The way of the cross leads home. That’s the theme we’ve been using this Lenten season as we follow Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem, where he will suffer and die on a cross and then be raised on the third day. We’ll get to a fuller treatment of the cross part next week on Passion Sunday, and we’ll get to a clearer sense of the home part in two weeks on Easter Sunday. But today we have a little scandalous scene that foreshadows both.

Jesus had friends and he had followers. Most of his followers would become his friends, and some of his friends would be his followers. But when Jesus dragged his dusty feet into the small village of Bethany on the outskirts of Jerusalem, he would be among friends who were his followers without ever leaving home.

Mary, Martha and Lazarus lived in Bethany. They were two sisters and a brother. We know them from Luke’s gospel as well as John’s. You remember that in the Luke story, Jesus was at their home, and Martha took issue with Mary for sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to his words while she—Martha—was in the kitchen preparing a meal like a good woman … martyr. Jesus gently let Martha know that “one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Jesus is the real host, and all of us need to learn to eat with our ears.

The second time Luke mentions Bethany is after Jesus is raised from the dead and is ready to go home to be with his Father in heaven. The very last thing he does is lead his disciples out of Jerusalem to Bethany, where he raises his hands and blesses them before ascending to God. In other words, Bethany was for Jesus a kind of home away from home. It was for him the next-best thing to being home with God. It wasn’t Nazareth—the place he grew up—which he thought of as home; it was Bethany, the place where he was able to be a man as well as Messiah.

When we pick up the scene in the Gospel of John, Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead and sealed his own death. He has opened one tomb so that Lazarus could get out, and in doing so he has all but opened another tomb so that he could get in it. See, it was one thing to tinker with doctrine and another to taunt death. The religious leaders were both disturbed and fascinated by the way Jesus talked about God and scripture. But these things only made him interesting. When he started healing people and raising the dead, well, that was dangerous. Now he was disturbing the peace. I mean, if you can’t even count on someone dead staying dead, what can you count on? The Romans would not put up with that kind power on the loose. And that meant they would turn on the Jews altogether to put down this rival. All the religious leaders knew to do was to protect the peace and keep their people safe. Jesus had become anything but safe. And he knew what that meant for him: he himself would be anything but safe.

So he sits at the table with his closest friends and followers, aware that this meal might not be his last but that he wouldn’t last much longer, either. Mary comes to wash his feet. That’s what everyone thought. Nothing alarming there. But instead of a basin of water and a towel, she brings costly perfume and lets down her hair. Watch out now! She breaks a beaker of nard and fills every nostril in the room with such a fragrance that you’d think you had stumbled up to the perfume counter at Neiman’s. But this was no Jade East she was pouring on his feet. This was spikenard. Very expensive. From the Himalayas. Would have cost a full year’s wages back then for the average worker.

So here’s Mary with this perfume. If she had gone over to Jesus and anointed his head with it, you wouldn’t have heard a peep from Judas about how she was wasting it. Then she would’ve been a heroine for doing just what Judas expected someone should have, because it would have meant that she was anointing him as a king. Kings deserve expensive things. And if she could convince Jesus to be the King of Israel and marshal the support of the people to revolt against Rome—something the disciples had tried but failed to do—all the better. But when she bends down to anoint his feet, Judas is outraged.

That’s the other use of the nard: to prepare a body to be put in the grave. And that’s what Jesus took away from this little gesture. It was a sign. Mary got it, and the disciples didn’t. The woman who was his friend understood what the men who were his followers did not. Jesus was a dead man.

Jesus and Mary both seemed to see that if you would save your life, you will lose it; but if you lose your life for the sake of gospel, you will find it.

We are no better at getting this than those disciples in Jesus’ day. We think that the only way to have life is to protect it against anyone who would take it from us. So we compete with others to secure our own place. And holding on to our stuff is one of the chief ways we do that.

Mary saw no point in holding on to her nard as an investment. What’s more, she saw no point in selling it or giving it away carefully. Hers was a carefree love for Jesus. She didn’t love him because he was the messiah. She loved him because, well, because … I don’t know why. Maybe she loved him because he paid attention to her. Maybe she loved him because she felt sorry for him. How do any of us know why we love someone? In fact, if you do know why, it probably takes a little of the love out of it.

