Study

DAILY READING

John 12:1-8

Here we have an exchange of gift-giving between Jesus and Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus. Mary is giving a gift to Jesus. It is given as a response to Jesus’ upcoming self-giving. She responds, she is responsible. Jesus is giving himself, whole and totally. 

Derrida*, the French philosopher, asks a series of questions that I want to pose specifically for Jesus’ gift. With the interrogative adverb, “how,” we are not asking about the means, or a technique. We are searching for the meaning and truth of Jesus’ giving. How does Jesus give death to himself, real death, putrefying death? How does Jesus take up responsibility for his own death? 

To be sure, Jesus is sacrificing himself for another, dying for the other – indeed, all others who are other than himself. Jesus gives his own life to others by giving himself death. Note here that in giving death to himself, in order to give life to others, Jesus is redefining all three realities: life, death and gift. We are invited to think about the relationship of giving oneself death and giving others the gift of life; of putting oneself to death and dying for the other – all others. 

Mary responds to Jesus’ gift. She gives herself to him through the symbolic ritual of anointing. She responds – takes responsibility to the uniqueness of Jesus’ gift. She responds to Jesus’ gift with a gift that renounces herself. Is this mutual self-giving the dance of infinite Love? 

She is moved to responsibility on the recognition of a looming death of this Man of Nazareth. She is responsive and takes responsibility for the uniqueness, irreplaceability, individuality, and dignity of this dying man. Her concern, unlike Judas’, is not about the anonymous other, but the ineffable singularity, infinite worth, ineffable beauty of this one man: Jesus. 

Could it be that Christianity comes to itself only in responding the irreducibility of each and every single individual person with the self-giving of oneself? 

*Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death 

ACTION FOR THE DAY

What gift is God calling you to give?   

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