The Unused Spices
Sermon
An Idle Tale Becomes Good News
Messages On Lent And Easter Themes
Spices were important commodities in the ancient world. Fragrant vegetable products, they were used for cosmetics, as sacred oil and incense for worship, as perfume, and for burial purposes. Extensive trade in spices was carried on, and one who had large quantities of spices was considered wealthy.
Jews, like other peoples in their region, used spices in preparing bodies for burial. The purpose was for ceremonial purification rather than for preservation of the bodies.
It is not spices in general though that I have in mind now; it is particular spices. These had been purchased by some women, friends of Jesus, and were brought by them on Easter morning to the tomb where Jesus' body had been laid. They intended to anoint his body, but when they reached the tomb, his body was not there.
What happened to those spices then? Did the women, in their surprise and fright, simply drop them outside the tomb and forget about them? The spices were expensive; did they return them to the shop where they had purchased them and get their money back? Did they use them for some other purpose? We don't know; it really doesn't matter. What does matter is that they were no longer needed for the purpose for which they were originally intended. They were new spices then, and were to have been used immediately. But they were still unused after the eastern sun had risen high in the sky.
Symbol Of Love
Those unused spices are a symbol of love. They were bought by Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. We know little about these women, except that they were among those who followed Jesus and helped to finance his ministry (Matthew 27:55-56; Mark 15:40-41; Luke 8:1-3). Mark's Gospel tells us that Jesus had cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:9). This led Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to have her sing in Jesus Christ -- Superstar about how she has been changed, "really changed," so that when she sees herself she seems like someone else. And she exclaims, "I love him so."1
Perhaps the others had similar reasons for loving him. At any rate, it is not likely they would have come to his tomb on that first day of the week to anoint his body with spices if they had not loved him. Those spices are a symbol of the love they had for him.
Jesus had known so much of hate in those last days of his life, but through it all he must have been sure of the love of these devoted women. At least a little joy must have welled up in his heart at the thought of their love for him.
Before Augustine became a Christian, he had a dear friend whom he lost in death, and it seemed for a while that he himself could not continue to live. He was so close to his friend that he felt that their souls were "one soul in two bodies." He later wrote in his Confessions, "Therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved."2
Those women must have felt something like that, too. In Christ they had found a love that had transformed their lives, and they had come to love him in return. He meant so much to them that it must have seemed that they were now "halved." It was loving hearts that carried them to his tomb that morning. Their unused spices are a symbol of their love.
Evidence Of Faithfulness
Those spices are also evidence of faithfulness. When Jesus was alive, these women had attended faithfully to his needs. Part of the time they had traveled with him, and from their own possessions they had contributed to his necessities and to those of his disciples. Their faces were among those seen at the Crucifixion. They had done all they could do, and now they watched from a distance, with bleeding hearts, as he suffered and died. They came closer when he was taken down from the Cross, and they followed to the garden where he was entombed. The Sabbath was at hand then, and they could do nothing else for him until it was past. But then they came again, in faithfulness, to anoint his body with spices they had bought. Those spices are evidence of their faithfulness to Jesus.
Not everyone values faithfulness that much. We want to be happy; we want our rights; we want to advance in the world; we want to be liked, to be popular; we want to be healthy and prosperous. But what about being faithful -- faithful to our duties, faithful to our vows and commitments, faithful to our country, to our church, to our God? Just where does faithfulness fit into our scale of priorities?
When Adlai Stevenson was running for President of the United States in 1952, he spoke at the dedication of a monument to Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois. Lovejoy was a Presbyterian minister and anti-slavery editor who was shot to death on November 7, 1837, while trying to protect his printing press from a mob. Mr. Stevenson quoted the words Elijah Lovejoy spoke to the mob just before he was shot: "I am impelled in the course I have taken because I fear God. As I shall answer to God in the great day, I dare not abandon my sentiments nor cease in all proper ways to propagate them. I can die at my post; but I cannot desert it."3
Few, if any, of us are fated to die as a result of faithfulness. But our lives would make more of a difference in the world if we were that faithful.
Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century English conversationalist and literary figure, wrote a great many prayers. The manuscript of one of his birthday prayers, written on September 18, 1758, has these words below the prayer: "This year I hope to learn diligence."4
Diligence is worth learning, but what about learning faithfulness, too? We could do with a good supply of that. The spices those women brought to Jesus' tomb were evidence of their faithfulness. Somewhere along the way, they had learned faithfulness. May God help us to learn it, too.
