Pastor Edgar Mayer;
For more sermons and other writings check out pastors homepage: http://www.geocities.com/mayeredgar
Why
This Waste
A woman had just poured out $50,000 over
Jesus head which generated a response harsh words from other Christians who
said:
Why
this waste?
According to the Bible the woman had come I
quote from Mark 14:3-5:
with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume,
made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on Jesus head.
[Then] some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, Why this
waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a years wages and the
money given to the poor. And they rebuked her harshly.
Why did this woman waste a small fortune
on a questionable outcome? Perfume is good in small quantities and Jesus might
have appreciated to freshen up with dabs of expensive alabaster but to be
drenched in the fragrance of luxury would have been a little overpowering. The
gift made no sense. Yet, the woman was not restrained by practical matters or
cautious modesty or the immense cost of her action. This woman wasted the most
expensive item in her possession on Jesus because she loved him beyond logical
calculations with absolute abandon. This woman loved Jesus. She loved Jesus.
And not so many weeks later even those
that were at the start upset with her must have changed their minds because this
woman was at least one person among the many followers of Jesus that did not
disgrace him when the going became tough. This incident happened just before Jesus
faced his final persecution and then death. The Bible introduces the story
of the womans love gift with these words Mark 14:1-2: 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. But not during the Feast, they said, or the
people may riot.
Thank God there was at least one person
that did not bow to the pressure of persecution. Everyone else either betrayed
Jesus or denied him or simply ran away. Only the woman lavished love on him and
by her action she somehow made us humans look better. Now we want to tell her
story but back then we were indignant.
This reminds me a little of the book
which I read about the Christian resistance to the Nazi regime in Germany.
There was not much to tell. The book only mentioned about three names again and
again because most people either betrayed others or denied them or simply ran
away. However, at least there were the odd ones whose story we can now tell.
Otherwise the shame would have been even greater. Thank God for the woman and
her $50,000 love gift.
Lets take in more slowly what actually
happened. Why did the others get so upset with the woman? It wasnt their money. A Christian businessman was
traveling in Korea. In a field by the side of the road was a young man pulling
a rude plow while an old man held the handles. The businessman took a snapshot
of the scene and said to the missionary who was interpreter and guide to the
party: I suppose these people are
very poor.
The quiet reply was: Yes, those two men happen to be Christians. When
their church was being built, they were eager to give something toward it, but
they had no money. So they decided to sell their one and only ox and give the
proceeds to the church. This spring they are pulling the plow themselves. The businessman was silent for some
moments. Then he said: That must have been a real sacrifice. The missonary answered: They did
not call it that. They thought themselves fortunate that they had an ox to sell!
This is again difficult to understand.
We may feel like becoming indignant and charging these two Koreans: No wonder you are poor. Business lesson 101 is
that you dont sell your means of production because it puts you at risk of
further poverty and downgrades your future offering potential.
However, our indignation is wrong as was
the indignation of those that rebuked the woman and her gift of perfume. Jesus
said Mark 14:6: Leave her
alone. She has done a beautiful thing to me. Jesus defended and understood what we may struggle to understand. These
people loved him and it was love that made them wasteful. They loved him!
The question is: Do we love Jesus or do
we approach our faith from a different angle? The indignant people said among
themselves Mark 14:4-5:
Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold
for more than a years wages and the money given to the poor
And they were right and their reasoning was
pious. The talk about helping the poor made good religious
sense. Jesus himself had demonstrated that helping the poor was one of
Gods top priorities and he had said on many occasions Luke 12:33:
give to the poor
Luke
Do we love Jesus? Do we pour out what we
have on him because we love him so? Can we say what I heard a preacher say only
this week: Im so in love with Jesus. Hes won my heart? Can we say that? The truth is that love should be at the core of our
faith but many a time it is not. Like the indignant people pointing at the
wasteful woman we many a time look
in from the outside at love a broken jar of pure nard on Jesus head
poured out by a laid-down lover and we
do not understand the emotion.
And what we dont understand, we usually
attack. The woman was rebuked harshly by the other guests and we likewise may
and do get irritated and angry when there is too much intimacy with God when people seem to go overboard lose themselves
in worship pour out strong emotions of utter abandon toward Jesus. What is going on?
