Transvaluation = True Joy
Transvaluation = True Joy
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Having been the collect for the 3rd Sunday of Easter since the Medieval era, in the 1979 BCP it was moved to this 5th Sunday in Lent. As we prepare to walk with Jesus on his Way of the Cross, as he staked his life on gaining us eternal life, so we need to decide on what to stake our life, what is most valuable, which paradoxically can’t be some past nostalgia that we try to hoard as we go with Jesus into the unknown future and true joys promised by God. On the 5th Sunday in Lent in the year of our Lord 2025, we are learning that much we valued and counted on, we may have overvalued. But on this 5th Sunday in Lent in the year of our Lord 2025, we are invited to be transvalued, as Paul and Mary were by their relationship with Christ Jesus.
The Jewish exiles were reminded by the prophet Isaiah of how God had brought their ancestors through the Red Sea while drowning the Egyptian chariots, horses and warriors, and leading them to the same mountain where God had appeared to Moses and making a covenant relationship with them and with each other. But why does Isaiah suddenly tell them, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” The people of Judah, the remaining two tribes of Benjamin and Judah from the original 12 tribes of Israel, had come to overvalue a royal dynasty and the blank check they thought God had given to the descendants of King David. Do not remember when you based your security on a king to make you secure at the price of your freedom. The new thing would be the older thing, a people living as equals by a covenant relationship with their God and with each other, a covenant of peace and justice.
Paul, on the other hand, turned his back on everything, not just a “loss,” but “rubbish” — actually “sewer trash.” Of course, Paul had considered his Jewish legacy something of supreme value — note his reference to the surviving tribe of Benjamin. And he is more affirming of his Jewish legacy elsewhere in his letters. But in his overvaluing of that legacy, he had indeed been a “persecutor of the church” — Paul had blood on his hands. And he had been convinced that he was doing God’s will, fulfilling God’s call. It took one blinding instant to realize that his entire life’s calling, for him, might as well have been a total loss.
Speaking of loss, Mary’s one whole pound of perfume was made of nard, which had to be imported from India. Think how much it cost to transport nard that far, and how much of that that cost would be passed on to the consumer, how long it would have taken Mary, however wealthy her family was, to accumulate a pound, ounce by ounce. And then she throws it all away.
But how valuable was the life of her brother Lazarus, even if she knows that he and the man who raised him would soon be killed? Just a few verses after this story, we’re told that those plotting Jesus’s death “planned to kill Lazarus as well.” We hear no more of Lazarus in the Beloved Disciple’s Gospel. But why would the Gospeller have mentioned this unless those succeeded in killing Jesus also succeeded in killing Lazarus, just days after he had been raised from death? And by anointing Jesus’s feet first, as was customary at burial, I believe that Mary understood that. And still she sacrificed the most valuable thing in this world she had, for a man she knew would soon be killed. Somehow, she must have sensed that this man held a truer joy than anything in life and death that she could imagine.
Today she sacrifices an entire year’s worth of perfume – 300 denarii – for Jesus: money that could have been given to the poor, Judas the traitor sniffs. But Mary now knows that there is more to life than this life. She knows that Jesus will be killed for what he has done for her brother. I think also she knows that her brother will be “dissapeared.” I think she also knows that there will always be opportunities to love justice and to do mercy. But also knowing that Jesus will be sacrificed for the sins of his nation, for the sins of all nations; Mary sacrifices that thing which is clearly most precious to her for he who will sacrifice himself even for those who would sacrifice him. Her values have been transformed. Like Paul, Mary has been transvalued.
In the words of our collect, we look for “true joys” in things we have already experienced, or possessed for a long time. But this 5th Sunday in Lent, we pray that God will fix our hearts on true joys we haven’t yet experienced, something we can’t place our hands on and our arms around. Only Jesus Christ makes it possible for us to pray this prayer because he knows his burial is coming; he is moving toward that thing which was as unknown to Jesus before he experienced it as it is unknown to all human beings. The only true joys, the only joys whose value is everlasting, can only be found by being buried with Jesus, for only on the other side of loss, as Paul learned, can the new thing that Isaiah prophesied be seen. The truest joys are the unknown joys.
5th Sunday In Lent
The Rev. David Kendrick
April 6, 2025