It was about a quarter to eight on the evening of June 15, 2011, when all hell broke loose on the streets of downtown Vancouver.
Just moments before, in the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals, the Vancouver Canucks had suffered a humiliating 4-0 shutout at the hands of the Boston Bruins.
Out on the city streets, the crowds were thick in the fan zone, a two block area cordoned off, filled with an estimated 100,000 people.
A lot was on the line that night. It had all come down to this one deciding game. Who would win? Who would go home in defeat? Who would take home the cup and the honour?
In Vancouver, the fans were on edge. Even those not known to take a liking to sports came downtown to absorb the atmosphere. Earlier games had seen 70,000 downtown. On this Wednesday night, that number had increased by another 50%.
Not all of them were there for the love of the game.
From early in the first period, there were groups amongst the crowds agitating, shouting, “Let’s go riot, let’s go riot…”
When the final buzzer rang, the trouble started immediately. Jerseys were lit on fire. Porta Potties were tipped over leaving an awful stench. Fist fights broke out. Within minutes of the game’s ending, a car was overturned somewhere on Georgia Street near the public library’s main branch.
People started jumping on the overturned automobile, and moments later, it was lit on fire.
This was only the beginning.
They lit a truck on fire. It was put out by firefighters. The crowd lit it on fire again. In a nearby parking lot, two squad cars were torched as well.
All in all, more than a dozen vehicles were burned that night, and much more damage besides.
The riot police advanced on the scene. Bit by bit, block by block, they pushed the crowds south through the entertainment district. Down Granville towards Robson. Not before the windows at the Hudson’s Bay flagship store were shattered.
I wasn’t downtown that night. But what happened on that warm Wednesday evening is emblazoned on my mind. Etched in my memory.
And there are two sets of artifacts from that night that I still vividly remember.
The first is the set of panels, the 4x8 sheets of plywood that had boarded up the windows the day after the riot. The panels on which many of the city’s residents had later scrawled their names, words of love and peace, after the night downtown Vancouver burned.
The second, is that breathtaking image—and perhaps you remember it too—the photo of the so-called kissing couple.
In the midst of the riot, with fire and smoke and riot police everywhere, Richard Lam captured a striking, moving photo of a young woman in shorts and a baby blue sweater, head cradled in a a tender and intimate embrace by a young man. From the angle in the photo, they appear to be kissing.
Two thousand years earlier, and six days before Passover, Jesus had gathered with his closest friends—Mary, Martha, and Lazarus who Jesus had raised from the dead.
The tensions and anxiety in the countryside surrounding the Capital had been steadily mounting as skirmishes between dissident factions and the Roman occupiers broke out.
Everywhere you turned, there was another rebel leader seeking to mobilize a movement to take on the religious and political establishment. They were sick of being treated as less than. They were sick of the effects of the changing economy on their lives. Their livelihoods were being taken from them, and they didn’t know what to do, except march on the capital.
As you might imagine, the puppet government in place didn’t look kindly on these disturbances. They had long before developed a shocking visual deterrence device, and placed it on the hill outside the city’s gates. The people of the city and the surrounding areas lived their lives in the shadow of the Roman cross, and the message it sent: do not resist. If you do, you know where you’ll end up.
Heart set on Jerusalem, and the liberation mission he has embraced, Jesus comes to rest at his dear friends’ house in Bethany. Bethany is a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem, a stone’s throw from the Mount of Olives. If you know Vancouver, it’s Commercial Drive to the Downtown peninsula.
The Mount of Olives, as you might remember, is the very same place that will become the site of Jesus’ final prayer vigil and arrest before he tried, condemned, and executed.
But for now, in a time of chaos, and with mounting interest from the religious authorities, Jesus hunkers down for an intimate meal with the ones who know and love him the best. The religious authorities, those who had gotten wind of Lazarus’ rising from the dead, are none too pleased, and they are plotting for Jesus’ end. But for now, Jesus experiences a moment of reprieve.
They’re not alone, of course, Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and Jesus.
As always, Jesus has his entourage with him, and they gather together for dinner at the table. The candlelight flickers, and the wine is poured. There’s the smell of a fresh roast. I can almost catch the hint of rosemary and thyme infused in the lamb.
The air is thick that night as they reflect on all that has been. All they have been through. The miracle of new life on the other side of death, still fresh in their mind, the miracle of Lazarus’ rising. And perhaps, as the night wears on, someone asks Jesus what comes next.
I can almost see myself there, the smoke of little fires everywhere in the distance, while Jesus and his most intimate community sequester themselves from the chaos—if but for a moment—in this intimate gathering of close friends.
And then, somewhere between dinner and the cheese course, Mary opens a jar. I can hear the pop of the cork, and then, the most exquisite aroma fills the room.
