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Sunday, August 16, 2009
You Anoint My Head With Oil
Ninth in the Psalm 23 Series
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Psalm 23 New Revised Standard Version
1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; 3 he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. 4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
The verse from Psalm 23 for today is a bit unsettling for most of us about having oil poured on our heads. Most of us have been influenced enough by hair care products and shampoo ads that we would not look forward to having our heads anointed with olive oil. And this reference in Psalm 23 does not even compare well with the image in a later Psalm about even more oil on our heads and hair.
In Psalm 133 the Psalmist writes about the pleasures of living in community, in a close fellowship together, and the best image he has to compare that with is: “It is like the precious oil on the head and running down the beard of the Hebrew priest Aaron, running down his beard and onto the collar of his robes.”
Olive oil on our heads and running down our cheeks and onto our clothes is not a pleasant image for many of us. We send clothes to the cleaners if they get olive oil stains on them because most of us do keep olive oil around for our cooking and food preparation. I hope we keep olive around because it has many nutritional values when we put it on the inside of our bodies and not on the outside. If you do not know that, you can Google the words, “Mediterranean diet,” and look at the health benefits of olive oil.
But in the world of the Psalmist, being anointed with oil had several very positive meanings that we need to look at closely. The earliest reference to this anointing is in the book of Exodus where the Israelites go into the wilderness after slavery in Egypt and Moses is receiving instructions from God about how they are to live and how they are to worship before they go on to enter the Promised Land. Moses learns that he is to designate, or ordain, his brother Aaron and other priests, and to ordain them or consecrate them, he uses oil to anoint their heads. He also anoints with that oil some other holy objects and the tent of the Ark of the Covenant.
The book of Exodus even contains a recipe for how to make this anointing oil, a combination of olive oil and cinnamon and myrrh. Do you remember where you have heard about myrrh before in the Bible? It is an expensive perfume or balm that was one of the gifts brought to the new born Christ child by the three astrologers in Matthew’s gospel story of Jesus’ birth.
You may remember some other references to being anointed in the Bible besides these in psalm 23 and 133. When the prophet Samuel is called by God to go and anoint the next king of Israel, after King Saul is doing so poorly, about 1000 years before Jesus, God tells Samuel to fill his horn with oil and go to Bethlehem where he will meet Jesse and Jesse’s sons. There in Bethlehem God will help Samuel identify the new king. Jesse brings all of his sons for Samuel to see, but Samuel does not see the one who is to be the future king. He asks the father if there are any more sons and learns that there is only the youngest who is out tending the sheep. David, the youngest, is brought in and Samuel poured the oil onto his head from the horn of oil and the Bible says that with that anointing the spirit of the Lord came mightily on David from that day forward.
There are other examples of anointing that we may remember from the stories of Jesus. When Jesus is visiting at the home of a Pharisee, a respected lay leader in Judaism, a woman from the street comes into the room. She kneels before Jesus with the alabaster jar of balm or ointment, which was probably myrrh. She began to bathe his dirty feet with her tears. She dried his feet with her hair and she anointed his feet with this lotion or balm. The Pharisee was offended by her action and even her presence, but Jesus spoke up and said to the self righteous leader, “When I came into your home, you did not wash my dirty, smelly feet but she has. You did not anoint my head with oil as a sign of hospitality and blessing but she has anointed not my head but my smelly feet, and because of her generosity and her blessing, her sins are forgiven.”
There are two other ways that anointing someone with sacred oil was used in the New Testament. One was to bless and help to heal those who were ill which we can read about in the book of James. The other practice, which was a surprise to me, was that when a leper was cured and then welcomed back into the community from which they had been expelled, part of their being welcomed back involved anointing them with oil. Part of the welcoming back, for someone who had been exiled and excluded, was to anoint them.
Cindy Bates introduced some of us to the writing of a woman who has helped facilitate that kind of welcome, that act of radical hospitality. Becca Stevens is an Episcopal priest in Nashville. She is not only the priest at St Augustine’s Chapel on the campus of Vanderbilt University but she also founded, in Nashville in 1997, the Magdalene Community which is a two year residential community for women with a history of prostitution and drug addiction. The purpose of Magdalene is to help women recover from sexual abuse, violence, and life on the streets. The women tell some of their stories on the website, Thistlefarms.org. One woman, Katrina, tells about coming to Magdalene after being on the streets of Nashville as a prostitute and drug user for 20 years. She talks about how the Magdalene community saved her life. And, she talks about her job at Magdalene which is to make and package skin care products, body balm, body lotions and body oils that we can use to bless, and perhaps even, anoint our skin and our bodies. This is a caring and hospitable community that welcomes back and gives new life to women who have been abused and excluded. The Rev. Becca Stevens is herself the survivor of childhood sexual abuse and who, when she visits sick or needy people as a priest, takes her vial of oil to anoint.
