By Dwight Swanson

There are many maps of Jerusalem. I have walked with the throng of pilgrims in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, waving my palm branch with thousands of Christians from around the world, following the path from Bethphage to Stephen’s Gate of the Old City.

We could not start in Bethany because of the Separation Wall. Today, Jesus would be fenced out of Jerusalem unless he took the detour to the security crossing that connects Jerusalem with the illegal settlement city of Ma’ale Adummim. We cross over the ridge of the Mount of Olives, beginning our descent by the Holy Land Hotel (formerly Seven Arches Hotel, birthplace of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation), down past the ever-expanding tombs of rich Jews who have paid well to be among the first to rise at the great resurrection, and Dominus Flevit—the chapel built to commemorate Jesus’ tears on looking over the city from this place.

This modern map, never far from the signs of contemporary conflict, is far different from the mental maps pilgrims bring. We come with pictures of the Holy Land painted on our minds by pastel drawings from Sunday School, felt figures of people in pyjamas set on brown and blue backgrounds devoid of vegetation. And the expectation of feeling the holiness of the place, just because this is where the Bible happened.
When the real gets in the way of the ideal, the result is either rejection of the real or disillusionment. Sometimes, revelation.

Today, in Longsight, our procession huddled under blustery Manchester skies and before the indifferent gaze of passers-by, holding (sometimes waving) palm crosses, as we entered the gates of the church, a la Psalm 118 (‘This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!’), singing ‘All glory, laud, and honour, to Thee Redeemer King!’, and manoeuvred our way to our seats. Our map of Jerusalem consisted of stolid late-Victorian houses standing coolly undisturbed, dogs walking their sleepy owners unheeding of us, and a breeze which could in no way be called balmy—all suggesting nothing in common with Jerusalem at all. Certainly not the one from 2000 years ago.

This is the thing about Jerusalem maps—they seldom have much to do with the dirt and stones, and the people, of the place in Israel. I have seen many pilgrims come and go from Jerusalem, their mental maps intact. They have seen what they were looking for, and blocked out that which did not fit. And returned to their homes glowing with the joy of ‘walking where Jesus walked’. Like me, they simply passed by the inconvenient bits.

Today, however, Longsight mapped on to Jerusalem. Real streets heard hosannas from disciples of the King. The world around barely paused to recognise her Redeemer. But salvation came to Longsight.

By Dwight Swanson

Based on today's lectionary Gospel reading.

John 12:1-11

1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

An observant Jew, Jesus arrives in Bethany from Galilee a week early to assure ritual purity for attendance at the festival. The village sits just over the last rise from Jericho, a twenty minute walk from Jerusalem, a hostel town for pilgrims. Jesus, with other pilgrims, comes to prepare himself for the coming Passover. In more than one way.

We are invited to prepare with him.

The story actually begins in Ch 11, where we are introduced to Lazarus, Mary and Martha. In that story, Lazarus is ill, and dies. Jesus hears of the illness, but rather than rushing to heal his friend, waits for him to die, because, he says, ‘this illness does not lead to death, rather it is for God’s glory’.

Lazarus, of course, dies. Jesus reports this plainly to his disciples when it occurs. ‘Lazarus is dead.’ Even though he had told them a day or two earlier that Lazarus would not die. (That is what it sounded like).
Jesus does not leave him in his stinking shroud. He calls him out of his tomb, saying, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they die, will live.’ That’s what he says to Martha, asking her to believe in him.

Martha, we are told, is the sister of Mary who now prepares the a dinner in Jesus’ honour, and serves Jesus personally.

We are introduced to Mary with foreshadowing: she is the one ‘who anointed the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair’.

The Fragrant Room

3Mary 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.

This is an act of extravagant and expensive love. Nard was a perfume imported from India, and 300 denarii amounts to a year’s wages for the common working man. (Half a litre of Chanel No 5, at a going rate £326, doesn’t begin to compare in value.) This spontaneous act come from the joy of resurrection, of a brother restored; of Jesus in the midst of the family gathering.

The room is filled with the fragrance of the gift.

