Hegel on the Universal Need for Art

"The universal need for art, that is to say, is man's rational need to lift the inner and outer world into his spiritual consciousness as an object in which he recognizes again his own self."

"But nevertheless the work of art, as a sensuous object, is not merely for sensuous apprehension; its standing is of such a kind that, though sensuous, it is essentially at the same time for spiritual apprehension; the spirit is meant to be affected by it and to find some satisfaction in it."

G.W.F. Hegel, "Introduction," Aesthetics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 31 and 35.

Goethe on the Beautiful

"The supreme principle of antiquity was the significant, but the supreme result of a sucessful treatment was the beautiful."

Freedom, Art, and the Divine

"Now, in this freedom alone is fine art truly art, and it only fulfills its supreme task when it has placed itself in the same sphere as religion and philosophy, and when it is simply one way of bringing to our minds and expressing the Divine, the deepest interests of mankind, and the most comprehensive truths of the spirit. In works of art the nations have deposited their richest inner institutions and ideas, and art is often the key, and in many nations the sole key, to understanding their philosophy and religion. Art shares this vocation with religion and philosophy, but in a special way, namely by displaying even the highest [reality] sensuously, bringing it thereby nearer to the senses, to feeling, and to nature's mode of appearance." G.W.F. Hegel, trans. T.M. Knox, "Introduction" in Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, Vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) 7-8.

Natural Beauty and Artistic Beauty

"But we may assert against this view, even at this stage, that the beauty of art is higher than nature. The beauty of art is beauty born of the spirit and born again, and the higher the spirit and its productions stand above nature and its phenomena, the higher too is the beauty of art above that of nature. Indeed, considered formally, even a useless notion that enters a man's head is higher than any product of nature, because in such a notion spirituality and freedom are always present."

"But what is higher about the spirit and its artistic beauty is not something merely relative in comparison with nature. On the contrary, spirit is alone the true, comprehending everything in itself, so that everything beautiful is truly beautiful only as sharing in this higher sphere and generated by it. In this sense the beauty of nature appears only as a reflection of the beauty that belongs to spirit, as an imperfect incomplete mode [of beauty], a mode which in its substance is contained in the spirit itself."

G.W.F. Hegel, trans. T.M. Knox, "Introduction" in Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, Vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) 2.

Freud, Piaget, Apel, and Habermas

Freud's moral-psychological speculations and Piaget's theoretical investigations on child development are both empirically reductionist interpretations of moral autonomy in Kant. Each tries to empirically demonstrate that children gradually arrive at an understanding of themselves as morally responsible actors. This encounter - through process - with existential constraints compels developing subjects to adopt the perspective of moral autonomy. This detranscendentalization is particularly well illustrated in the works of Karl-Otto Apel and Jurgen Habermas. Each locates the moral subject within a communicative community. In this light, it's the product of a speech community. ~Slight rephrasing of Axel Honneth's, Philosophy of Right, 34-35.

Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottfried Herder on Reflexive Freedom

"Both Kant and Herder are convinced that merely negative determinations of freedom are insufficient because they do not penetrate the space of reasons, thus regarding subjects as free in a merely external sense without taking account of whether their realized intentions themselves meet the conditions of freedom. In order to correct this grave omission, both thinkers adopt Rousseau's idea that individual freedom rests on free will. Subjects are only truly free if they restrict their actions to intentions or aims that are free of any trace of compulsion. But when it comes to how subjects carry out such a purification process, the two thinkers part ways. Whereas Kant proposes that we interpret the free will as the product of rational autonomy, Herder assumes that the purification of the will is a matter of discovering one's own, authentic desires." Axel Honneth, Freedom's Right, 34.

Kant - Morality and Reflexive Freedom

"'As a rational being, and consequently as belonging to the intelligible world, man can never conceive the causality of his own will except under the Idea of freedom; for to be independent of determination by causes in the sensible world... is to be free. To the idea of freedom there is inseparably attached the concept of autonomy, and to this in turn the universal principle of morality - a principle which in Idea forms the ground for all the actions of rational beings, just as the law of nature does for all appearances.' The reflexive freedom Kant has in mind consists in the insight that we have the moral duty to treat all other subjects as autonomous beings, just as we would expect them to treat us." Axel Honneth, Freedom's Right, 33.

