Today is a great day of celebration friends, colleagues and loved ones join together to give thanks and express their love for Marion and the church. Marion will receive many gifts; and perhaps surprises. All of us love surprises especially when they are packaged with love. A few weeks ago an Harley Davidson Motor bike all bright and glistening in the morning sun was driven up to the entrance of New Horizons. The aged care program at Southcare next door. Much to the complete surprise to one of the workers.

This worker a very committed person, is loved by both staff and clients, a person who is always ready to go the next mile for others. On this day she was celebrating her birthday and the staff had decided they would show their love, to a very special woman some may say in an extravagant way.

The gift overwhelmed her and she stood with tears of joy running down her face. Her colleagues had provided her space to get in touch with herself and to live completely in a moment of great love surly the greatest gift any person can receive.

After much laughter and tears and of course photo's both she sat behind the driver and the coordinator jumped into the sidecar. They were driven up to Kings Park, through the city and home by the freeway, a day that will be treasured for a long time. The gift of Love had been freely given and received.

In our reading from Mark's gospel the gift of love had been given freely however there was hostility, hostility and love each reinforcing the other, and at the same time introducing the passion story, just prior to Jesus' crucifixion. Let us for a brief moment transport ourselves back to the scene set for us, a group of men gathered for a meal. Mark does not identify this hostile group, they may have included disciples or they could have been a group who were looking for some entertainment for the evening with this radical and risk-taking fellow called Jesus who was their guest.

We are not sure of the identification of Simon the Leper, at least he was named unlike the woman she was totally anonymous, This woman had in one way or another gained access to the room. Most likely the meal would have been a lively gathering. Men reclining on low couches resting on the left elbow and using a right hand to eat their food from a low table.

When the woman entered the room would have stood well above the group, She makes her way to Jesus with an alabaster phial of ointment, it was the to pour a few drops of perfume on a guest when they arrived at the house or sat down for a meal. The phial she carried was filled with Naird, a most expensive and costly perfume, its worth around 300 denarii; this amount would pay a lower class worker for a year.

The woman broke the flask and anointed Jesus not with a few drops, but the entire contents, thus causing such an up roar. Its pungent aroma filling the room inviting all to smell, in addition to seeing, hearing and being part of the scene.

In the midst of this entire going on some began to calculate the cost of the very expensive perfume. They were unable to appreciate the value of this wonderful loving gesture.

The question they raise is not a trivial one, it is a question that is raised every time people spend money on things such as church buildings, wouldn't it be better to spend it on social welfare? However they are missing which I believe is the crucial point of this story told by Mark, 'for Jesus will not always be with them'.

The group not satisfied with making their objection known, literally turn on the woman and berate her. The remarkable thing is the woman never speaks, she doesn't participate or respond to the debate. In this debate it seems there was an unacceptance of the need to show love and affection to Jesus. They literally contrast the wasting of the ointment on Jesus with giving to the poor. In doing so they stated a basic issue for Jesus followers and an issue that has come down through the church for nearly two thousand years.

Doing good deeds was more important than going to the next level of love and devotion which the woman gave.

Let us now listen to Jesus response to all of this Jesus defends the woman- " leave her alone, why do you trouble her? she has performed a good service for me" and " she has done what she could do".

The impassioned, extravagant gesture that was in her power to give, is what Jesus wanted. In performing this act she had created scared space for him and held that space for him in love, in the midst of hostility, pain, and isolation. She presents Jesus with a wonderful gift, in a wonderful manner and yet very profound way. Did this unknown woman recognise in Jesus her own pain and woundedness and respond to it? Was she aware that she was actually anointing Jesus' body prior to his burial? we are not sure.

However we do known that it is out of this woundedness and pain that Jesus became the giver of life for her, he affirms and accepts her demonstration of love, linking it with his own impending death.

Jesus and the unknown woman in a very profound way gives us the basic key to ministry which is love, a love that leads to deep spirituality and relationship with God. Each one of us is called to ministry be it ordained or lay, Marion is being set aside in a full time capacity to exercise a ministry to which she along with the church affirmed her call.

This particular ministry of deacon has a strong focus on service; some may describe it as only doing good works. If that was so, Deacons would soon become like the hostile group calculating the cost of a very expensive perfume without appreciating the value of a loving gesture.

Deacons are called to discover the Spirituality that is within each person Who ever they are and what ever situation they are in those in prison, people caught up in domestic violence, the sick and dying, the bereaved those in our psychiatric hospitals the homeless end the powerless. People who are part of our community and loved by our creator.

Like the woman we need to create a sacred place for others, The Franciscan priest, Richard Rohr when he visited Perth several weeks ago, he too spoke about the holding of this scared space, allowing ourselves to explore our woundedness and to hold it until it teaches and transforms us.

Holding the wound is painful and something we often find difficult. Holding the mystery until it transforms, means we don't have to fix it, just hold it, thus developing spirituality, which leads to the right relationship with God.

We are also called to hold a sacred space, a common ground in diverse community issues such as capital punishment, juvenile justice, and abortion. Giving all parties the opportunity to express and explore their own pain and encouraging them to listen to each other. This may be one of our most difficult and complex tasks.

However people need to be supported in the process and be valued for who they are. Our task is to hold the sacred place and allow the Holy Spirit to work and transform. Jesus said the woman had done all that she could do, all that was within her power, she acted out of her very being. Each one of us is unique and has something to offer we too can respond in love out of our own woundedness. For all of us at some time or another have been wounded in life.

In Christine Noble's book " Bridge over my sorrows" she tells of her own great woundedness. Christine was a child in Dublin Ireland, her mother died when she was young, her extended family sexually abused her and the whole family eventually split up. She was placed in an orphanage and later escaped to make her home on the streets, sometimes eating cardboard because she was so hungry. At the age of sixteen she was pulled into a car by four men and packed raped. A few years later she is driven to near insanity by her violent husband. Christine finds the will to live, her transformation in a recurring dream, a dream that she herself managed to hold with help of others.

It was out of Christine's great woundedness, which lead her to minister to the street kids of Ho Chin Minh City, Vietnam. She too acted out of her being, her depth of spirituality.

All of us this afternoon can do what the woman who anointed Jesus, and countless others have done down the ages. We can create a space for others in love, in the midst of hostility, pain, and isolation. All of us have the power to be a healing, transforming, community, by holding a scared space.

When we do this we find much to our surprise and delight that it is the wounded one who is the greatest gift giver of all. It is the person who holds the space for the other that receives the gift.

Out of the woundedness of others we too discover our spirituality, our relationship with God. We are transformed and in response to this relationship of love and devotion we can operate out of our own individual beings, good works and service will flow from this love.

This is the message Jesus was giving us. This is the message Mark was relating to his community some seventy years later, and this message is so real for us today. May we allow the Easter story of death and resurrection to continue to transform our lives every day. Amen.

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