Sermon Notes 23rd July 2023
Desiree Snyman

I want to focus on the experience of anointing. Jacob’s experience with a dreaming-stone that he anoints is our entry point. The stone, likely a meteorite, is a fragment of the heavens that settles onto the land. This stone, born of the heavens and the earth, births a vision from the earth to the heavens. Jacob’s vision is of a ladder. Like a cosmic tree, it yields a flow of energy between this world and the heavenly spirit world. Jacob’s cosmic spirit dream of a ladder uniting earth to heaven with winged messengers (angels) flowing up and down is reminiscent of the ancient archetypal tree of life found across the ages in diverse cultures. The tree of life appears in Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) as a diagram where each of the numbered branches represents the attributes of God. In Norse mythology an enormous ash tree connects the nine worlds, including the underworld, the earth, and the realm of the gods. The Assyrian tree of life represents a series of nodes and cross branches with winged genies on each line. A winged genie is a bearded man with an eagle head and angel wings. See how similar it is to Jacob’s ladder? In Christianity the tree of life is the cross. Saint Bonaventure taught that the healing fruit of the tree of life is Christ himself. In eastern Christianity the tree of life is the love of God. Saint Isaac the Syrian says that "Paradise is the love of God, in which the bliss of all the beatitudes is contained," and that "the tree of life is the love of God" (Homily 72). 

The I Am that will later speak to Moses through the burning bush speaks to Jacob through the meteorite-stone: Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. Jacob is stunned. He calls the wilderness spot “The Gate of Heaven.” He sets up the baetyl or sacred stone as a pillar of witness. The pillar stone is a shrine at “Beth-El,” the “House of El.” El is a Canaanite Deity. Jacob anoints the iron-mineral petrified rock with christening oil. The rock pillar is now more than rock it is a “Living Being.”

The Urartian tree of life, Urartu Helmet fragment(Public Domain, Wiki Commons).

That Jacob sets up a “pillar” is surprising. Hebrew religion later forbade erecting pillars as they were associated too closely with Canaanite religion and were seen as a phallus symbolising union with the gods. See Exodus 23:24; Deuteronomy 7:5; Leviticus 26:1, Hosea 3:4 and Micah 5:13. 

Jacob offers a challenge: if this God that overshadows the mountains (El Shaddai) will give him bread and clothing on his journey he will embrace Elohim as his deity and that very stone as “El’s House” or Bethel. Jacob wants bread from stone and later Jesus in his own wilderness will be tempted to turn rocks into bread.  

The anointing of the pillar stone is the very first time in Biblical history that anointing occurs. A wild, unmanufactured, undomesticated rock petrified from stardust and earth, in the middle of the desert wilderness, is anointed, “in-christed,” re-created as a Christ, an anointed one. The rock is ritually re-created as “Christ”. The anointing of the rock is significant, it announces that this is the place where God is experienced, touched, tasted. The rock is like an anchor to the spiritual realm that is always around us. Where else does anoint occur in the scriptures?  

As we travel through the scriptures anointing is associated with priests and kings. A member of the Levite tribe, Aaron is anointed. The songbook, the psalms, sings about community saying “behold how good and how pleasant it is when God’s people dwell together in harmony. It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes (Psalm 133). It is not only priests that are anointed but kings and queens too. A prophet Samuel anoints Saul as the first king of the Israelites. Anointing empowers people to perform a certain task and protects them in carrying out their work.  

In psalm 23 anointing is associated with healing. Sheep were driven to near madness with flies laying eggs in their eyes. The shepherd would anoint the sheep’s head with oil which would wash out the flies and prevent further infestation, providing healing and relief to the sheep. 

To summarise, anointing in the Hebrew Scriptures makes present three realities:

1.   when something or someone is anointed, they are re-created ritually as a Christ, an anointed one, a place where God is found.

2.   Anointing also empowers and protects people for a particular task, for example as a priest or a king.

3.   Anointing is also a sacrament sign of healing.  

In the New Testament it is Mary Magdalene who is most closely associated with anointing. Some authors suggest that Jesus learnt the practice of healing from Mary. The Feast Day for Mary Magdalene is 22 July. The “Bearer of the Anointing” Mary Magdalene is present at the critical moments in the Jesus story. In the same way that Jacob “in-christed” the rock so too does Mary Magdalene “in-Christ” Jesus. Christ means anointed one. Jesus has this name because of Mary. Mary anoints Jesus as the Christ. When Mary anoints Jesus, she reveals to us Jesus’ deep and true nature. Mary is the Beloved Disciple for two reasons. First, Mary understood the deep message of Jesus better than any of us, there is much we must learn from her. Second, she represents what it means to love with body, mind, soul, and spirit; she loved deeply and fully. 

Mary is referenced a few times in Scripture but comes to prominence as we enter Holy Week and especially in John from chapter 12. The scene in John’s Gospel is a sensory overload. Lazarus has been raised from the dead and is in the room, in a shaman-like state, neither fully present nor fully absent. He carries on him the stench of death. Into this odour of death Mary opens the perfume of Spikenard. She anoints Jesus’ feet with oil and her tears and massages them dry with her hair. It is a shocking image and one few of us are ready for. She has anointed him, made him Christ, priest, and king.

Spikenard is only mentioned in one other book of the Bible. It is featured in the Song of Songs, which is written in the form of love poetry, expressing God’s love for us. In the Song of Songs (1.12-14), the woman has anointed herself with spikenard as the king, the woman’s beloved, is reclining on his couch.

While the king was on his couch,
   my spikenard gave forth its fragrance.
My beloved is to me a bag of myrrh
   that lies between my breasts.
My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms
   in the vineyards of En-gedi.

When we read this passage of the Gospels where Mary anoints Jesus, we can put ourselves in the place of Mary and ask ourselves if we love Jesus as much as she did. Mary offers a story and a wisdom that we need to live the Gospel. Mary teaches us to not only listen to the Gospel, to spread the Gospel but to be the Gospel. All the canonical Gospels call Mary the apostle to the apostles. In our liturgy and theology let us restore Mary’s voice and teachings to the story of the cross and Resurrection. Mary is there throughout the journey from the table to the cross from the cross to grave from the grave to the cave and from the cave to unitive consciousness. Let us also recapture the sacrament of anointing. Within the context of the resurrection, anointing becomes the ritual most closely associated with the passage from death of self to fullness of life, from egoic alienation to “union with God. As such, it conveys the very essence of Christianity’s transformative wisdom.