Rousseau, 'The Social Contract'

"Rousseau noted that human cannot be free as long as they remain enslaved by the 'impulse of mere desire'; they are only free once they practice 'obedience to self-imposed law'." Axel Honneth, Freedom's Right, 30.

Communism, "The German Ideology"

"Communism is for us not a state of affairs to be established, an ideal to which reality must conform. We call communism the real movement that supersedes the present state of affairs. The conditions of this movement derive from presuppositions that presently exist."

"The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, the action of the proletariat, can be present at all only as a 'world-historical' existence [...] But with the supersession of the basis [of this relationship], the supersession i.e. of private property, with the communist regulation of production and what that regulation implies, namely the destruction of the estrangement with which men relate to their own product, the power of the relationship of supply and demand dissolves into nothing and men regain power over exchange, production, and the way they relate to one another."

Labor and Determinism, Marx's 'German Ideology'

"As soon as labour begins to be distributed, everyone has a definite, exclusive sphere of activity which is imposed upon him and from which he cannot escape... This ossification of social activity, this consolidation of our own product into a material power over us, which grows out of our control, cancels our expectations and nullifies our plans, is one of the principal factors in historical development up to now."

Division of Labor in Marx

"the division of labor, in which all these contradictions are given, also entails the distribution, and indeed the quantitatively and qualitatively unequal distribution, of labour and its products, in short, property, which already has its germ and first form in the family, where the wife and children are slaves of the man."

"Further, and simultaneously, the division of labour brings about the contradiction between the interest of each individual or each family and the common interest of all individuals who associate with one another; and this common interest exists to be sure not just in the imagination, as a 'universal', but rather first in reality as the mutual dependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided."

Liberation and the Self-Consciousness, Marx

"Naturally, we will not take the trouble to inform our wise philosophers that when they subsume philosophy, theology, substance, and all that rubbish under 'self-consciousness', and when they have liberated 'Man' from the dominion of these phrases under which he was never enslaved, they have not advanced the 'liberation' of man a single step; that it is not possible to effect a genuine liberation apart from the real world and real means; that slavery cannot be eliminated without the steam engine and the mule-jenny, nor indentured service without improved agriculture; that man cannot be liberated at all as long as he is unable to provide himself with food and drink, housing and clothing, sufficient in both quantity and quality. 'Liberation' is an historical act, not an imaginary one, and it is achieved through historical conditions, the level of industry, commerce, agriculture, transportation [...] and subsequently, according to their various levels of development, the nonsense of Substance, Subject, Self-consciousness, and pure Criticism, just like the religious and theological nonsense, which they then eliminate again if they are sufficiently developed."

"Consciousness is thus from the very beginning a social product and remains so for as long as men exist."

Ideology: Base and Superstructure in Marx

"The presuppositions with which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but are real presuppositions from which one can abstract only in one's imagination. We begin with real individuals, together with their actions and their material conditions of life, those in which they find themselves, as well as those which they have created through their own efforts. These presuppositions can, in other words, be confirmed in a purely empirical way."

"Men can be distinguished from the animals by consciousness, by religion, or by whatever one wants. They begin to distinguish themselves from the animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of life, a step which is determined by their physical organization. In producing their means of life, they indirectly produce their material life itself."

"The manner in which they produce their means of life depends in their first instance on the character of these means themselves, as they are found ready at hand and have to be reproduced. This form of production is not to be considered solely as a reproduction of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a distinctive form of activity of these individuals, a distinctive form of expressing their life, a distinctive form of life of those very individuals. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. Thus, what individuals are depends on the material conditions of their production."

[Superstructure] - "The production of ideas, of concepts, of consciousness is at first directly interwoven with men's material activity and commerce: it is the language of real life. [...] Men are the producers of their notions and ideas, etc., but they are real, active men, conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and by the relations that correspond to these forces, up to and including their most extended forms. Consciousness can never be anything other than the conscious being, and the being of men is their real life process."

"It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness."

The German Ideology, "On Feuerbach," Marx

"The inventions of their minds have come to dominate them. They, the creators, have bowed down to their creations. Deliver us from the phantoms, the ideas, dogmas, imaginary beings under whose yoke they languish. Let us revolt against the domination of thoughts."

