A Divine Extravagance

A while back there was a news story about how to cook turkeys for Thanksgiving.  This woman had a Butterball Turkey in her freezer and called the Butterball Talk-Line to find out how long to defrost it.

The fellow on the line asked her how long it had been in her freezer and she told him that the date on it was 1987 – it had been in the freezer some 16 years.  There was a long pause on the other end of the line.

“Ahhh, just a minute.  I think I need to consult my supervisor,” the fellow said.  When he came back on the line, he told her that a turkey frozen this long – well, the company didn’t recommend serving it to anyone.

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said.  “It’s just for the church.”  Good enough for God!  No extravagance here.  Devoid of all compassion – just unloading an unwanted turkey (in both senses of the word).

Our lesson this morning is about the extravagance of divine compassion. 

It takes place at a dinner, always symbolic of God’s bounty and also a Last Supper with the disciples.  Among the guests is Lazarus, Mary’s brother whom Jesus raised from the dead, giving us the foreboding of more death to come. 

Remember, that in the gospel of John no detail is by happenstance.  All is freighted with meaning.  The evening overflows with expectation and mystery.

Then, on the most extravagant impulse, pure compassion, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with the costliest perfume, it’s scent soon filling the entire house.  She ends this generosity by wiping his feet with her hair.  There is a sumptuousness about the act as the scent continues to pervade the corners, nooks and crannies of the abode.

Of the acts to follow in the coming days, climaxing at Golgotha and following through three days later – it’s the culmination and sign of God’s extravagant compassion to all.

We now live in a nation run by a White House where compassion, empathy, are dirty words.  America is suffering through a lack of empathy, devoid of compassion, from the Orange Felon on down.  Empathy is a dirty word for Christian nationalists.

David French, in an opinion piece, reveals the new animus of Christian Nationalists to empathy.[1]

Once, the focus of Christian evangelicals was on the defense of liberty and the prerogatives of the faith community.  Now it’s all about power, imposing their will, their specific ideology and theology on the rest of us.

A part of this is defunding faith organizations of which they disapprove, even if they are of the evangelical community.  Catholic charities have received substantial cuts, especially to programs showing empathy and compassion to immigrants.  Cuts that have been characterized as “catastrophic, ruthless and chaotic.”[2]

Often these unilateral decisions are taken unlawfully against Christian organizations serving the poor and marginalized.

In defunding, actually in destroying USAID, lifesaving aid worldwide has been cut off to the most vulnerable – the starving, the unsheltered, those with HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.  Not a scintilla of empathy for these.

Sarah McCammon, in her “Weekend Edition” on religion reports on how “empathy” has become a bad word for one group of Christians.[3]  The Ayn Rand crowd I suspect, with a few John Birchers thrown in.

A soundbite from the “Joe Rogan Experience,” podcast features Elon Musk on the danger of empathy, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”  Nice, for a multi-billionaire who has absolutely no idea on how ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world lives.  Nice.

Musk continues, “There’s so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself” – to which Rogan responds, “Yeah.”

Musk: “So that – we’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on.”

In a soundbite of the podcast, “Stronger Men Nation,” the Evangelical pastor, John McPherson, asserts, “Empathy almost needs to be struck from the Christian vocabulary.”  Whereupon two other pastors on the program join in, “It does.”  “Yes.”

Pastor McPherson’s conclusion?  “Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic. Empathy will align you with hell.”

In his podcast, “Thinking in Public,” Joe Rigney asserts that empathy is harmful, and because it seems so nice, it is one of the most “destructive tactics” of the devil.

Yet, that is stuff of what God is ever about – compassion, empathy.  Such is a life leading to the door of eternity.  The scripture is full of such stories – the woman with the hemorrhage, the leprous man along a dusty highway, the woman caught in adultery.  Jesus stoops and listens.

Listens even to his blockheaded disciples who often get it wrong. Understanding nothing.  Yeah, stoops also to bless and heal us blockheaded disciples who so often screw up the message.

David Warbrick writes a most tender article in Christian Century about one of the best gifts he ever gave his father.  A gift of pure compassion.

His father with Parkinson’s disease, now living apart from his wife due to being confined to a nursing home, had very few material needs.  That Christmas, David gave his father a small bottle of fragrant bath essence.

The nursing home staff would occasionally “take him to the bathroom, lift his painfully thin frame into the warm water, and leave him and Mum in private so that she can help him bathe.”

Normally, given his illness, his father is mostly surrounded by noisy machines and many interruptions by medical staff.

As his father and mother were forced by Parkinson’s to live separately, bath time is one of the few, precious times they have alone.

David continues, “The bath time is the most intimate time and touch possible for them. After 50 years of marriage my dad’s hands—which once painted stunning pictures and caressed his wife—are so translucent that you can see all their workings. He draws in the air with them sometimes now. He has a tremor. Bath time allows him gentle, distant echoes of the power of his youthful touch. It’s my parents’ least mediated, least frustrating communication. It’s a place where Mum can be wife instead of caregiver.”[4]

It is their precious time together at bath, husband and wife, that is the extravagance of God’s grace.

While the world peddles a transactional economy based on greed, Mary’s economy is pure, unlimited extravagance as she breaks open the jar and lavishes precious ointment over Jesus’ feet.

That’s a sign of Jesus’ extravagant compassion for creation, bending near to touch hearts and minds of all he encounters.  Something, Judas cannot comprehend.  Something the Orange Felon, Musk and their minions seem not to comprehend.

Yet, as Pascal said, “The heart has reasons of its own which reason comprehendeth not.”

If empathy and compassion are sins, then with Luther I say, “Sin boldly.” 

Someone said that Judas, in a way, was 100 percent right, but, without empathy, he ended up 100 percent alone.  Not that Judas ever cared a wit about the poor.

In the end, I suspect, this self-serving administration will also, eventually, end up alone.  Deserted by most all Americans, including many of those in the MAGA crowd.

So, back to Grace — Don’t be a turkey: Break out the ointment of generosity, break out your most precious gifts only you have to offer the world.  Break out an attitude of pure, unmerited extravagance.  Live dangerously in God’s Grace.

I close with Mother Teresa on Grace – Grace as embodied in the extravagance of Mary, Grace as in the extravagance of God:

              People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

            If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

            If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.

           If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.

            What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.

            If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.

            The good you do today will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

         Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.

         In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.

Amen.

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[1] David French, “Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy,” New York Times, February 13, 2025.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Sarah McCammon, NPR Weekend Edition, March 22, 2025.

[4] Ibid.

April 6, 2025
Lent 5

Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126;

Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

“A Divine Extravagance”