You know the song recorded by Nancy Sinatra: These Boots Are Made for Walking right:
These boots are made for walking and that's just what they'll do, one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you...
It is a kind of cute song about a woman standing up for herself in the midst of some pretty bad luck in love. What is most fun about it though is that it is told, at least in part,, from the perspective of a pair of shoes, boots to be precise. Its fun that we get to think about how Nancy's feet play into the whole story.
Well today we have a gospel lesson all about a pair of feet. About Jesus' feet. We start out at a dinner table with some of Jesus' closest friends and then the focus shifts, quickly to a woman who we have seen do all kinds of normal and admirable things doing something very strange. She kneels down on the floor, pulls her hair down out of the nice knot that it is tied in, keeping it respectable and controlled and she starts rubbing strong scented oil on Jesus feet and wiping it off with her hair. Very strange and to understand I think that we need to go back a ways in the story and think about these feet and where they have been.
The first place we ever are conscious of Jesus' feet is when he is a little baby in scratchy hay, he certainly needs to be wrapped in bands of swaddling clothes, like the gospels tell us he was, to get him all tightly bound up so that no skin is exposed to be cold or to be irritated by the scratchy hay. So Mary and Joseph, I'm sure after counting his little fingers and toes, take strips of cloth and start to wrap him up, clumsily, like new parents do, trying to hold his little feet still to get him all wrapped tight, afraid that they might break him and finally they get him all bound up feet and all so that he can sleep peacefully.
Then the next time we see his feet they are being a little mischievous, whether by intention or not. They carry him, twelve years old into the temple. Where he amazes the chief priests and teachers of the law with his great knowledge of the scriptures. He stays behind when the family leaves, and his parents have to come back looking for him a little panicked and certainly with his feet in mind wondering where he wandered off to and what he is doing. Once they find him they are struck by the difference of their child, he stayed behind in the church talking to the priests, this is not a normal kid, he will not have a normal life.
And he doesn't, the very next time we see him is by the river Jordan, he takes his shoes off and his bare feet wade into the cool water where he is baptized and comes up out of the water to hear the voice of God calling him son. In the old testament when Moses heard the voice of God speak it told him to take his shoes off because the place that he was standing was Holy ground, when God is speaking even the ground becomes Holy and wouldn't you want to be as close to that as possible, to soak it up through the soles of your feet?
Well after the voice was done speaking Jesus put his sandals back on and it almost feels like he didn't take them off even for a minute for three years. He went straight out into the desert. Where they got hot and tired and dusty and he was tormented but he remained, preparing himself for all that he would have to endure later on.
He came back and they took him down to the seashore where he called disciples to him. They took him all over the countryside where crowds gathered, pressing in on him, constantly asking him for teaching and healing. Each time we hear in the gospel that he tried to get off his tired feet, that he went to a certain quiet place to pray, people would find him and beg him to look upon them to answer to their needs and he would.
It seems sometimes that he and his disciples crossed the sea so often in their little boats so that they could have a few moments rest and peace and quiet. But even then Jesus' feet weren't still. Instead they carried him out onto the water. He stands there calling Peter, giving Peter a chance to know who God is and who Peter is to God. So Jesus stands on the water, feet ready to hold him up and steady enough to reach out and hold Peter safely too when he starts to sink.
Then in the days nearest to our story for today, the patterns that Jesus' feet walk in start to change. He has stayed away from Jerusalem for a while because the outcry against him is getting louder and louder. Because he knows that there are those who would convict him there. So he keeps preaching and teaching in the more distant lands but then he turns his feet and warns his disciples that the time is getting near that he will have to go back, to allow himself to be arrested, to withstand what is before him.
Then in the midst of that they get a message, Lazarus, their dear friend is sick, very sick. Should they go? Lazarus is in Bethany, a suburb of Jerusalem, close enough that Jesus will surely be arrested. So they don't go. They wait. They get another message and another, but they are caught up doing other things. Finally they get the message that Lazarus has died and so they turn toward Jerusalem. They go to Bethany, they meet Mary and Martha Lazarus' sisters. When Mary comes out to Jesus she says Lord if you had been her Lazarus would not have died. Then she wept and Jesus did too. And then Jesus walked to the tomb and called Lazarus out. His dear friend, dead four days, walked again. Mary and Martha and Lazarus had their lives back. The world that had fallen around their feet had been put back together...And the religious authorities saw it and they were scared so Jesus' fate was sealed.
By coming back and calling Lazarus out of the tomb and showing his power of new life over death Jesus traded the life of his dear friend, the comfort and peace of Mary Lazarus' sister, the promise of new life for us all, for his own life.
There was a trade, Lazarus was dead and now he is alive. And so when they are all at dinner in today's gospel, Jesus, His disciples, Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha, Mary wants to do something for Jesus. She finds a very expensive jar of oil, one that was left over it seems from the burial of her brother Lazarus. She takes that jar and sets it near Jesus, perhaps as a gift for him? Or for the poor, certainly he has gotten funeral spices as a gift before. But then she pulls her hair down. Something a woman certainly didn't do in the company of men, it was indecent. And then she touched Jesus feet. A single woman touching the feet of a single man, also not done. And she takes the oil and pours it on him. and wipes it with her hair. Everyone in the room suddenly gets very uncomfortable. This was inappropriate, it was against the rules and it was darn right strange.
They protest, Judas points out that she is using oil that costs enough to feed a poor family for a year. The only one who seems calm about it is the only one who really understands it. Jesus. Of course she is doing this because his feet are nearly done taking him places. He traded their freedom for the life of one whom he loved and the only place left for his feet to go is the cross. They will walk him into Jerusalem. They will hold him steady in front of Pilate and Herod, they will walk him under the weight of a cross up a hill and finally they will be nailed to that cross.
Mary gives him the only thing that she has to give him, out of love and gratitude. And in so doing, she predicts the events of the next two weeks of the church year for us. She reminds us that because he gave it for us, the life of Jesus is no longer his own. Because he gave it for us, the next time anyone touches his feet will be to wrap them in bands of cloths, swaddling cloths and lay him in the grave. The next time his disciples notice his feet they will be wounded but triumphant. They will have made that same trade that they made for Lazarus for us all. Mary anoints Jesus' feet to remind us of the road we walk with him for these next two weeks and the road he walked for our sake forever. Amen.
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