Aristotle on Metaphors

"But the greatest thing is to employ metaphors well. For this alone cannot be acquired from another, but it is an indication of an excellent genius; since to employ metaphors well, is to discern similitude." (Poetics, XXII)

Schopenhauer on Philosophy and History

"Hence philosophy, rightly understood, is a material force of the most powerful kind, though very slow in its working. The philosophy of a period is thus the fundamental bass of its history."

Schopenhauer on Some Forms of Literature in 'The Art of Literature'

"Human life is short and fleeting, and man millions of individuals share in it, who are swallowed by that monster of oblivion which is waiting for them with ever-open jaws. It is thus a very thankworthy task to try to rescue something - the memory of interesting an important events, or the leading features and personages of some epoch - from the general shipwreck of the world. From another point of view we might look upon history as the sequel to zoology [...] the object of science is to recognize the many in the one, to perceive the rules in any given example, and to apply to the life of nations a knowledge of mankind; not to go on counting up facts ad infinitum."

Schopenhauer on Education

"Even children have, as a rule, that unhappy tendency of being satisfied with words instead of wishing to understand things, and of learning words by heart, so that they may make use of them when they are in a difficulty. This tendency clings to them afterwards, so that the knowledge of many learned men becomes mere verbosity."

Self-Knowledge in Kant

"I have therefore no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself." Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 90.

Kant on Thought and Intuitions

"But all thought must directly, or indirectly, by means of certain sign, relate ultimately to intuitions; consequently, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us." ~Immanuel Kant, "Transcendental Aesthetic," in Critique of Pure Reason (Prometheus Books, Buffalo: New York, 1990) 21.

Nozick

For Nozick, "All life aims, however irresponsible, self-destructive or idiosyncratic, must be viewed as part of the aim of realizing freedom, provided they do not violate the rights of others." Axel Honneth, "Negative Freedom and the Social Contract," in Freedom's Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life, 25.

Axel Honneth on the Evolution of Negative Freedom

"Contrary to his own intensions, Hobbes' unleashing of the legitimate purposes of free action led to the rise of a concept of freedom who primary aim is to defend idiosyncrasy. This feature of negative freedom, however, only becomes clear once individuality loses its elitist character and becomes a cultural achievement of the masses. At the height of twentieth-century individualism, it became apparent that Hobbes' doctrine was also an expression of the tendency to grant people the opportunity to be narcissistic and eccentric. Both Sartre's existentialism and Nozick's libertarianism represent variations on this theme of negative freedom." (p. 23)

Hobbes on Negative Freedom

"By Liberty, is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of externall Impediments." Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Penguin, 1968), p. 189.

Axel Honneth, "Freedom's Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life"

Excerpts from "Historical Background: The Right to Freedom"

"For instance, it took years to see that even the 'postmodern' ethic, supposedly critical of the subject, ultimately represents a more deep-seated variety of the modern idea of freedom." (16)

"Our individual self-determination and our insistence that a social order be 'just' are joined by an indissoluble bond, because our desire for justice is merely an expression of our subjective capacity for justification. [...] To demand justice, to even assert a certain aspect of justice is to strive to (co)determine the normative rules of social life." (17)

Hegel on Ethical Decay in Bourgeoisie Life

"When complaints are made about that luxury and love of extravagance of the professional classes which is associated with the creation of rabble (§ 244), we must not overlook, in addition to the other causes [of this phenomenon] (e.g. the increasingly mechanical nature of work), its ethical basis as implied in what has been said above. If the individual is not a member of a legally recognized corporation... he is without the honour of belonging to an estate, his isolation reduces him to the selfish aspect of his trade, and his livelihood and satisfaction lack stability. He will accordingly try to gain recognition through the external manifestations of success in his trade, and these are without limit, because it is impossible for him to live in a way appropriate to his estate if his estate does not exist." Hegel, § 253 of Philosophy of Right

Hegel on the Absolute

"[T]he absolute idea is the sole subject matter and content of philosophy. Since it contains all determinateness within it, and its essential nature is a return to itself through its self-determination or particularization, it has various shapes and the business of philosophy is to cognize it in these. Nature and Geist are in general different modes of presenting its existence, art and religion its different modes of apprehending itself and giving itself adequate existence. Philosophy has the same content and the same end as art and religion; but it is the highest mode of apprehending the absolute Idea, because its mode is the highest mode, the Notion [Begriff]." Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1969), 824.

