Alabaster Jar by Rev. Dr. Jay Marshall Groat on November 17, 2024, at Mount Vernon, Ohio, based on Mark 14: 1-10

I served a couple churches in 17 years in the Chicago area. While we were there, we were members of various museums and one of them was the Art Institute of Chicago. Who’s been there? Yeah, we really loved going there, and I loved being a member. I loved, from time to time, just getting on a train and going downtown and wandering around the institute. I own many rare and expensive van Goghs. This is one of them. This is a very rare and expensive – I think I got it maybe for $9.99 in the gift shop. I know it’s small, you can’t really see it, but this is one of van Gogh’s masterpieces. It’s entitled simply “The Bedroom,” 1888, and it was his bedroom in Arles, France that he shared with Gauguin. You might know a little bit of the story, you might know a lot of the story, but very tumultuous times and van Gogh wasn’t alive all that much longer after he painted this. This is his bedroom. There are two doors, one led to the hallway and another one led to Gauguin’s room. But there was something about this painting, and I used to go there sometimes, and they had a bench in front of it and I would just sit there, look at it and meditate on it. I wasn’t sure why at the time and now I think I know why, and I’m going to tell you why in a minute or two. We’re going to work up to that.

As I mentioned to the children, this is 10 verses in Mark and at first glance it’s maybe not that much, but at second and third and fourth glance, there’s a lot going on here. As Charlotte mentioned, we’re coming into first Thanksgiving and then Advent and it’s coming fast, and our lectionary people have us today talking about something that happened leading up to Jesus and Holy Week. We’re told that the authorities were out to get Him. They were getting much closer. We’re told that Jesus is invited to dinner at a man named Simon’s house. The commentators tell us that this woman, we don’t really know much about her, but the logical assumption is that she was part of the household. One of the commentators that I read said that it’s quite possible that, in the commentator’s words, she was a woman of means. A woman who had power, a woman who had money, very rare in that society, because she was walking around with an alabaster jar filled with nard. And by the way, try to resist the temptation to Google this while I’m actually preaching, but if you Google nard you can buy nard now. You can even buy it at a very famous big-box store that I refuse to use the name of in a sermon. For centuries, from Old Testament time onward, nard was used to anoint canes, to consecrate canes. This woman didn’t just take the lid off of her alabaster jar to give Jesus a little bit of ointment to anoint Him, she broke the jar. She didn’t need to break the jar, why did she break the jar?

I’ve been haunted by the question this week as I studied this passage and I want you to be haunted by it. What jar in our lives do we need to break open today? Not just very carefully take the lid off, but just break it, and give? Write this down – timing is everything. Have you ever heard this? Trying to be ironic here. Timing is everything. People got mad at this woman because she, quote, wasted so much money. And Jesus jumps in and says no, this is what time it is. This woman knows what time it is. I’m going to remind you, and I didn’t bring my super-powered flashlight that I’ve shared with you before, I forgot it this morning, so I’m going to use my finger, my finger can shoot these lines that my super-powered flashlight can. I’m going to remind you of the two concepts of time that are presented in the New Testament, the two Greek words. I’m shooting my light now on that cross, and I’m highlighting the horizontal line first. The Greek concept and the Greek word in the New Testament that they talk about is kronos. Kronos is represented by the horizontal line on the cross, and the kronos right now according to my watch is 10:08 and counting. That’s kronos. Now I’m highlighting the vertical line, and the vertical line goes by the name of kairos. The best definition I’ve ever heard of kairos is God time. At 10:08 and counting God presents God’s self, and that’s what time it is. This passage of scripture asks us the question, “What time is it?”

I was honored and privileged this past week to officiate at a funeral. It was an unusual situation for me, I’d never done anything quite like this before. Diane was not my friend because she was too young. She lived in the same neighborhood as me growing up in Marysville, but she was my sister Jill’s friend. My sister’s four years younger than me. I knew of Diane, but I didn’t say a blessed word to her. She was a freshman in high school. Why would I talk to a freshman girl when I was a senior, right? I say that without animosity. You might remember that a couple of months ago I officiated at another funeral, and this was my lifelong best friend Dean’s mother’s funeral in Marysville. After that funeral Diane came up to me and said, you know, we live near you in Westerville and my mother-in-law is dying, there’s no soft way to say these things. She’s dying and we don’t have a pastor. Would you be interested in – whenever she passes, it’s probably going to be soon – would you go to Portsmouth, Ohio and officiate at her funeral? And I said yes.

On Thursday I got up early and drove my car to Portsmouth, Ohio. It rained on and off on the way there, and I had never been to downtown Portsmouth, Ohio before. I’d been around it. I know like many of you, I love to be around water. I love being around oceans, I love being around lakes, I love being around rivers and creeks, small, big, doesn’t matter. This is why I live in central Ohio, because of the bodies of water. What was I thinking?

