March 23, 2010

1 Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. 2 "But not during the Feast," they said, "or the people may riot." 3 While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
4 Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, "Why this waste of perfume? 5 It could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money given to the poor." And they rebuked her harshly. 6 "Leave her alone," said Jesus. "Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8 She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9 I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her."
Mark 14:1-9 (NLT)

Mary, Lazarus’ sister, spent the entire annual wage of an average worker on the perfume ($77,000.00 if you live in New London). This sounds crazy if you are an accountant, investment banker, struggling to make ends meet or if you are mercy oriented and your heart aches for the poor.

Yet Jesus lifts her up as an example of what it means to love God. (please do not ever use “the poor you have with you always” as a proof text to prove that the poor should not be a major concern. That would fly in the face of everything that Jesus did and taught).

So what does “insanely extravagant, self forgetful, whole hearted, radical, costly demonstration of vulnerable love" show us? We sing a very wonderful hymn in church with this line “were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing so divine, demands my soul, my life my all”.

Pastor Tim Keller puts it this way, “She has all the marks of a person who is not following Jesus for what they get, but for who He is. She is not following Jesus in order to get things from Him, but in order to get Him. Her critics found Jesus useful, but she found Him beautiful. From this woman we get an indispensible tutorial on the nature of worship."