Two Beams Of Light As Night Gathers
Mark 12:41-44 Mark 14:3-9
The Bridge of Orchy railway station is in the middle of nowhere.
The waiting room has some bunks in it where you can spend the night if you’re on the walk from Glasgow to Fort William.
To sit on the platform at night is like being in a church with no one else around.
It’s still. It’s dark. It’s strangely spiritual.
Every night at about 11pm it’s worth going down to the very end of the southern platform and staring into the darkness.
Looking for the light which soon will shine there.
Right on cue it comes.
A flicker to begin with, then a shimmer and a glow – evolving into a massive searchlight which lights up the sky and then the rumble and thrash as it speeds down upon you – and the Caledonian express overnight sleeper comes gliding into the station.
The people on board look wearily out of the window wondering where it is they could possibly have come to and why I should be standing there transfixed by the sight, with no intention to board.
Holy Week is an ever darkening experience – every action and every word is interpreted as menace, and yet, here are two women who come as lights into the darkness.
Like trains at the dead of night on the West Highland Line.
Here are two women, contrasting personalities, who like so many saintly souls are completely unaware of the good they do or the beauty they radiate.
Later in this week Jesus will kneel before his disciples and minister to them in complete humility as he washes their feet. Here in advance of that moment, two women strike up the same pose.
One kneels before him to anoint his feet with costly perfume and wipe those feet with her hair.
The other bends low to put all she has in the treasury money box.
Each in their own way – shaping up to the body of Christ.
Each in their own way – to the increasingly desperate Jesus – a light shining in ever increasing darkness.
The widow has very little to give – but she gives it all. She does not suppose a single soul is taking any notice of her let alone the son of God sitting just over the way.
In a way her sacrifice is misguided – for Jesus came that people might not have to sacrifice like this – under obligation and duty – rendering themselves penniless in the cause of the temple tax.
Yet she offers everything because in some way God matters to her – matters more than her own well being and comfort.
She is like us in those times where we know we have so little to contribute – yet we give it all in spite of ourselves.
She is like us when we wonder if we are any good to God at all as we compare our meagre gift with that of those who give of their abundance.
But look how beautiful the action is in God’s eyes and never deny that it’s the same for you, even if life finds you digging deep from an increasingly shallow pocket.
The woman with the alabaster flask of ointment is a contrast.
We don’t know who she was – an adulteress, a woman of ill repute or Mary Magdalene?
Whoever she is, she causes quite a stir yet like the widow she does a thing of which only Jesus sees the true beauty.
She’s a step ahead of the widow in that she’s freed of the temple obligations – having been influenced by Jesus she doesn’t care what the authorities think and if they are stirred up by her actions, well so much the better.
Her breaking of this flask of ointment is like the breaking open of her life – where all the goodness had been kept locked in, all the light denied, it suddenly, because of Jesus it comes flooding out.
Others protest at the waste of it – Jesus sees to the beauty of it. He sees it as the final act of love towards him before the darkness really takes hold
Our nature is to recoil from the possibility of aligning ourselves with either of these two – even though they do precisely what Jesus says we should do.
We resist being the widow with nothing more than a mite to offer – for we know the paucity of our gift only too well – and the offering of it will confirm the truth about ourselves – poverty stricken and sadly lacking.
We resist being the woman with the alabaster flask of ointment because we do not want to make a scene, we don’t want to shine such a light that others will question our motives, we think Jesus might be just like the rest and tell us to go away.
And yet they shone bright lights did these two – just for a brief second, just for a few verses of scripture and they gave heart to the saviour and inspiration to every Gospel reader.
The train waits four minutes that’s all. The guard peers down the platform and flashes his lamp to the driver and the Caledonian Express glides on into the dead of light.
At the Bridge of Orchy station no one gets on or off.
I watch the light fade. I watch the darkness consume it. I feel the stillness descend and the night gather.
Nothing more now until morning – but that glimpse of light so strange and so fleeting was a foretaste to me of what the morning might be.
Just like these two women in Holy Week, just like you and I as we wonder about our discipleship – that with our lights shining we may show others what the morning might be.
RH 7.4.09