I’ve studied the Ohio River and I love the Ohio River. Whenever I get the chance to cross it on a bridge Vicki is always saying to me, keep your eyes on the road, because I’m looking at the river and I’m looking at the bridge. I timed it so I could get down to Portsmouth, Ohio a little early to afford myself the opportunity to drive to the river and look at it, and I did. I found the funeral home, which was downtown, and then I drove to the river. Now this is a tangent, and it’s all about breaking alabaster jars and it’s all about asking the question, “What time is it?” And then I’m going to tell you about van Gogh, who figured out what time it was.

So I found myself at Shawnee State University. Anybody ever been to Shawnee State University? I pulled into the parking lot and I didn’t know where I was. I looked at this building way over there and I thought, you know, I don’t know what that is, is it a hospital? No, I don’t think it’s a hospital, it looks like a community college. I used the term community college, they probably wouldn’t like that, but no offense intended. And sure enough, there I was at Shawnee State University. And I went inside the building, because I did the things that you do when you’ve been in the car for two hours. And I thought, you know, I’m really close to the river, but where is it? I looked to my right and there was this huge, huge – it looked like a man-made hill that went all the way that way as far as the eye could see, and it went all the way that way as far as the eye could see. What was I looking at? I was looking at the levee. Later on I did a little research. A little over 100 years ago Portsmouth had a disastrous flood, so what did they do? They built a levy. I asked some of the people at the funeral, I said, does this levy work? He said, oh yeah, it does. And I did something that I don’t think I’ve ever done before. There were some little steps over here and I went up, and I never walked on top of a levee before. This part of the levee was grass-covered, it was human-made, it was covered with green grass, and I walked on top of the levee. And sure enough, there it was. I looked down there and there was the Ohio River.

There was the river, over here was the city of Portsmouth, and I realized I was standing on a liminal space. And liminal space is in-between space, bridges are liminal space. You know, the Ohio River, the people who study these things, they say it’s a, quote, young river. I’ve got it in my notes here. These experts say that the Ohio River is only, quote, 2.5 to 3 million years old. That’s young, apparently, for rivers around here. And I thought, this is just a young river, what does this river know? It’s only 2.5 to 3 million years old. I looked around, I made sure nobody could hear me, so I said to this young river that was very gently flowing from left to right on the Ohio side, I asked this river, “What time is it?” What time is it as I gather to do, yet again, another funeral in my career? I said, Ohio River – and we’re pretty sure we get that name from the Seneca tribe, and it means “good river.” Thomas Jefferson called the Ohio River the best river on earth to travel. And I asked this river, “What time is it?” And I got an answer. I didn’t hear it with my ears, but I heard it with my spirit, and the river smiled and said, “Break the jar.” Break the jar of alabaster.

What does that mean for you? What does it mean for me? What does it mean for us? I’m going to read this to you – “‘He has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor,’ declared Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo in a letter dated 1876.” You know, one of van Gogh’s biggest problems, you know what it was, he was a preacher’s kid. This is problematic. “For the next three years van Gogh single-mindedly pursued his calling to the ministry” – did you know his first calling was to the ministry? — “first as a student of theology and then as a missionary to the coal miners in an area in Belgium. Deeply moved by the poverty surrounding him, van Gogh gave all his possessions” – he broke the jar – “he gave all his possessions, including most of his clothing, to the miners.” He was serving poor coal miners in Belgium. He read the scriptures, the scriptures said give it all to the poor, so he did. “An inspector of the local church council came to the conclusion that the missionary’s” – van Gogh’s – “excess bordered on the scandalous, and he reported van Gogh’s behavior to the church authorities.” He tattled on van Gogh to the church authorities. This was the Dutch Reformed Church. “Although van Gogh was successful in his ministry, the hierarchy of the Dutch Reformed Church rejected him, and at the end of 1879 he left the church, embittered and impoverished.” You’re fired. You’re taking this biblical stuff too literally, you’re giving away all you’ve got to the poor, you weirdo. Get out. Van Gogh was heartbroken. “But he remained in the village after the church withdrew its support, and he began his artistic career by making drawings of the simple life of the Belgian people.” The church said get out, and van Gogh started to draw. Van Gogh said this, ‘“In spite of everything I shall rise again. I will take up my pencil, which I had forsaken in my discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.’ Art, rather than preaching, became van Gogh’s chief form of religious expression.”

I’ll close with this – “Rather than choosing a traditional subject matter and the iconography of the academic religious history of painting, van Gogh tried to capture what he saw of the infinite in the subjects of everyday life.” A woman showed up in everyday life, and she didn’t just open the jar and anoint Jesus. She broke it. Break the jar. What does that mean? The sacred of everyday life. Amen?