JCS: What's the Buzz/Strang Thing Mystifying

Listen along!
103 - What's the Buzz
104 - Strange Thing Mystifying

Let me start off by saying that I love the disciples. A loveable band of misfits if there ever was one. Before you think I'm calling names, I think that descriptor definitely applies to all of the current disciples, i.e. the Church, just as well. There really is no other way to describe the disciples than clueless. They were in the very presence of God but look at this litany of goofy things they did: argued about who Jesus loved the most, cut off a guard's ear, didn't recognize Jesus when he came back (that might be defensible), almost drowned while walking on water, and not to mention a general disbelief about everything Jesus said/did practically. It just sounds a little too familiar if you ask me!

"What's the Buzz/Strange Thing Mystifying," along with "The Last Supper," captures this cluelessness so well and I love it. The disciples are all, "What's the buzz? Tell me what's happening?" They're concerned about the plan, what's coming up next, what's gonna happen. Then Jesus hits it right on the head: "Why are you obsessed with fighting times and fates you can't defy? / If you knew the path we're riding you'd understand it less than I." (Did Jesus not understand it? Hmm, I think he had to. His prayer in Gethsemane reveals he's not crazy about it, but I think he understood it.)

And then there is the one who gets it right. But she's not a disciple, she's not even a man; a total contradiction to everything the disciples thought they stood for. Mary Magdalene breaks out the perfume and annoints Christ, gives him comfort. The act doesn't go unappreciated as he addresses the disciples: "While you prattle through your supper--where and when and who and how / She alone has tried to give me what I need right here and now."

It's an interesting idea here: Mary meeting the needs of God. More than that, she does it rather simply. The perfume was no doubt expensive (thus prompting Judas' outcry), a gift worthy of a king. I think, in essence, what she was doing was worshipping. She acknowledged Christ's worthiness and then she responds through an action of worship. That, in all simplicity is worship: acknowledging God is God and then responding however we desire to that thought that is at once simple as can be yet more complex than we can fathom.

JCS differs a bit from the real version here. In John 12 we find Mary, sister of Martha and brother of Lazarus, annointing Christ's feet with oil and drying them with her hair (wow, what a humble act) and the timing is a bit earlier I think (JCS puts the event on the Friday before Maunday Thursday and John 12 is six days before the Passover, so those two could very well be the same days and I screwed it up). So, different Mary but the act and the motivations and the themes are all intact.

I love stories where it's the unlikely or the outcast who "gets" it while those who should know better are left, jaws agape, and learning a lesson they should have already known. This is a version of that theme that knocks it out of the park and I love it. It's a great insight into worship that I am finally starting to comprehend bits of. Wow, just love this stuff :)