Today's guest blogger is Carol van Deelen. She and her family have been members of Peace for six years. Carol teaches at Madison Country Day School. She and her husband, Tim, have twins who are in seventh grade.
Carol wrote this reflection during the week after Transfiguration Sunday (February 19).
My pastor went a little crazy last Sunday.
It was the Sunday between St. Valentine’s Day and Mardi gras, two great celebrations of love and overindulgence.
During the children’s sermon, she passed out Mardi gras beads to the children. LOTS of Mardi gras beads. (Does she know how people earn those in New Orleans?!) She told them to pass them out to people in the congregation, to spread the joy. And they did. I thought they’d take the beads back to their parents and families, but they didn’t. They passed them out to surrogate family members, surrogate grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles. They passed them out to other children. They even passed them out to people they DIDN’T KNOW!
Then during the second sermon, my pastor flung pink, red, and white heart-shaped confetti over the congregation. Not sprinkled; flung. By great handfuls. And she walked all through the pews to do it. No one was spared. We had it in our hair, in the hymnals. We even took it home with us. At school, my son found some in his pants pocket. There’s still a piece on our kitchen floor. Children and adults, yes adults, were picking it up by the handfuls to re-throw at each other. The girl in the pew in front of us started collecting the larger pieces to bring home with her. I helped her.
During this barrage, I found myself thinking about the waste of it all. The natural resources and energy at the factory that went into making this confetti. The marketing and shipping costs. I found myself thinking about how we might be able to collect it for reuse, maybe by the preschool or Sunday school classes. I found myself sympathizing with the custodian who would have to vacuum this all up. What a waste.
And then it struck me. To Pastor Karen’s extravagant display of God’s love, I was Judas. You know the story, right? Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem – to die – and a woman anoints his feet with expensive oil, then wipes his feet with her hair. Judas stands by bemoaning the waste of expensive oil, oil that could have been sold to provide for the poor.
(A noble thought, his. Unfortunately, the gospel writer reminds us, his real motive as a leader among Jesus’s friends, was to have stolen the money. A noble thought, mine as well. I can say though, that as a leader in our church, it never did occur to me to steal the money that was instead spent on the confetti.)
“Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany. There they gave a dinner for him. A woman 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. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (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.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’" (John 12)
Judas couldn’t see the extravagant love expressed by the woman, the extravagant act that Jesus endorsed. Could I see what Judas didn’t?
I did. To the children in the congregation the confetti was God’s extravagant love displayed. To the new Christians in the congregation, the confetti was God’s extravagant love displayed. Between family members and strangers who threw the confetti at each other and walked out of church laughing, the confetti was God’s extravagant love displayed. Mostly, to the middle aged Christian who has heard of God’s love her whole life, read about God’s love, and experienced God’s love, the confetti was God’s extravagant love displayed.
I needed to experience it most of all.
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