Compline on Monday in Holy Week

Canon Tim Schofield, Canon Emeritus of Chichester Cathedral

There are times when it is all too obvious that someone is dying. At the age of 90 my father had a fall and needed an operation to pin a badly broken femur. After coming out of theatre the staff assured me on the phone that he had come though the operation successfully. Yet when I went to visit him, I could see immediately that he was dying. The shock of the fall and the strain of surgery had simply been too much. But the signs of death are not always so obvious; sometimes there are no physical indications, and it takes spiritual perception to discern an approaching death.

And that, I think, is what was happening in tonight’s gospel reading. The first three gospels all record how Jesus warned the disciples on the way to Jerusalem that he was going to suffer and die there. But, for whatever reason, the disciples didn’t understand – they couldn’t grasp it. There was, though, according to the fourth gospel, one person who did perceive what was happening. And that was Mary of Bethany. And it is her actions at the banquet we heard about, which reveal her discernment. First, she goes to the feet of Jesus. The last time we heard of her at the feet of Jesus was, significantly, when she was weeping and grieving over the death of her brother Lazarus. And here she is again before Jesus, this time pouring costly perfume on his feet, which is exactly where a Jewish embalmer would begin with someone who had died. But that is not all – for she then undoes her hair and wipes the feet of Jesus. Jewish women usually kept their hair tied back in public. They only let their hair loose in times of intimacy or as a sign of distraction in mourning. And Mary’s actions speak of both those things. They are a sign of mourning for the approaching death of Jesus, which she so clearly discerned, and a sign of passionate love for her Lord.

But the fulness of her loving is communicated in another way. She anointed Jesus’ feet with a pound of pure nard, a perfume usually imported at huge expense. And a pound of nard was an overwhelmingly extravagant amount. That’s why we’re told the fragrance of the perfume filled the whole house, every corner. But when it comes to describing the power of such fragrance our vocabulary is rather limited. There is something strangely ineffable about smells and scents. Yet they are so powerful we can be transported straight back to past memories in the most vivid way by a particular fragrance. And the importance of smell for us in the context of tonight’s gospel is that it is a sign of the economy of grace. From a human point of view, we don’t need the fragrance of roses, jasmine, hyacinth or nard for our survival. And that, of course, is the point. Although scent is not essential to us it is bestowed on us as a sheer gift – a gift in which we are called to delight and take joy. And certainly, that seems to be how Jesus reacted when Mary anointed his feet. He delighted in the gift of grace and beauty that was conferred on him.

Some scholars think that this account in the fourth gospel was influenced to some extent by Mark’s account of the anointing of Jesus. And after the anointing in Mark’s account Jesus says this: “She has performed a good service for me”. The Greek word for “good” here is “kalos” which can also mean beautiful. She has done a beautiful thing for me. But this act of gratuitous beauty was not something everyone delighted in. Judas, for one, couldn’t find any joy in Mary’s loving extravagance. He would rather the money had been given to the poor; although John adds that this was not because he cared for the poor but more that, as keeper of the common purse, he was embezzling the proceeds.

And all this takes us to something rather important for the mission of the church. The church, like Judas, has not always embraced the beautiful or seen sensory joy as a sign of the grace and glory of God. R.S. Thomas in one of his poems describes the Puritan influence on our land as “the adroit castrator of art; the bitter negation of song and dance and the heart’s innocent joy”. That may feel like a harsh judgement, but the disparagement of beauty can have profound spiritual effects. The great Roman Catholic theologian, Urs Von Balthasar, once said: “We can be sure that whoever sneers at beauty as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.”  “Whoever sneers at beauty…can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love” – that might explain something about the portrayal of Judas in tonight’s gospel.

And this speaks directly to our present culture. One of the diminishing things about contemporary society is the glorification of gracelessness which has led to a collective brutalisation of heart, mind and spirit. It’s exacerbated by a utilitarianism in which the worth of things is judged not by their beauty or truth but more in terms of self-interest and short-term expediency. Faced with these forms of what Jonathan Sacks called decivilisation I believe that the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty need to be at the forefront of the mission of the church.

We have seen how tonight’s gospel revealed to us something of the grace of God implicit in beautiful fragrance. And art, architecture and music are similar signs of glory pointing to the gratuitous love of God. For instance, music is not given to us to make life a little more bearable even though a teacher of mine once described Debussy as the thinking man’s gin and tonic. God gave us music so that we might simply take joy and delight in it. And because artistic beauty is a hint, a reflection of the uncreated beauty of God, that joy leads us to the source of beauty, which is God himself. That’s why beauty is so important to the mission of the church because it helps people draw closer to God and enjoy him and love him. And as we do that, we are ourselves are gradually restored into the beauty of the image of God in which we were created. Much of the time that restoration work within us is a matter of faith. Occasionally, though, that transforming grace is clearly discernible.

In my study I have an icon of St. Seraphim, a nineteenth century saint, who is, I think, one of the truly great saints. He grew up in Kursk on the Russian/Ukraine border, so his prayers and influence are especially important at this time. Towards the end of his life, Seraphim had a conversation with a friend in which he said the real aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. What followed was a sort of practical demonstration of Seraphim’s teaching as they were both enveloped in the dazzling light of the Holy Spirit.  Accompanying this was feelings of peace, joy and warmth which words could not express. And then rather surprisingly Seraphim asked: “And what of the smell?” His friend replied that there was nothing on earth like the fragrance that accompanied the gift of the Spirit at that moment.

This aroma, this fragrance of the Spirit of Jesus is mentioned by St. Paul, and we usually read it metaphorically. But the Fathers of the church wrote about the divine fragrance that sometimes accompanies contemplative prayer and Teresa of Avila described the same phenomenon. So, it would appear that beautiful fragrances are a particular sign of a greater glory – the aroma of Christ himself. Let us, then, at the beginning of this Holy Week, rejoice in the many and varied signs of glory around us. And let us use them to draw near to the source of all beauty and glory – God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.