By the way, some of you have learned what the word in Hebrew for “anoint” is. All of you actually know it is Meshiach or “messiah.” Jesus is called this but he is not the only one in the Bible who gets this title. David is called by this title meaning God’s anointed leader, and even the pagan King, Cyrus of Persia, is referred to in the book of Isaiah as God’s Meshiach.
I want to focus on two of the meanings in the verse from Psalm 23 that says God anoints our head with oil. First of all that means that God is blessing us and God loves us. To anoint someone was to say, God loves you and is on your side. It is the same message we have gotten from most of the other verses of Psalm 23. God is our shepherd who watches and nurtures and guides us and cares for us. He keeps us on the right track with rod and staff. He comforts us and provides nourishment for us even in the midst of the enemies of life. He loves us and blesses us by anointing us with sacred fragrant oil. Do you have that kind of relationship with God, the kind of relationship that the Psalmist talks about with the image of anointing, the kind of 21st century image of a caring God that pastor Jim Moore talked about in this way: if God has a refrigerator, your picture is on it!! That is the God Jesus shows us, offers to us. That God loves us unconditionally and anoints us to bless us.
There is a second meaning to being anointed. It also means that God is giving us an assignment. To anoint someone is to consecrate and bless them, but, also, to anoint them is to appoint them, to send someone into a new chapter of life, to help someone move across a threshold into the next segment of life. You will recognize some of the examples of this kind of anointing as appointing and sending forth. In the book of Isaiah, chapter 61, the Prophet says the spirit of the Lord is upon me and God has anointed me to…. offer good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, to offer freedom to the captives. Do you recognize those words, that image of God anointing someone to then send them on an assignment, to care for the least and the last and the left out? They are the first public words of Jesus of Nazareth in the gospel of Luke as he begins his itinerant ministry of teaching, preaching and healing. The story of being anointed by God, being appointed by God to include those who have been excluded, to care for the vulnerable and the needy is the story that Jesus chooses to define his ministry—and also the ministry of those who are his disciples and his followers.
We read about the memorial service Friday of Eunice Kennedy Shriver who dedicated much of her life to living out this kind of assignment to care for the unincluded and to include those who had been on the fringes. Eunice Kennedy Shriver lived the words from Jesus, that of those to whom much is given, much will also be expected. That phrase was part of her identity as it can and should be part of our identity also. She saw the plight of persons with disabilities and special needs fifty years ago. When a parent of a disabled child called her one summer and cried on the phone saying she was just not able to find a summer camp that would accept her child, Mrs. Shriver said, you bring your child to my home one month from now and we will have a camp for her. And the mother brought the child a month later and there was a day camp for fifty children with disabilities right there in Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s huge back yard. Mrs. Shriver, the incredible advocate and organizer that she was, had put the staff and camp together, and out of her passion and her advocacy and her deep Catholic faith, she not only put the camp together, she became the catalyst for what is now the International Special Olympics movement. Her son Tim, a child when the camp started, says that when he was a child he thought that everyone just grew up having a camp occur in their back yard!
Was Eunice Kennedy Shriver anointed or appointed to do what Isaiah describes? Was she appointed or anointed to offer hope and comfort and promise for those who are excluded and left out and vulnerable?
Can it be that you and I as people of faith are being asked and called to emphasize that concern for the vulnerable, at a time in our country of dialogue about health care and health care reform, a time when the shouting and the rumors and the hysteria can cause us to forget that perhaps the people who first need to benefit from any changes and reforms are the patients-not the well compensated insurance industry or well compensated pharmaceutical executives but first of all, those who are in need and are being left out?
Everyone must finally realize some benefit, and if we are people of faith, we will start by lifting up the Biblical concern for the least, the last and the left out because the second most common theme in the whole Bible is to care for the weak and vulnerable and the uncared for. Can it be that some of us may feel anointed or appointed to offer that value and that reminder?
Gracious God, you want the best for me, you are on my side, you set a table for me amidst my enemies and you anoint my head with oil.
We are going to give each of you a chance to be anointed after the benediction today. We will not be using lots of olive oil to run down your face. We will be using a little perfumed balm to make the sign of the cross on your forehead after we sing, There is a Balm in Gilead. This might be helpful to you if you need to be reminded how special you are to the God who created you. It might be a sign that you are moving from one chapter of life to another. It might mean that you are willing to accept some new appointment, some new call from God. You can make it mean what you want.
Here are the words we will use as you come to the altar rail after the benediction: YOU ARE LOVED AND BLESSED BY GOD AND GOD NEEDS YOU TO SHARE THAT LOVE AND BLESSING WITH OTHERS. Amen.