The Fly in the Nard

4But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 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.) 7Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Now there is an insertion of foreboding. The story seems marred by the Judas narrative, a souring of the fragrance. A cash value is placed on the gift in the name of compassionate ministry. In the midst of celebration of life a shadow falls at the mention of the one who ‘was about to betray him’.

Jesus’ reply is full of Johannine irony. Irony is hard to spot in printed text, and detecting it requires more than a predilection for literary techniques to show it. What seals it here is recognition that Jesus is quoting Deut 15:11 – ‘There will always be poor people in the land’. This is a marker to listeners who know their Scriptures (which few Christians these days do) to recall the context of Deut 15.

The command begins in Deut 15:4, ‘There will never be any poor among you.’ It is a call to God’s people, blessed with riches, to assure that everyone in the nation is cared for, including foreigners (read it!). It is tempting to suggest that even Moses is being ironic, when he ends the section with the words Jesus cites. Even when he commanded it, Moses knew it would never be obeyed.

Even if we should read the quote as belonging within parentheses, it is useful to note the rest of the text Jesus quotes: ‘I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land”.’

Jesus’ words here are a rebuke that rings down the ages for those who excuse themselves from compassion for the poor on the basis of these words.

Preparation

Mary’s act of pouring costly perfume on Jesus is a celebration of life—of the fulfilment of the promise of resurrection. Jesus, preparing himself for the days ahead, calls it a preparation for burial. Judas reduces it all to monetary considerations.

The beauty of Mary’s extravagant action is in its affirmation of God’s power over death, which becomes a preparation for the death which brings resurrection.

Attention on Judas’ cleptomania, however, tends to obscure the power of Jesus’ rebuke of Judas and of all who separate their own spirituality from the life-giving purpose of Jesus’ death and resurrection—he will die, not only for ‘my’ sins, but for the poor and needy neighbour.

On a day in which the US congress votes on health care for millions of their neighbours, it is not a little ironic that so many Christians stand in opposition.

By Dwight Swanson

As Holy Week begins, the Gazelle offers these words for meditation--from a respected Palestinian Christian church leader from Jerusalem:

I wish you every blessing as we turn our faces towards Jerusalem during the coming week, remembering that at the heart of our liturgical celebrations this week is the acknowledgement that human beings deny and kill the truth and the goodness of God when it comes among us, for it subverts our ways of doing and arranging our world. We do not like it when there is an Oscar Romero around, or a Martin Luther King. They tend to challenge our norms of doing things and thinking about our 'security', so we resort to killing them. It is in this sense, that we say, Jesus died because of our sin, for we simply do not want his truth, He literally died because we do not like him - that is our sin. And yet God in his mercy, forgives, and accepts us even before we have confessed our wrongdoing: 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do'. Jesus intercedes for our forgiveness even before we have asked for it, reflecting the nature of the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, who accepts the son before he even began to speak.

We know not what we do. And in our mutual relations, and the destructive relations between nations, we tend to expect and seek flippantly for retaliation in first. Jesus, on the other hand, gets his forgiveness in first. How shocking? We do not know that we hurt ourselves too when we do not seek mutual healing from others. Jerusalem does not know what it is that provides for its peace. But, it is made possible, and is revealed to us to be God's gift always, in the history of Jesus. In his God-sized Resurrection that cannot be assessed or defined in human terms we have God's yes to us. As it is a God-sized event, it has made the history of Jesus of Nazareth not limited to one time and one place, but to all the places and even the darkest corners of the earth; for now we know that even death is invested with God's mercy. May we grow to accept that gift, and always seek to forgive one another as God forgave us in Christ, accept one another as God accepts us in Christ, and love one another as God loves us in Christ, and in no other way. And may this especially be the case in Jerusalem, which seems to refuse God's presence at all times, as the two peoples of Israel and Palestine refuse to look each other in the face, and see their goodness there. We too need to look Jesus in the face, and see our victim there; but, in that gazing into our victim, we do not find a request for revenge, or retaliation, and even reparation, but sheer grace to release us and sustain us anew at all times.