They can tell as soon as it is open. That this is no cheap perfume. All eyes turn towards the source. All eyes turn towards Mary as her costly perfume overwhelms the smells of the evening’s dinner. The stench of fire and death in the air is overwhelmed with an enchanting, pungent fragrance, as if to bear witness to the exquisite beauty of life even in the midst of death.
And then she bows down before Jesus, pouring herself out at his feet.
Her act, as pastor and author Emily Scott points out, is “sensual, transgressive, and astonishing.” It breaks all cultural norms, crossing the boundaries of all the taboos of what a woman, a friend, ought to do, especially in such a public setting. She lets down her hair. She touches his feet. Massages and caresses them. In a reckless act of desire and devotion, she abandons the rules of proper conduct, giving her whole self over to this one moment. Giving her whole self to an intimate act of care. Giving her whole self to the one before her, as though it’s the last night on earth.
In the midst of the riot, glass shards and burning cars, overturned toilets, with people screaming and riot police closing in, a moment of deep tenderness and care.
This story isn’t about the cost of the perfume.
It’s so much more. It’s the cost of Mary’s reputation. It’s the cost of her dignity. It’s the cost of her role in the community. It’s also about the reckless abandon of love and devotion with the world crashing down around us.
There are so many ways in which Mary ought to be distracted. And yet, in the face of everything she knows is coming, perhaps emerging from a deep feminine intuition that foreshadows all that is to come, she can do nothing but anoint Jesus’ feet in the purest form of love she can muster.
And all we ever want to do is look away.
We get distracted by Judas mansplaining what should be done with the money. We can turn that into a nice sermon about stewardship and argue about whether the poor really are among us, and what that means, and the historical context of such things, all as a means of sweeping aside our discomfort with Mary’s transgressive devotion.
In a world such as ours, focused as we are on what’s rational and right…focused as we are on what we can see and know and count. Focused as we are on numbers—whether it’s the cost of perfume or any other numbers impacting the church—we miss out on what’s been before us all along.
Our Saviour is here. Our friend is here. Our Jesus is here. How will we respond? He’s here with us now. In our midst. And we carry on with life as usual, dismissively pushing him to the edges of consciousness, the edges of our devotion.
And in a few short days, he’s going to pick up his things, hop on that donkey, and head towards Jerusalem. But for now he’s here.
In a few short days, Jesus is not going to be here anymore. He’ll have moved on to accomplish the next task in God’s liberating mission. He’ll take one step closer, and another step closer to bearing witness to a love that will not let go, a love we can barely fathom.
And yet he’s here. Right here.. Right now. He’s here with us. Sharing this meal with us. And in this moment, we have a choice. We can get lost in our thoughts about how things aren’t as they should be, or how we’d like them to be, or how we can fix this, or change that person, or change ourselves, or go back to whatever we considered normal.
Or, we can throw ourselves down headlong at Jesus’ feet, as irrational as it sounds. As un-Anglican as it sounds. What would it look like to take on Mary’s transgressive devotion for ourselves? Holding nothing back. Sparing nothing. Our resources. Our dignity. Our reputation.
You and me? We live in a world that has a hard time believing that God still speaks. We live in a world that has lost its ability to hear God’s words of love and devotion spoken from the beginning—Let There Be and It Is Good. And yet those words are still spoken. Those words are still true.
As I was meditating on this passage this week, a thought washed over me. I want to be like Mary. And oftentimes. Most times I'm not. I want to be like Mary. I want to live with Mary’s abandon. I want to give myself to Jesus in ways that make no sense to Judas or anyone else.
Not knowing what will come, Mary senses that it is worth the risk to honour the one who is before her, the one who is here with us today. Gathered with us around this table, at this sacred meal.
Last fall, we ended many of our services with these words from swiss philosopher Henri-Frederic Amiel:
Life is short, and we don't have much time
to gladden the hearts of others.
So, be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
I know not everyone loves those words. And we each have our reasons. Perhaps they remind us of death. Perhaps they put the reality of our own mortality too close for comfort.
But here’s what they remind me of:
They remind me that nothing is as important as loving with wild abandon. Right now. In this moment. Loving like Mary, knowing not what tomorrow brings.
Loving like Mary, focusing on the present. On this moment. On the ways we can gladden the hearts of others. Asking of ourselves, and of this community how—in this moment—we can be swift to love?
Mary didn’t think twice before she acted.
And my prayer for us today is that we won’t think twice either. That in all things we will bbe a people who are swift to love, no matter the cost.
That we will not think twice in loving with our whole hearts. That it will be our practice as individuals, and as Christ’s very body, to make haste to be kind.
That the blessing of God all loving, Creator, Christ, and Spirit
Be with us, and remain with us
this day and for evermore.
Amen.