Schelling on Art

"All effects of art are merely effects of nature for the person who has not attained a perception of art that is free, that is, one that is both passive and active, both swept away and reflective. Such a person behaves merely as a creature of nature and has never really experienced and appreciated art as art." Schelling, Philosophy of Art.

History, Tragedy, and Catharsis

"[I]n Hegel's understanding, the absolute is always emergent from individuality in history. This process of emergence is for Hegel a dialectic, in which (to put it most broadly) opposed positions are reconciled in the moment of 'sublation' (Aufhebung, from the verb aufheben, which can mean "to negate," "to preserve," and "to raise up" - all senses that are encompassed in Hegel's usage). From this higher viewpoint, elements that appeared contradictory or incompatible reveal themselves as parts of the same unified whole. Philosophy's aim for Hegel is the attainment of a viewpoint in which difference and division appear as constructive. The philosopher, like the tragic spectator, cannot reunite what the play of history opposes, but can rationally reconcile himself to the consequences. For Hegel, history is tragedy, and philosophy catharsis." Joshua Billings, Genealogy of the Tragic, 152.

Hölderlin's Understanding of Greek Art

In a letter from 1800, Hölderlin writes that the sole aim of ancient poetry was, "to bring the gods and humans closer together. Tragedy shows this per contrarium. God and man appear one, upon which a fate [ein Schicksal, sc. comes], which arouses all the humanity and pride of man, and the end leaves behind, on one hand, respect for the heavenly ones and, on the other, a purified mind as the property of man. (E&L 184; SWB 3, 412)" ~Billings, 149.

Empedocles

"To men is given the great desire that they make themselves young. And from the purifying death that they choose for themselves at the right time, the people rise up, as Achilles out of the Styx."

Hegel, Kant, and Morality

"In another fragment, Hegel develops a conception of morality based on subjectivity rather than objectivity, opposing the Jewish-Kantian concept of duty (Pflicht) with a Christian concept of inclination (Neigung)." ~Joshua Billings, Genealogy of the Tragic, 142.

Reason and Beauty, Hegel

Hegel writes the following in his "System Program," "that the highest act of reason, the act in which it encompasses all the ideals, is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness are united only in beauty" (SP 511; WZB 1, 235).

The Religious Ideals of Hegel and Hölderlin

"Hegel and Hölderlin seek a way beyond the controversies between rational and revealed religion, or Spinozistic pantheism and orthodox monotheism. They hope for a future religion that would encompass both an infinite aesthetic diversity and a unified philosophical and religious conception. For Hegel, this takes the form of 'monotheism of reason and heart, polytheism of imagination and art' (SP 511; WZB 1, 235-36) while Hölderlin imagines a world in which 'everyone honors his own god and all honor one common god in poetic representations' (E&L 239; SWB 2, 568). Aesthetic imagination appears as a form of mediation between faith and reason, and so offers a response to the problems of theology and philosophy alike." Joshua Billings, Genealogy of the Tragic, 137.

"Hegel imagines a reciprocity of mythical imagination and philosophical reason, which will make 'the people rational' and 'the philosophers sensible' as the basis of a 'new religion, [which] will be the last greatest work of humanity" (SP 511-12; WZB 1, 236)." Ibid, 137-138.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

"To be sure, I can imagine what Heidegger means by being and anxiety. Man feels the urge to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is also no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be nonsense. Nevertheless we do run up against the limits of language" Schulte and McGuinness, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle (Oxford, 1979), 68.

Schelling, Schiller, Schlegel, and Hermann

All of these authors, "view human nature as divided between sense and reason, all engage with Greek tragedy as a representation of the limits of human reason, and all understand tragedy through the Kantian concept of the sublime as a relation of freedom and necessity." ~Joshua Billings, Genealogy of the Tragic, pg. 103

"Idealism's focus on freedom in tragedy allows it to argue that tragedy of all art forms represents the possibilities of human action at their fullest." Joshua Billings, Genealogy of the Tragic, pg. 104

A.W. Schlegel on Tragedy

"Tragedy is the immediate representation of an action, in which the conflict between humanity and fate is resolved in harmony." KAV 1, 83.

"Everything occurs with necessity, except for where the free being acts." KAV 1, 84.


Art is then the power of elevation over nature."His definition of tragedy's essence as the sublime struggle against fate elevated the genre above all other art forms for its depiction of human freedom." Joshua Billings, Genealogy of the Tragic, pg. 100.

