Worship for Sunday 6 April 2025, by Rev. Caroline Wickens

Mary anoints Jesus

Invitation to Worship

Let us begin this day by rejoicing!

The Lord has done such wonderful things for us.

Let us be glad!

The day before us is uncertain.

We know not what we will encounter on our way.

Wherever we go, we go forth as people of the living God,

And we go forth to touch the lives of all with his healing touch.

Let us begin this day with rejoicing!

and return to our homes with gladness!

Hymn: StF 89 Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our strong deliverer

You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
You do not faint
You won’t grow weary

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our strong deliverer

You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
You do not faint
You won’t grow weary

You’re the defender of the weak
You comfort those in need
You lift us up on wings like eagles

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our strong deliverer

‘Cause You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
You do not faint
You won’t grow weary

You’re the defender of the weak
You comfort those in need
You lift us up on wings like eagles

From everlasting
To everlasting
God, you are everlasting

Opening Prayer

God, who loves us beyond our wildest dreams,

What can we do to show how much we love you?
The gift each of us brings is different yet
every gift is valuable, because each one comes from you.
You see the heart of the giver and the love it holds.

We want to give you praise and adoration but
we don’t know how to do it properly.
Who among us would have the courage of Mary with her perfume,
showing the whole world that you are her Lord?

What can we do to show how much we love you?
We can remember your chosen path of pain.
We can try to understand the way that you love us.
We can thank you and praise you for your great sacrifice.

Lord, give us the words we need to tell the world about you.
Give us voices fit to sing your praise.
Give us the courage of Mary with her perfume.
We long to worship as you deserve.
Amen.

Bible Reading: John 12:1 – 8

Mary Anoints Jesus

12 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ²There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. ³Mary 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. ⁴But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ⁵‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ ⁶(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.) ⁷Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. ⁸You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

Hymn: StF 489 All I once held dear

All I once held dear, built my life upon
All this world reveres, and wars to own
All I once thought gain I have counted loss
Spent and worthless now, compared to this

Knowing you, Jesus knowing you
There is no greater thing
You’re my all, you’re the best
You’re my joy, my righteousness
And I love you, Lord

Now my heart’s desire is to know you more
To be found in you, and known as yours
To possess by faith what I could not earn
All surpassing gift of righteousness

Oh to know the power of your risen life
And to know you in your suffering
To become like you in your death, my Lord
So with You to live
And never die

Graham Kendrick (b.1950), © Graham Kendrick/Make Way Music Ltd. Reproduced under CCLI licence no.263530

Reflection

‘Wanted: Jesus of Nazareth’. The Gospel has just explained that the chief priests and the Pharisees were planning to put Jesus to death, and so he went into hiding near the wilderness. Everyone was wondering whether he would take the risk of coming to Jerusalem for the Passover, and many thought he would take the easy way out and stay away. So his arrival in Bethany must have come as a shock.

Jesus didn’t behave like a fugitive whose life was on the line. He and his disciples went to a dinner party, which turned out to be unusual in several ways. Lazarus was there, whom Jesus had raised from death just a few weeks earlier. But the story focuses on Mary, one of Lazarus’s sisters. She behaved in ways that would be surprising even today, and were shocking in Jesus’ world. Women never appeared in public with their hair loose, and the action of pouring the perfume over Jesus’ feet was also very unexpected. In her longing to honour Jesus and show her love, Mary was challenging social expectations about how women should behave.

Mary was a woman of courage. She was brave enough to stand up against Jesus’ powerful enemies and acknowledge him as her friend. She took the risk of anointing his feet with her rich perfume, which she could have sold to feed the family for months. She faced up to the criticism of others for breaking the social boundaries in such a spectacular way, filling the whole house with the fragrance of her action. Jesus was also drawing on deep reserves of courage as he anticipated his coming suffering and death, and perhaps he recognised Mary’s courage – she and he were both sustained by God’s strength and love.

We don’t always think of courage as a quality that Christians need. Yet following Jesus can be risky. Some people are called to give up their lives for his sake – Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, both martyred for their Christian opposition to evil. Others are called to new and unsettling ways of life, getting involved with people they don’t know, whose ways may be different from theirs, so as to bring the good news of Jesus into difficult places. Others find themselves facing criticism because the way they choose to praise God is more radical than their society can accept – like Mary of Bethany. And all of us are called to recognise that, as Jesus said, ‘we always have the poor with us’ – we all face the ongoing challenge to comfortable complacency that flows from knowing how other struggle.

Jesus said yes to Mary’s act of courage, and to all the others who act courageously because they want to make their love for him come alive. And his words highlight the link between their courage and his – for he told Mary that she was anointing him for his burial. He knew the risks of coming back to Jerusalem, and less than a week later, his enemies would nail him to the Cross and his friends would lay him in a borrowed tomb. Courage is a dangerous gift.

Yet it is through facing up to challenges that we find the way through to new life. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus waited for the soldiers to come and arrest him, and his sweat fell like drops of blood. If he had run away instead, there would have been no Cross, no burial – and no resurrection. If Martin Luther King had not spoken and acted for racial justice, he might have lived longer, but the journey towards freedom for Black people in the US would have been so much harder. Courageous choices cost much, but God uses them to channel the power of love into a hurting world.

We may not think of ourselves as courageous – we know the inner fears and struggles that go with so many of life’s choices. This story tells us that we can make the brave choices. When troubles come, Jesus is there for us, saying ‘yes’ to the choices that affirm faith, build hope and bring love, and leading us through the hard times to new life with him.

To think about

What helps you be brave when you need to be?

Prayers for others and ourselves

Let us open hearts to change
and call the Holy Spirit in,
that change may be for good.

God, who in Christ affirms the beauty of compassion,
who accepts and blesses what is offered in love;
we bring and offer the best things from our hearts,
the treasures of our affections and concerns
for the world’s healing, which is also our own.

We pray that we may be strengthened for the good of all,
to make known, in warnings and in songs of love,
Your Good News: God, at work for justice, renewing the life of Earth, in whom You delight.

We acknowledge the ugliness of wars and conflicts continuing without concern for life and beauty.
The corners people have felt backed into,
responding so desperately with violence.
Guide the leaders of the world to make decisions that will lead to peace.

We pray especially for the people of Sudan, Ukraine and Israel-Gaza as war continues to cause turmoil in those places

We consider the blessing that is the world-wide Church –
divided, preoccupied, fallible, but still Your people.

Help us to be what Church needs to be –
called to love extravagantly in our response to need,
our pursuit of peace, and our love of the Earth.

We remember the people of Myanmar and Thailand following the earthquake there, praying for all who are injured or bereaved, all those made homeless.
And we long for healing for the hurts
of our own immediate lives and communities,
may the precious oil you have saved for this day, this church, this life be the balm.

Guide us in prayer for those we haven’t loved,
for those dealing with hard choices, those facing loss,
and show us how Your grace can make what we do offer –
a blessing for Your beloved world.
Amen

Hymn: StF 566 Take my life, and let it be

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07cf33j

Take my life and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
*Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in endless praise.
Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
Take my voice and let me sing,
Always, only for my King.
Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.
Take my silver and my gold,
Not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect and use
Every power as Thou shalt choose.
Take my will and make it Thine,
It shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart, it is Thine own,
It shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love, my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself and I will be
Ever, only, all for Thee.

Frances Ridley Havergal (1836 – 1879)

Blessing

Lord, we long to share your life in thankfulness and love.
We ask you to pour out your blessings upon us
So that we can pour them out to others.
Amen.