During my years as a student at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN, I was privileged to sit under the wise teaching of Dr. Lowell Satre, a New Testament scholar who, I found out after coming to St Paul’s ten years ago, was also the grandfather of former St Paul’s member Kari Ristvedt Mahaffey. Dr. Satre taught classes on the gospels as well as the letters of Paul, and for every course he taught there was the requisite term paper due near quarter’s end. Regardless of the content or quality of one’s term paper, the ever-pastoral, the ever-gentle-and -dear, and the ever-zealous-for-the-gospel Dr. Satre would inscribe two simple words at the end of his comments on the paper. Two words always underscored and then followed by an exclamation mark. Two words which echoed those of St. Paul’ to the Philippian church from our second reading this morning: “Press on!”

Those words of St Paul echoed by Dr. Satre could not be more appropriately-timed for us who this morning are witnesses (albeit indirect) of the Los Angeles Marathon, that great race from the stadium to the sea: “I press on” St. Paul writes, not once but twice. “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

Perhaps you know something this morning of “pressing on”. Perhaps in order simply to get here this morning you had to “press on” through the traffic of those coming to Santa Monica to be at the finish line to cheer on the race-runners. Perhaps you have had one of those weeks, or one of those months, or perhaps 2010 has already proven to be one of those years through which you have had to push forward despite every challenging and unexpected roadblock and detour. Perhaps like the thousands of runners this morning, you too have a goal, a destination, a finish line for which you have been intently focused, with your “eyes on the prize” of accomplishing a task, making it through a a time of personal challenge or hardship, just getting through it.  Against the grain, up against a wall, against all odds, in the face of adversity, suffering, and even death: we press on.

It was a dinner party.

Jesus was the guest of honor, and the hosts were his dear friends Martha, Mary, and Lazarus — three siblings who lived together in their home in Bethany, just outside of Jerusalem. Besides the twelve disciples, these three were Jesus’ nearest and dearest. With them, Jesus was at home. It was as if their home was a home base for Jesus, where he could get away from the crowds, have a quiet meal, get some rest, let down his hair.

It was a bittersweet dinner party. There was some celebration still lingering in the air after Jesus had raised from the dead his friend Lazarus who was now sitting beside him at the table and in whose home the dinner party was being held.  The festival of the Passover was just six days away, and as is our custom during our holidays and holy times, Jewish families and friends gathered — then as now - for Passover meals and dinner parties. But at the same time there was a subtle heaviness in the room, a tension in the air, a sense of foreboding.

While the ever-busy Martha poured the wine and dished up the meal, and while the freshly-resurrected Lazarus sat down at the table with Jesus and the twelve, Mary had something else in mind.  “Pressing on” past the plates and the persons gathered in her home and around her table, her goal is to get to the feet of Jesus. Don’t forget: she’d gotten in trouble with her busy sister Martha at one other dinner party for doing the same thing. While Martha served dinner, Mary the mystic sat at Jesus’ feet listening to his words. But this night, Mary pressed on further than simply being there at Jesus’ feet. With plates of food being passed, with glasses of wine being consumed, with at least fourteen men sitting there having a meal at her table, Mary takes Jesus’ feet into her hands, and with both her hands and her hair applies a pound of costly perfume onto Jesus’ feet. It was a ritual act expressly-reserved for dead bodies being prepared for burial, and I’m nearly certain it must have been a buzz-kill at the pre-Passover dinner party. It was also doubtlessly something she’d done not long ago with her dead brother Lazarus who — clearly - was now back on his feet and sitting there right beside Jesus at the table.

Not only the room but the entire house soon became thick with the fragrance of the perfume, a fragrance that was meant to cover up the stench of a dead body laying in a tomb. Instead, it was covering up the wafting aromas of whatever delicious Middle Eastern cuisine had been cooked up in Martha’s kitchen, making a festive dinner party smell more like a funeral parlor.

Mary was in trouble again. Not with Martha her busy-serving sister but this time by one of Jesus’ disciples, Judas — the group sticky-fingered treasurer.  Distracted by her act of extravagance, angry that all that expensive perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor and presumably some for his own pocket as well, Judas defies Mary’s discipleship, her very act of love and devotion.

At Jesus’ command, Mary pressed on. “Leave her alone,” Jesus said to Judas. “She bought it so she might keep it for the day of my burial.”

The very next day, Jesus himself pressed on into the city of Jerusalem. Riding on the back of a borrowed mule, triumphally entering through the gates and being hailed with palm branches and acclaimed as the king of Israel, Jesus presses on to Passover. Mary’s extravagant and fragrant act prepared him for what was to come: his most extravagant act of love on the darkest of Fridays we have come to call good.

Sisters and brothers, as we press on through Lent to Passion Sunday and Holy Week, we do so with a God whose extravagant promise — in the words of the prophet Isaiah — is to make all things new, to make a way to water in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.

Today we press on to these waters with Cooper Gregory Emerson, waters that will wash him in Jesus’ life and waters that will drown him in Jesus’ death.  St. Paul wrote to the church in Rome that we are buried with Jesus by our baptism into his death.  Today, just shy of his 1st birthday, Cooper dies with Jesus. But Jesus will not linger in death.  Nor will he let Cooper linger there. He will press on beyond his burial.

And we, with Cooper, will follow Jesus. To the cross.  To the grave. And beyond.

Press on.