The Late Schiller on Historical Existence and Alienation

"The world, as a historical object, is basically nothing else than the conflict of the powers of nature with one another and with the freedom of man, and history tells the result of this struggle. [...] If one approaches history with great hopes of light and knowledge - how much one finds oneself disappointed! All well-intentioned efforts of philosophy to bring what the moral world demands into agreement with what the real world permits are refuted by the testimonies of experiences." Essays 81; FA 8, 835.

Schiller on Liberation and Politics

"Before humans are able to act as independent political agents, Schiller argues, they must first develop themselves intellectually and morally. Schiller points to two paths for the improvement of character: philosophy, which seeks 'justification of concepts [Berechtigung der Begriffe],' and aesthetic culture, which leads to 'purification of feelings [Reinigung der Gefühle]' (FA 8, 505). Coming at the end of a century of Enlightenment, Schiller finds that the first task has been sufficently accomplished, but the second remains unfinished - indeed, has been largely forgotten in the concentration on the first. The human mind has rationally deduced the rights of man, but man's feelings are still prey to confusion, selfishness, and brutality." Joshua Billings, Genealogy of the Tragic, pg. 90.

“Awkward Moments," A Sermon From Sunday, March 13th 2016

John 12:1-8

Passage: “Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’”

Introduction:

As many of you know, I live in a house in a neighborhood of West Philly with four other guys. Many of you probably remember what it was like living with a lot of people of your own gender. For some of you, it may have been in the service. For others, in college. In any case, a good portion of you probably had roommates before you got married and moved on to the ‘family–centered’ portion of your life.

If that’s the case, then you probably remember a lot of the strange differences about your lifestyle then. Perhaps you even had a group activity. When I was in college, many of the girls’ dorms would have activities where all the girls on a hall would go do stuff together. Well, my roommates and I have several group activities. When political debates are on we gather around a computer monitor with our debate bingo cards and as many jokes as we can muster. It’s been a good year for political comedy! When it snows, we pull out the Monopoly board and play until the game is over – you can stay up till 3:00am if you don’t have to work the next day. And sometimes we all gather around to laugh and watch a YouTube channel run by a guy called Jeremy Fragrance. He’s just about the strangest, most eccentric, reviewer you can imagine. As you might expect, many young men are interested in attracting women and sometimes that involves the sense of smell. Jeremy Fragrance is a cologne reviewer who makes the whole process of purchasing a smell quite entertaining. He’s confident, wild in his enthusiasm, and practically bursting with energy.

But one of the most interesting things about the weird subculture of perfume and cologne is how overlooked it can be. Sure, many people buy it. But how often do you overlook smell? We always talk and think about our sense of sight. So it’s rather novel to see someone like Jeremy Fragrance take such a serious interest in something that just makes you smell different.

But perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe our conceptions of smell have as much to do with our conditioning as they did in Jesus’ day. Perhaps ‘smell’ seems like something easy to overlook because I’m a guy. It’s that thing we might do, but is it really all that important?

This question got me a little curious so I did a little digging and discovered that the most expensive men’s cologne is Clive Christian’s No.1 Pure Perfume which sells for $2,350. Maybe that’s surprising. Maybe not. But one thing is for sure. It doesn’t even compare to the market for women. The most expensive perfume for women is also from the house of Clive Christian and its entitled Imperial Majesty – it sells for a whopping $215,000! So if we run with this analogy we can be pretty certain of at least one thing – gender matters!

Smell might be something we think that we overlook, but it’s actually kind of a crazy thing. It can make us remember scenes from our childhoods, it can remind of a first date after forty years of marriage, and it may even remind us of loved ones long past. So perhaps there’s a reason to take it seriously. Or, even more importantly, to many of the social things that come along with it seriously.

Body:

As many of you have probably noticed by now, I entitled today’s sermon “Awkward Moments.” At first glance, this scene from John seems both awkward and confusing. We might assume that Mary is the lady of the night we read about in the other three Gospels – most of Church History follows in this assumption. After all, we hear elsewhere that a sinful woman who was ashamed of her deeds came to Christ in the middle of supper and knelt down, washed, and anointed his feet with perfume. So when we take the synoptic Gospels into account, it is only natural for us to assume that this is Mary Magdalene – who we now know is the sister of Lazarus and Martha.