Token Of Triumph
Consider, too, that those unused spices are a token of triumph. If it had been necessary for the women to use them that morning, there would be nothing to say about Christ's triumph. But they didn't have to use them. Christ had been raised, triumphant over sin, over evil, and over death. Those spices then, unused, are a token of his triumph.
There is a story from India about the Buddha being stopped one day by a young woman who had long been childless and who, after many years, had given birth to a son. The child, playing among the bushes, was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. Pleading with the Buddha to restore her son to life, she received the answer: "Go, and bring me some mustard seeds from the home of people who are not mourning a death." Life expectancy was much lower then than it is now, and the infant mortality rate was tragically high. The mother began to wander about, in search of such a home, but after many years returned empty-handed. Seeing her return, the Buddha said: "When you departed you thought that you and you alone were the only one who had ever suffered a loss through death. Now that you have returned, you know differently. Now you know that the law of death governs us all."5
That is why we need an authoritative word about it, and Christ's resurrection gives us that word. No wonder Principal James Denney said, "The Gospel cannot be described at all unless it is described as a victory over death as well as sin."6
Financier Bernard Baruch tells about his father calling him and his brothers into his study once and asking them to promise that when he lay dying they would not allow their mother to send for a rabbi to say any final Jewish prayer. They promised, and when he was 81 and had a stroke and was dying, they had to say, "No," when their mother tried to get them to call the rabbi. Just a few days before he had reminded them of their earlier promise, adding, "The last thing I can do for you boys is to show you how to die."7
Jesus showed us that twenty centuries ago. But he did more: He robbed death of its power and took away its final threat. He triumphed over it, and he promises us victory over it, too. That is why we may hope to "find, when ended is the page, / Death but a tavern on our pilgrimage."8
Those unused spices are a token of triumph!
Stimulant To Hope
Therefore, they may also be a stimulant to hope. Imagine the hopes that must have come alive in the hearts of those women when they found that they did not need those spices! They had thought that Jesus' companionship was lost to them forever, but now that dead hope became a living hope. With Jesus' crucifixion, they had despaired of the Kingdom of God becoming a reality on any time schedule that would make any difference to them. But now they could pray again with hope for the coming of the Kingdom.
As they had shared in Jesus' ministry, they had felt the thrill of being involved in something that put meaning and purpose and joy into life. The Cross ended all that, but when they did not need to use those spices, they could dare to hope again that life would once more possess the wonder and excitement and meaning they had so recently come to find in it. There was a lot they did not understand as they turned away from that tomb, but hope was beginning to come alive in their hearts once more.
Hope is such an essential ingredient for meaningful living. When hope is taken out of life, the lift is taken out of it, too, and life becomes a burden to be borne. But when hope is alive and flourishing, there is something to draw one forward and to give buoyancy to existence.
But hope has numerous foes. Circumstances can dislodge it. Broken or strained relationships can overpower it. Disappointments, griefs, failures can smother it. But the resurrection of Jesus proclaims the presence and power of God in the midst of life's troubles, turmoils, and tragedies. God can bring good out of evil, victory out of defeat, life out of death, hope out of despair. That is why those unused spices may be stimulants to hope!
If those particular spices had been intended for one of the other common uses of spices, they would have no significance for us today. But they were not, and so they symbolize a love that stayed alive in the midst of death, and they call us to bring to Christ the affection of our souls, the devotion of our hearts, the consecration of our wills. They give evidence of a faithfulness that does not quit, reminding us of the need for the developing and strengthening of faithfulness in us -- faithfulness to Christ, to persons, to vital causes, to ideals and convictions. Those unused spices are tokens of Christ's victory over death. Because of that victory, "chords that were broken" within us may "vibrate once more," and we may know what it is to live in the hope that the Resurrection makes possible.
____________
1. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, Jesus Christ -- Superstar.
2. Augustine, The Confessions (Great Books edition, Vol. 18), p. 22.
3. Cited by Clarence E. Macartney, The Woman of Tekoah (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1955), p. 31.
4. Elton Trueblood, editor, Doctor Johnson's Prayers (London: SCM Press Limited, 1947), p. 24.
5. Martin Diskin and Hans Guggenheim, "The Child and Death as Seen in Different Cultures," in Explaining Death to Children, edited by Earl A. Grollman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), pp. 122-123.
6. W. Robertson Nicoll, editor, Letters of Principal James Denney (London, New York, Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, n.d.), p. 193.
