist Church at 6pm.
• Lenten Home Contemplative Practices with Owen and myself can be found on our website with a new one posting each week until Easter.
• Discussion Group & Confirmation Studies April 27th after Church.
• Watch the recording HERE

This might be one of the most beautiful stories of love ever.  There are so many words for love in other languages.  In English, we really only have one: love and this, this, is love.  This is a love story full of longing, and grief, and deepest love.  Filled with delicious scents and sacrifice. We’ll get back to this passage in a moment.  

Let’s look at another story of gift giving and love.  

There is a story called the Gift of the Magi by O. Henry that was written in the early 1900’s. The story spoke to society that was losing sight of what truly matters in the desire for possessions and things.  

In the story, there is a very poor young couple who are so in love with one another, that on Christmas Eve they each go out and sell their most precious possession to buy a gift for the other.  This may be beginning to sound familiar.

The wife, Della, sells her beautiful hair to a wigmaker so that she can buy a gold chain for her husband’s heirloom pocket watch.  

The husband, Jim, sells his heirloom pocket watch to buy a set of combs for his wife’s beautiful hair.  

When they give each other their gifts, it highlights sacrifice and love, which is true love. Love of what matters..  A willingness to sacrifice for one another what is most precious for what is even more precious…their love. 

The story seeks to teach us generosity in love.  That love is more precious than stuff and money.  These gifts of love echo the first Christmas gifts from the Magi, which teaches us about what might be called: holy love.

Gift giving is complicated.  We might even see the disciples’ point (it’s not always just Judas who is outraged) that this money could have been saved for the poor and not wasted on something so frivolous as perfume.  We, too, might question Mary’s devotion to…the cause. One might even be surprised that Jesus turns the tables on us, and surprises us, yet again, that this gift is more precious than the money that might have been used to help others.  Jesus always invites us to think and just when we think we get it…it changes.  

This might also be a tale of generosity in gift receiving and giving. Often called…exchange, but maybe better thought of as reciprocity.  It’s so easy to judge a gift.  It’s not good enough.  It’s too much.  It’s not comparable to the gift I gave.  Jealousies and fears come into play when we give. Giving is vulnerable.  We really see the vulnerability of giving in this Story.  

We, truly, could spend a lifetime on just a single Story like this one.  Stories help us to discover who we are and who we want to be… and, just maybe, who we’re meant to be.  They show us how we change and grow as we come back to the same Stories that are never the same…because we change.  

They show us the times when we are like Judas judging one another for the way we waste money that could be better used or better saved.  We could be the one made uncomfortable in receiving such expensive gifts.  We could be the one who feels the hurt of our gift being judged and rebuffed.  

This is not a story about stuff.  This is a story of love.  The sacrifice. The pain.  The grief.  The vulnerability.  This story reminds us of the deepest love where we will give everything for that love.  A love deeper than mere human love.  Dare we call it, again, holy love?

Stories are never just one thing, especially these incredibly deep and precious Stories.  It is, perhaps, also a reminder that there will always be a world that needs us.  PAUSE.  There will always be people who need us.  There will always be “poor” to be fed.  Children to be clothed.  Sick to be healed.  Tables to be turned.  Justice to be worked.  

It might be a lesson in stepping back to rest and breathe in the beautiful things around us (perfume, in this case) because nothing lasts forever.  It may be that we all have times that we need to pause and step back and lay at the alter of what is most precious…our love.   

Perhaps it is a reminder of the simple thing of how to live well here on earth.  How to give and give well.  How to receive and to receive well.  How to be with one another in community.  Perhaps the lesson is to judge less and to remember to love and tend to those in your close circle as well. Maybe even those people who seem so strong that it’s easy to think they surely don’t need anything from mere me.  Not only do we have to tend to the work of this world, but we must tend to our day to day as well.  And we must do that tending with just as much love and grace as we give to the “big” and “important” things.  

It might be a warning to be sure that when we do give and tend, that we are doing it with love and vulnerability and grace…not just with our eyes on the purse strings. 

It is also a reminder of death.  This perfume is a perfume that would have been used to anoint the body after death.  Mary is already preparing Jesus for his death on the cross.  Mary is giving Jesus his last gift.  Her love.  

The Magi give the first Christmas gifts.  Mary gives Jesus his last gift. 

Love is always entangled with grief.  To love deeply always comes with loss.  Life and love is messy.  Grief and love is complicated.  To Love is to be deeply vulnerable. To give everything, knowing it will hurt.  This is a scene of sacrifice, deep vulnerability, and grief.  In some ways, it is a foreshadowing of what’s to come.

Jesus, perhaps, is holding space to help Mary, and maybe even himself, to move through the process of grief.  It is a ministry to one another, knowing what is to come and preparing the way.  We are closing in on the end.  We are coming toward death.  We are in sight of the cross and the crucification.   

Jesus is reminding his disciples and us, once again, of the greatest commandment and call…to love one another.  To set aside judgement and meanness, to take a pause from what seems so obviously right and wrong and wasteful to look deeper.  To look not just outside, but to look within our circle and ourselves and to seek Grace and tenderness. Because that is what heals the world.

In the beginning, it’s love.  The heart of God that unfolds into Creation.

In the end, it’s love.  The death and resurrection that is another unfolding Creation.  

Jesus is reminding us simply to love and tend to God/Universe/Spirit/Divine.  Jesus is reminding us to love one another.  Always and especially when we disagree and when it’s the hardest.  

People are complicated and messy.  This story will get more and more ugly and messy.  But right now, there is a moment of deepest love.  The gift of generosity, kindness, courage, and sacrifice that will echo what’s to come in the deepest pools of grief and loss. 

Let us Be Still for a moment to remember that it is always love.  Deep, abiding love.  

Please take a moment to Be Still. A moment to pause, reflect, meditate, close your eyes, breathe, or pray before continuing your day.