Taken from this assumption, things are certainly scandalous. Think about it. A pastor is in a room, or at a party, and one of the local prostitutes shows up and bathes his feet in $50,000 perfume. That’s the kind of cost we’re talking about here. This perfume wasn’t cheap. It was worth a year’s wages. So when the treasurer shows up and says, “Hey! You could have sold that and used the money to feed the poor” we should be able to understand that. There’s a lot of money being thrown away here. So it’s rather shocking that Jesus’ response is, “Leave her alone. She bought it in case I might die [but decided to use it earlier]. The poor will always be with you, but you will not always have me.”

Now maybe this is my weirdness, but this answer strikes me as incredibly strange. It can almost sound like he’s saying, “So what, one day I’ll die. It’s time to live it up!” For some of you, the scene might recall an image of John Daly, JFK, or Kanye West. It can certainly sound that way. Jesus’ closing words here have often been used to dismiss the plight of the poor because after all, “they will always be with you.” The first impression that this scene gives reminds me of a student I’ve had in a couple of my classes. He always tries to dismiss injustices and social ills by saying, “Well, isn’t that just human nature?”

So I chose the title “awkward moments” for a very good reason. This passage matters and it matters a lot. Like a mirror, it can force us to look at a reflection of ourselves that’s all too disturbing – like a vision of Dorian Grey’s painting. So we need to think carefully about this story and the awkward assumptions we might take to it.

Moving Beyond an Initial Assumption:

Maybe it’s just me, but I think Jesus cares deeply for the poor. I don’t think that Jesus responds to the suffering of others with the kinds of responses that some of species worst might. So it is with that in mind that I am going to ask us to take John’s account of Jesus’ perfume moment on its own footing. It’s certainly possible that the Mary mentioned in the story is Mary Magdalene, but we don’t actually know that. All we know is that she’s Mary of Bethany, sister to Lazarus and Martha. We don’t know if she’s a prostitute or if she’s independently wealthy. All we know is that she’s a woman – someone who’s very existence would have been defined almost exclusively in sexual, and consequently in shameful, terms – who lost her brother. So after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead they hold some sort of banquet for him.

You see, the way that a Gospel writer tells a story matters. In John, Mary doesn’t anoint Jesus’ feet because she is repentant, but because he raised her brother from the dead. That’s what precedes this scene. So yes, there’s awkwardness. Having a woman wash your feet with expensive perfume is unusual and sketchy territory in terms of sexual purity with regard to the law. But this isn’t a moment of awkward tension. This is a beautiful moment where a sister anoints the Messiah who raised her brother from the dead. Seriously, how would you react to someone if they raised your loved one from the dead? We’d all be in awkward moments I’m sure. So John’s account of Mary of Bethany is actually a beautiful story – not an awkward one!

Judas

The awkwardness comes from Judas who asks, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” Like many in today’s society, there will always be those who will use the plight of the poor and the suffering to their own gain. There will always be those who say that the needs of the oppressed should be overlooked because we all get what we deserve. If we’re well off, it’s because we deserved it. If we’re poor, it’s because we deserved it. It’s a strange twist of smooth words that can make the beautiful moments of life – like the scene Jesus here shares with Mary – and turn them into excuses for perpetuating the very things that stand in contrast to the ideals of the Kingdom Jesus so often talked about.

Jesus’ statement that the poor shall always be with us is not awkward at all! He’s not justifying the status quo or anything like that. He’s accepting the beauty of a heart that’s expressing gratitude for a truly marvelous act – resurrection! Rather than using the perfume for his burial, Mary has instead chosen to use it to celebrate his life – in contrast to death, because Jesus had already conquered death in the raising of Lazarus.

Perhaps even more profoundly, this scene of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with perfume leads us to one of the most important scenes in the Gospel of John. As you probably noticed, we’re in 12:1-8. Well, in 13:1-20 Jesus comes back to this scene of foot-washing. Jesus comes to and continues an act started by Mary! Jesus takes this act of love and gratitude from Mary and then goes to his disciples and washes their feet and in the process of doing that gives them the most important commandment, “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (13:34).

Mary’s anointing of Jesus starts a series of radical acts of hospitality that come from Mary to Jesus, then from Jesus to his disciples, and finally, in the commandment to love one another, from his disciples back to the whole world. What a profound thing that is!