7. Bernard Baruch, My Own Story (New York: Pocket Books, Inc., Cardinal Giant edition, 1958), pp. 88-89.
8. John Masefield, "The Word," in Poems (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951), p. 71.
Jews, like other peoples in their region, used spices in preparing bodies for burial. The purpose was for ceremonial purification rather than for preservation of the bodies.
It is not spices in general though that I have in mind now; it is particular spices. These had been purchased by some women, friends of Jesus, and were brought by them on Easter morning to the tomb where Jesus' body had been laid. They intended to anoint his body, but when they reached the tomb, his body was not there.
What happened to those spices then? Did the women, in their surprise and fright, simply drop them outside the tomb and forget about them? The spices were expensive; did they return them to the shop where they had purchased them and get their money back? Did they use them for some other purpose? We don't know; it really doesn't matter. What does matter is that they were no longer needed for the purpose for which they were originally intended. They were new spices then, and were to have been used immediately. But they were still unused after the eastern sun had risen high in the sky.
Symbol Of Love
Those unused spices are a symbol of love. They were bought by Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. We know little about these women, except that they were among those who followed Jesus and helped to finance his ministry (Matthew 27:55-56; Mark 15:40-41; Luke 8:1-3). Mark's Gospel tells us that Jesus had cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:9). This led Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to have her sing in Jesus Christ -- Superstar about how she has been changed, "really changed," so that when she sees herself she seems like someone else. And she exclaims, "I love him so."1
Perhaps the others had similar reasons for loving him. At any rate, it is not likely they would have come to his tomb on that first day of the week to anoint his body with spices if they had not loved him. Those spices are a symbol of the love they had for him.
Jesus had known so much of hate in those last days of his life, but through it all he must have been sure of the love of these devoted women. At least a little joy must have welled up in his heart at the thought of their love for him.
Before Augustine became a Christian, he had a dear friend whom he lost in death, and it seemed for a while that he himself could not continue to live. He was so close to his friend that he felt that their souls were "one soul in two bodies." He later wrote in his Confessions, "Therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved."2
Those women must have felt something like that, too. In Christ they had found a love that had transformed their lives, and they had come to love him in return. He meant so much to them that it must have seemed that they were now "halved." It was loving hearts that carried them to his tomb that morning. Their unused spices are a symbol of their love.
Evidence Of Faithfulness
Those spices are also evidence of faithfulness. When Jesus was alive, these women had attended faithfully to his needs. Part of the time they had traveled with him, and from their own possessions they had contributed to his necessities and to those of his disciples. Their faces were among those seen at the Crucifixion. They had done all they could do, and now they watched from a distance, with bleeding hearts, as he suffered and died. They came closer when he was taken down from the Cross, and they followed to the garden where he was entombed. The Sabbath was at hand then, and they could do nothing else for him until it was past. But then they came again, in faithfulness, to anoint his body with spices they had bought. Those spices are evidence of their faithfulness to Jesus.
Not everyone values faithfulness that much. We want to be happy; we want our rights; we want to advance in the world; we want to be liked, to be popular; we want to be healthy and prosperous. But what about being faithful -- faithful to our duties, faithful to our vows and commitments, faithful to our country, to our church, to our God? Just where does faithfulness fit into our scale of priorities?
When Adlai Stevenson was running for President of the United States in 1952, he spoke at the dedication of a monument to Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois. Lovejoy was a Presbyterian minister and anti-slavery editor who was shot to death on November 7, 1837, while trying to protect his printing press from a mob. Mr. Stevenson quoted the words Elijah Lovejoy spoke to the mob just before he was shot: "I am impelled in the course I have taken because I fear God. As I shall answer to God in the great day, I dare not abandon my sentiments nor cease in all proper ways to propagate them. I can die at my post; but I cannot desert it."3
Few, if any, of us are fated to die as a result of faithfulness. But our lives would make more of a difference in the world if we were that faithful.
Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century English conversationalist and literary figure, wrote a great many prayers. The manuscript of one of his birthday prayers, written on September 18, 1758, has these words below the prayer: "This year I hope to learn diligence."4
Diligence is worth learning, but what about learning faithfulness, too? We could do with a good supply of that. The spices those women brought to Jesus' tomb were evidence of their faithfulness. Somewhere along the way, they had learned faithfulness. May God help us to learn it, too.
Token Of Triumph
Consider, too, that those unused spices are a token of triumph. If it had been necessary for the women to use them that morning, there would be nothing to say about Christ's triumph. But they didn't have to use them. Christ had been raised, triumphant over sin, over evil, and over death. Those spices then, unused, are a token of his triumph.
