Mark 14:3-11

Now while Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of costly aromatic oil from pure nard. After breaking open the jar, she poured it on his head. But some who were present indignantly said to one another, “Why this waste of expensive ointment? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor!” So they spoke angrily to her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you will always have the poor with you, and you can do good for them whenever you want. But you will not always have me! She did what she could. She anointed my body beforehand for burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”

Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus into their hands. When they heard this, they were delighted and promised to give him money. So Judas began looking for an opportunity to betray him.

 

Imagine with me – Mary does a beautiful thing

Can you imagine the loneliness Jesus is likely feeling at this point? Every time he mentions to his disciples that he must die, they don’t get it, or they get it enough to try to stop him, which just reinforces the fact that they don’t get it. 

We’ve all felt that sense of being lonely even in a crowd. We smile, make small talk, but our heart isn’t in it. Maybe we do dare to venture out and begin to speak about what’s really in our true heart, but it’s like being lost in the woods, crying out “Can anyone hear me, is anyone there?” with silence the only response. 

I sometimes think at the center of life is a song of call and response, proposal and engagement. The most terrible, lonely thing is to fall like a tree in the forest and for no one to hear or take notice. Or to sing up from the street to your beloved’s window, and for her to peek out briefly, then close the shutters. 

In the midst of this crowd, the man Jesus is carrying this unimaginable sorrow alone. But then comes Mary with a jar of perfume. As far as we know she spoke no word; she let her actions say everything, because only this beautiful act of love could say what she had to say. 

The alabaster body of her vessel is broken open and the very costly perfume poured out entirely onto Jesus. I’ve heard the idea of anointing is to supply the means necessary to fulfill an assignment from God. Who knows what strength Mary’s anointing gave to Jesus? Finally, someone who gets him. Someone who hears and understands what no one else has.  

And like loud flatulence in the middle of the most tender moment of the symphony, comes the voice of the wordly-wise disciples, “What a waste! We could’ve capitalized on that! Could’ve done something really useful – could’ve actually done some good in the world!” The text says they spoke harshly, threatening her. They’re not just mildly annoyed, in other words, they’re really laying into her.  

And Jesus lays into them, saying, “You leave her alone! Stop beating up on her!” Meanwhile, Mary is silent like a lamb before her butchers. But Jesus speaks up, “She has done a beautiful, praiseworthy thing for me.”  

It’s worth pointing out that immediately after Mary wastes her money on Jesus, Judas, in contrast, goes to turn in Jesus and makes money doing it. Interesting. 

The disciples are all pragmatists, utilitarians. This is stupid inefficiency. What is beauty worth? It serves no practical purpose. Acts of pure grace, acts of prodigal affection are more than baffling or unaccountable in the eyes of the world; they’re a kind of idiotic and infuriating foolishness. Maybe they make us mad because they distract us from our distractions, forcing us to face our real human hungers – the ones we’ve defaced; because, in our despair that those hungers could ever even be met, they’ve become too painful to look at. 

But what we’re really being asked to face is a humiliated, dead Jesus.  John’s baptism was the perfect case of anointing for Jesus as he began his public ministry, and Mary’s is the perfect case of anointing to send him forth to his own crucifixion, where his body will become the alabaster jar, and his blood the priceless, fragrant perfume, poured out  – entirely – on the world God so loved. (By the way, this means the Cross anoints us for an assignment, doesn’t it?)

And to the worldly-wise, that beautiful offering will always be infuriating. Grace tends to be.  We say, “I don’t want your pity, your charity – give it to the poor – someone who really needs saving.” But we’re being asked to look closely at Mary’s offering, to endure the embarrassing truth it tells us about ourselves, and to let it lead us to the beautiful thing Jesus has done for us. He has “wasted” his priceless life on us, because we are, in fact, poor. We must face that truth. The truth that not one stinking drop of our useful, practicality can save us. 

As one writer has said, in contrast to usefulness, “Beauty will save the world.”  Yes, it is this act of beauty that has.  

 

Poem – Grace Andrews, George Herbert’s “Mary Magdalene” 

Marie Magdalene.

When blessed Marie wip’d her Saviours feet,

(Whose precepts she had trampled on before)

And wore them for a jewell on her head,

               Shewing his steps should be the street,

               Wherein she thenceforth evermore

With pensive humblenesse would live and tread: 

 

She being stain’d her self, why did she strive

To make him clean, who could not be defil’d?

Why kept she not her tears for her own faults,

               And not his feet? Though we could dive

               In tears like seas, our sinnes are pil’d

Deeper then they, in words, and works, and thoughts.

 

Deare soul, she knew who did vouchsafe and deigne

To bear her filth; and that her sinnes did dash

Ev’n God himself: wherefore she was not loth,

               As she had brought wherewith to stain,

               So to bring in wherewith to wash:

And yet in washing one, she washed both.

 

Song: Taylor Leonhardt, Mission House – “I don’t have much”

How can I respond

To the love that You have lavished on me?

 

I don’t have much, I don’t have much

But I have a heart that beats for You

I have a heart that beats for You

 

Every part of me

Wants to love You like You’ve loved me, Lord

Every part of me

Wants to love You like You’ve loved me, my Lord

 

I don’t have much, I don’t have much

But I have a heart that beats for You

I have a heart that beats for You

Prayer: Brian Brown, Collect for Wednesday of Holy Week

Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

*The artwork featured above was created by Shannon Steed Sigler.