“One thing is needful”
Jesus’ word to Martha about Mary speaks to our reality throughout Holy Week and Easter. It is about attending to the one thing needful. What is that? It is about “sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to his word”. In the context of Holy Week it means seeing and hearing the accounts of the Passion and the other Scripture readings that help illumine the meaning of the Passion. Only by sitting and listening, seeing and hearing can we begin to learn things about ourselves and about the high and holy things of God.
It seems to me quite significant that at Morning and Evening Prayer throughout Holy Week, the second lessons are taken from the Gospel according to St. John and largely from what is known as the ‘farewell discourses’ of Jesus where he is explaining to them his going from them, at once into his passion and death but also into his resurrection and ascension, in other words into the hands of the Father, into the community of the Trinity. “I go to prepare a place for you”, Jesus says. What is that place? He is, he says, “the way, the truth and the life” and that is found in his love for the Father. “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me.” Of course, that may not be easy to grasp so Jesus adds “or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves.” Words and deeds that open us out to truth and life. These rich and paradoxical lessons reveal the dynamic of revelation and redemption.
The Resurrection forces into view a deeper reflection and understanding about the events of the Passion. In his going from them in this twofold sense, we are forced to remember and learn more deeply the meaning of our life with God. “In that day, you will know that I am in my Father and you in me, and I in you.” “The Holy Spirit”, he says, “whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
This is the condition of true peace. The peace that Christ brings is not as the world gives. It has entirely to do with his “going to the Father” which is the deeper meaning of the Passion without which the Resurrection makes no sense even as the Resurrection is essential for understanding the Passion.
It is equally marvellous that on the Monday of Holy Week we should have as the first lessons at Morning and Evening Prayer, readings from the last two chapters of The Book of Hosea. Hosea is the great love-prophet of the Old Testament and provides a strong way of thinking about repentance and forgiveness, about love in the face of betrayal. His own experience provides the template for thinking about the greater power of God’s forgiveness of wayward Israel. “Take with you words”, he says, “and return to the Lord”. In a way, he is saying what Jesus is saying in the house of Mary and Martha about “the one thing needful”. It is attending to the words of Christ – the Word and words of God in their fullest sense – in order to find our part in his passion.
Today we begin the Passion according to St. Mark. It begins with a scene from Bethany, the scene of the anointing of Christ by the woman with “an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious”. It begins with the breaking open of that box or jar and the pouring out of the oil upon his head. It causes outrage and. “There were some that had indignation within themselves”, Mark tells us. They said, “Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pieces of silver, and have been given to the poor: and they murmured against her.” This is a microcosm of the entire Passion. Something good is done and it is complained about. There are divisions in our souls about what we think is right and good.
The Passion confronts us with just these divisions in our souls about the good. Christ has come to show us something more and greater for our humanity than worldly things. This does not excuse us from acting with charity and compassion, with justice and truth towards the poor of the world. Far from it. “The poor ye have with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do good to them”. It reminds us though that there is a larger sense of justice that is found in the Passion of Christ. That larger sense of justice has entirely to do with God’s engagement with our humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. The woman says nothing, unlike, say, the woman at the well of Samaria. She is more like the woman taken in adultery or the woman who in Luke’s Gospel anoints Jesus’ feet. In each case there is indignation and division. Here, Jesus responds to our sense of waste and outrage. He reveals the meaning of her action. It is the one thing needful. “She is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.” Wow.
This changes the whole dynamic of Christ’s presence with the disciples and with us. It leads to Judas’ betrayal of Christ. It sheds light upon Mark’s account of the Last Supper, of his account of Gethsemane, of Christ’s capture and of Peter’s betrayal. These are all the things which the beginning of the Passion according to St. Marks reveals to us. What do we see except a fuller range of human limitations, betrayals and deceits, a fuller portrayal of the things in our hearts. What is the one thing needful here? It is the breaking of the alabaster jar and the anointing of Christ, to be sure, but it leads to our confronting the limits of our hearts and even more the betrayals of our hearts. This is captured in Peter’s tears when he discovers his betrayal of Christ. As Jesus said, “before the cock crow twice though shalt deny me thrice”. “And immediately the second time the cock crew. And Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said … and when he thought thereon, he wept.” Peter’s tears flow out from the one thing needful. The broken alabaster jar is at once symbolic of Christ’s death on the Cross, body broken and blood outpoured, but it also opens our minds to see the things of our hearts. Only then can we weep the tears of repentance. That is the one thing needful for us.
Fr. David Curry
Monday in Holy Week, 2016