Palm Sunday's Anticipatory Grief Sermon Audio – Cross of Grace

Mark 14:1-9
It was two days before the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.’
While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. But some were there who said to one another in anger, ‘Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.’ And they scolded her.
But Jesus said, ‘Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.’






























I promise, I’m almost done inviting you to listen to Anderson Cooper’s All There Is podcast. So much of our midweek Lenten series on “grieving well” was inspired by the interviews, conversations, and insights from that show. I can’t recommend it enough.
And one of the ways of grief we didn’t cover on Wednesday nights over the course of the last five weeks seems so appropriate for today, I just couldn’t resist. It’s called “anticipatory grief” and it’s something I never really wondered much about until hearing Anderson’s interview with a film-maker named Kirsten Johnson, who actually made a movie about her dad’s dementia, as he was suffering, declining, and very literally preparing to die, long before he ever found himself in hospital bed or nursing home, even. More on that in a moment … but keep the notion of “anticipatory grief” in mind, if you could. In some ways it speaks for itself.
Today, this Palm Sunday, is a day full of symbols and story and looking ahead, because it’s all about what is to come in the days that follow Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. In many churches on Palm Sunday – and at Cross of Grace, many years – we simply hear the Passion narrative of Jesus’ last days and hours, leading up to his crucifixion and death. But there will be time for that, later this week. Particularly, on Good Friday, we’ll gather to hear about his last steps and last words, and last breath, even, on the cross.
So today, we’re just getting started – with the parade into Jerusalem before the big holiday for the Jews and now, even closer to the Passover, we find Jesus having dinner and being anointed with oil by this woman who seems to anticipate something others have missed … something Jesus understands … which is that his death looms. It is right around the corner and coming soon.
And, who knows why she understands and anticipates what others don’t? Maybe she was paying attention at that parade, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that donkey and those palm branches and cloaks were laid out before him.
Maybe she knew that he’d gotten the attention of the powers that be, that his challenge to the Empire would be his undoing.
Maybe she knew her scripture enough to recognize, in those shouts of “Hosanna,” that here was, indeed, this one who had come in the name of the Lord.
Maybe, as John’s Gospel tells it, this was Jesus’ good friend, Mary, Martha’s sister and the sister of Lazarus. And maybe she came with the oil because Jesus had told her; given her the inside scoop. Maybe she had a plan to show the others something they hadn’t been able to catch onto yet. I wonder, if maybe Jesus had even asked her to do just that. Or maybe her moment of anointing was a surprise – even to Jesus – that set his fina