Jesus wasn’t basking in extravagance or providing an excuse to ignore the poor. Instead, he took an act of gratitude – given as thanks for an act of love – and then turned that into even more love. Jesus takes Mary’s radical hospitality, gives it to the disciples and then instructs them to turn around and pass it on to the entire world. There is no inconsistency here between Christ’s radical concern for the poor, the oppressed, the disheartened, the downtrodden and the scene that we heard about. Jesus is telling us that the poor will always be with us until his Kingdom has fully come, but that we should see that as an opportunity to serve and love others; and that we should not see that as an excuse to overlook the most important task of all – to love!

Conclusion:

We love because we were first loved by God. The Trinity wraps up all things in the love that Godself participates in. In Christ, all of creation is wrapped up into the work of recreation and renewal. We are invited to participate and grow in the only thing that can last – the love that is in God’s nature. This is vision of a new Kingdom – a kingdom where God reigns.

I suppose I’ll close with a bit of a funny story. As a couple of you know – well maybe just Baker, Janine, and Minjung – I’m a bit of a Kierkegaard fan. For those of you who don’t know, he was a really eccentric Danish philosopher from the end of the 1800’s. He was a bit of a poet, a theologian, and something of a love struck weirdo. But I like him anyway!

In any case, he once wrote a really scathing review of a sermon the pastor who held the highest office in Denmark. In other words, he wrote a really nasty sermon review that went something like this:

“[That sermon was] not really preached for the comfort of such suffering people. On the contrary, it is for the pleasant relief of the fortunate, so that they may go home from church armed against the impression caused by those suffering people.”[1]

To put it another way, I think my friend Soren saw something similar to what many of us have probably seen with today’s scripture passage. Some people are Judas’. They have beautiful moments of love and desecrate them. Or, they claim to represent the best interests of the poor only to cover for the pursuit of their own gain.

May we avoid this at all costs. When we talk of ministry and mission may we be empowered to follow in the spirit of love that Mary demonstrated here. May we follow in the Spirit of service that Christ then took on to his disciples. May we be empowered to be obedient enough to say that we are ready to be involved in the radical hospitality and love that Christ exemplified.

Let us pray…

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[1] Soren Kierkegaard in Eliseo Pérez-Alvarez, A Vexing Gadfly: The Late Kierkegaard on Economic Matters (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2009), 51.

Schelling on Oedipus and Christ

In an interesting twist, "Schelling makes Oedipus into a kind of Christ figure, his guilt a felix culpa that brings a demonstration of human freedom. The tragic hero recalls Christ in accepting and affirming his own suffering. [A concept echoed in Hegel's Spirit of Christianity as well in the works of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche] This interpretatio Christiana will be even more apparent in the thought of Hegel and Hölderlin, who, with Schelling, were educated in theology at the Tübingen Stift. Christian-tinged concepts of martyrdom and self-sacrifice provide the frame for Schelling's image of Oedipus' blinding as a redemptive act of submission." Joshua Billings, Genealogy of the Tragic, pg. 87

Reinhard Loock and Joshua Billings

"By vindicating both natural causality and human freedom, tragedy for Schelling gives an insight into the undivided state of the absolute. Freedom, properly understood, encompasses necessity within itself." Joshua Billings, Genealogy of the Tragic, pg. 86.

Antigone Quote

If my husband were dead, there could be another, and a child from a different man, if I lost one, but when my mother and father are covered in Hades, there could never grow another brother. (909-12)

Joshua Billings on Hegel's Phenomenology

"The chapter on "Spirit" begins at a crucial juncture in the Phenomenology: Having passed through the stages of individual development, consciousness has finally attained adequate form in Geist, as it recognizes its essential reliance on community. This comes about in the previous chapter, "Reason," as the rational subject of Kantian thought finds its own self-determination inadequate to ethical action, since it is without grounding in any particular society. Reason, the Kantian agent finds, must henceforth be understood as a social practice. With this transition to a genuinely ethical outlook comes also a shift in Hegel's descriptive focus from the individual to the society in which the subject exists." pg. 167-168

Joshua Billings on Art After Kant

"Beginning with German Idealism, it becomes possible to see art as a quasi-philosophical form, the locus of a truth different from - and for some, more profound than - the truth of philosophical discourse. Before Kant, art could be considered philosophical; after Kant, art could be more philosophical than philosophy." pg. 77 in Genealogy of the Tragic