Love comes from the heart, not the head. Love lavishes itself on the beloved. Love doesn’t ask about how something will look to someone else; it asks about how it will look to the beloved.

Notice that Mary didn’t use this nard for Lazarus. He had died only one chapter earlier, and Jesus had raised him. You might have expected him to chime in with Judas: Hey, where was that when I was dying? I’m your brother, after all. But the point is not to ask what other good this loving lavishness could have done. The point is to point to the heart of love, where you will always find humility in the form of generosity.

Thirty Wilshire people went to Mobile this past weekend on a spring-break mission trip. It was mostly families. Parents and children who could have gone anywhere for the same cost and focused on fun and relaxation. Instead, they worked for three days with paintbrushes in their hands to give a small church there a boost on a new future. Humility in the form of generosity.

Last Sunday morning you heard from us there as we hooked up by iPhones during our worship services. What you didn’t see that I saw was who else was in that service at Hillcrest. Terry Ellis and his wife, Leslie, came. Terry had been the pastor of Spring Hill Baptist Church in Mobile for about ten years, but he resigned eight weeks ago and is looking for a new position. This is the same pastor who put his own job on the line at the Mobile Baptist Association a few years ago when they threw out Hillcrest for ordaining a woman minister. Terry spoke up for Hillcrest, and it was just one more mark against him with people who thought he should have been using his influence in other ways. Well, I thanked him afterward, and he promised to work with the new resident pastor there for as long as he is in Mobile. The next morning he showed up with a paintbrush in his hand and went to work. When we saw that we couldn’t finish painting the chapel in our time there, he called in some professionals and offered to make sure they got paid right away from his personal funds until the money could be raised. Mary would have been proud. Guess that would make her Proud Mary, don’t you know?! Humility in the form of generosity again.

Don Kimball, one of our dedicated Wilshire distance runners, gave me Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run. It’s packed with amazing stories, especially of a tribe of Copper Canyon Indians in Mexico called the Tarahumara. These remarkable people are some of the gentlest and kindest on Earth. They are also some of the best runners at ultra distances that the world has ever seen. McDougall went to find them and learn their secret. And what he found is that they run because they love it. They don’t run to lose weight or get fit or win medals or make a name for themselves. They run because when they do, they are simply being themselves. And being themselves means they spur each other on rather than trying to defeat their opponents. They help each other along the way.

McDougall began to realize how true this is of the great ones. The Americans used to be great marathoners, because they used to run together for the love of it. Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Alberto Salazar: these guys would go out twice a day and run together in all sorts of weather just for the fun and camaraderie of it. But when big money started being offered for prizes, and shoe companies started paying runners to win, America lost its edge. Our runners trained harder and got slower. Meanwhile Kenyans and others who from their youth ran just for the love it got better and better.

One American was an exception, though. Scott Jurek is a rare bird. He has won every important 50- and 100-mile race from places as extreme as Leadville, Colorado, to Death Valley. And whenever he finishes a race, instead of heading for a shower or the media tent, Scott wraps himself up in his sleeping bag to keep warm and waits at the finish line to congratulate every runner who makes it. Even if he has to stand there through the night, when the last racer crosses, Scott will be there. Humility in the form of generosity.

I wish I could tell you more of these stories so that we might all learn this better. But Mary’s act of humility in the form of generosity toward Jesus is probably all we need.

I wonder, though, if it is all we actually need. I mean, maybe it’s all we need to learn it in our heads, but if we really learn it, we will have to get it into our hearts. And if it’s in our hearts, then we’ll lavish our love like Mary did when she put herself out there so boldly, forgetting about what anyone would think, except the one she loved.

Don’t you wonder what people would think of Christianity if all of us who call ourselves friends or followers of Jesus were as quick to lavish our love as Mary? How differently would the world perceive us if they saw signs from us of humility in the form of generosity instead of protecting our stuff and insisting on our rights?

We’re wrong to think of humility as staying out of the spotlight. For most of us, true humility is shown by putting ourselves forward and giving more than we think we can, agreeing to teach that youth Sunday school class even if it scares you have to death, or telling someone you always want to impress that you really do love Jesus.

For Jesus himself, humility meant putting himself out there and giving himself to the world for love of God. Have you ever done anything so lavishingly loving that it screams humility in the form of generosity? Is it time to start? After all, the way of the cross that leads home to God is the way of humility.