There is a story from India about the Buddha being stopped one day by a young woman who had long been childless and who, after many years, had given birth to a son. The child, playing among the bushes, was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. Pleading with the Buddha to restore her son to life, she received the answer: "Go, and bring me some mustard seeds from the home of people who are not mourning a death." Life expectancy was much lower then than it is now, and the infant mortality rate was tragically high. The mother began to wander about, in search of such a home, but after many years returned empty-handed. Seeing her return, the Buddha said: "When you departed you thought that you and you alone were the only one who had ever suffered a loss through death. Now that you have returned, you know differently. Now you know that the law of death governs us all."5
That is why we need an authoritative word about it, and Christ's resurrection gives us that word. No wonder Principal James Denney said, "The Gospel cannot be described at all unless it is described as a victory over death as well as sin."6
Financier Bernard Baruch tells about his father calling him and his brothers into his study once and asking them to promise that when he lay dying they would not allow their mother to send for a rabbi to say any final Jewish prayer. They promised, and when he was 81 and had a stroke and was dying, they had to say, "No," when their mother tried to get them to call the rabbi. Just a few days before he had reminded them of their earlier promise, adding, "The last thing I can do for you boys is to show you how to die."7
Jesus showed us that twenty centuries ago. But he did more: He robbed death of its power and took away its final threat. He triumphed over it, and he promises us victory over it, too. That is why we may hope to "find, when ended is the page, / Death but a tavern on our pilgrimage."8
Those unused spices are a token of triumph!
Stimulant To Hope
Therefore, they may also be a stimulant to hope. Imagine the hopes that must have come alive in the hearts of those women when they found that they did not need those spices! They had thought that Jesus' companionship was lost to them forever, but now that dead hope became a living hope. With Jesus' crucifixion, they had despaired of the Kingdom of God becoming a reality on any time schedule that would make any difference to them. But now they could pray again with hope for the coming of the Kingdom.
As they had shared in Jesus' ministry, they had felt the thrill of being involved in something that put meaning and purpose and joy into life. The Cross ended all that, but when they did not need to use those spices, they could dare to hope again that life would once more possess the wonder and excitement and meaning they had so recently come to find in it. There was a lot they did not understand as they turned away from that tomb, but hope was beginning to come alive in their hearts once more.
Hope is such an essential ingredient for meaningful living. When hope is taken out of life, the lift is taken out of it, too, and life becomes a burden to be borne. But when hope is alive and flourishing, there is something to draw one forward and to give buoyancy to existence.
But hope has numerous foes. Circumstances can dislodge it. Broken or strained relationships can overpower it. Disappointments, griefs, failures can smother it. But the resurrection of Jesus proclaims the presence and power of God in the midst of life's troubles, turmoils, and tragedies. God can bring good out of evil, victory out of defeat, life out of death, hope out of despair. That is why those unused spices may be stimulants to hope!
If those particular spices had been intended for one of the other common uses of spices, they would have no significance for us today. But they were not, and so they symbolize a love that stayed alive in the midst of death, and they call us to bring to Christ the affection of our souls, the devotion of our hearts, the consecration of our wills. They give evidence of a faithfulness that does not quit, reminding us of the need for the developing and strengthening of faithfulness in us -- faithfulness to Christ, to persons, to vital causes, to ideals and convictions. Those unused spices are tokens of Christ's victory over death. Because of that victory, "chords that were broken" within us may "vibrate once more," and we may know what it is to live in the hope that the Resurrection makes possible.
____________
1. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, Jesus Christ -- Superstar.
2. Augustine, The Confessions (Great Books edition, Vol. 18), p. 22.
3. Cited by Clarence E. Macartney, The Woman of Tekoah (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1955), p. 31.
4. Elton Trueblood, editor, Doctor Johnson's Prayers (London: SCM Press Limited, 1947), p. 24.
5. Martin Diskin and Hans Guggenheim, "The Child and Death as Seen in Different Cultures," in Explaining Death to Children, edited by Earl A. Grollman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), pp. 122-123.
6. W. Robertson Nicoll, editor, Letters of Principal James Denney (London, New York, Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, n.d.), p. 193.
7. Bernard Baruch, My Own Story (New York: Pocket Books, Inc., Cardinal Giant edition, 1958), pp. 88-89.
8. John Masefield, "The Word," in Poems (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951), p. 71.