Many a time we have more in common with
the people who would not pour out anything on Jesus but sell the perfume forsake the intimacy and give the money to the poor. Is it not true? When we practice our
faith, we are rather task-orientated (money to the poor) focused on
religious duties and action plans instead of love. For instance, when we pray, do we allow ourselves the time to praise
and simply love on Jesus? Can we do that when there is intercession to be done?
Dont we have to get busy and launch into our many prayer requests sell
the perfume of being there for Jesus and instead get busy?
The secret of being in love with Jesus
is that any moment spent in his presence is precious and glorious. Worship
becomes the most favourite occupation but again is this not selfish? Why waste
so much time and perfume on Jesus when the poor are waiting for help.
Jesus defended the woman and he defends
whatever we give him in love. We need to understand that with God everything is
about love because he is love. Jesus came from heaven to earth for love so that he would love us and we would love him. God created us for intimacy with him. This
is what God wants.
A preacher went to an evening service in
a Presbyterian church. The congregation was singing the usual songs of praise.
When it was time to speak, the minister rose and began to introduce him.
Suddenly, to the right of the minister, the preacher saw Jesus. Jesus was
standing there with the loneliest expression he had ever seen on any face. His
soft brown eyes overflowed with tears, which began to pour down his cheeks and
drop silently at his feet. There was no noise, no sobbing, and no movement of
anything except for the tears as they silently streamed down his face and
dropped to the floor. The sense of his loneliness filled the preachers being.
He wanted to comfort Jesus. How lonely he was, even in the midst of all his
people.
Jesus
disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. The preacher knew in an instant why
he had been weeping. He was lonely because, in spite of all their self-centred
singing about him, he himself was completely ignored. No wonder he wept. Of
course he was lonely. All the preacher could say was, Now, lets
worship Jesus. Immediately it
seemed as if the Holy Spirit flooded the sanctuary
(Roxanne Brant:
Ministering To The Lord,
At another time Jesus said in the Bible
Luke 13:34: O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem
I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers
her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing
Jesus has always longed and keeps longing for
his people. He wants us to snuggle up to him like chicks under the safe wings
of the mother hen. But we so often are not willing and get busy with other
things.
The Bible also talks about us
Philippians 2:1-2 being united
with Christ
comfort from his love
fellowship with the Holy Spirit
tenderness and compassion
God promises
intimacy. God desires intimacy. One more Bible verse Ephesians 1:4-6:
In love he
adopted us as his children through Jesus
Christ
In love God adopted us
and he is a parent that loves to spend time with his kids us. Love him back with perfume the best
fragrance you have.
And coming back to the other type of
Christianity the indignant advice
of selling the alabaster jar for money and then give it to the poor this wont happen either. Unless we know
about Jesus unless we are wrecked and ruined by him overflowing with
love sustained by his love there
wont be much love for anyone else either. Even the words give money to
the poor do sound rather cold. The
poor are not faceless. They are not an anonymous entity: the poor.
They are made up of individual people
with names and every one of them wants more than money. They want love
the same wasteful love which the woman poured out on Jesus and if we cannot love Jesus who is
altogether lovely then we wont be
able to love anyone else either. When Jesus came to save the world, he did not
simply save the sinners. He
saved you and me and he knew you and me by name.
Do we want what the woman had? Do we
want to know what it is to love Jesus
even at the risk of becoming wasteful with expensive perfume? Thats what I want. Our home has many bookshelves
with many learned academic books on the Bible and doctrines but I am getting
tired of many of them. Especially the more expensive ones seem to be written by
religious scholars who do not seem to know God and who do not seem to love him.
There is page after page of Bible exposition and page after page of expounding
core doctrines but nowhere even the tiniest glimpse of any experience or love of
God. For that reason I go back to the older scholars (and their editions
are cheap) Luther, Spurgeon, Finney,
because you cannot read, for instance,
Luthers commentary on the Bible book of Galatians and not at the same time be
impacted by something real: how much he experienced what he wrote.
I quote him to you and please listen to
his passion:
I have often proved by experience, and I still daily find, what a hard
matter it is to believe (especially in the conflict of conscience) that Christ
was given, not for the holy, righteous, worthy, and such as were his friends,
but for the ungodly, for sinners, for the unworthy, and for his enemies, who
have deserved Gods wrath and everlasting death.
Let us therefore arm ourselves with these and like verses of the Holy
Scripture, that we may be able to answer the devil (accusing us, and saying:
You are a sinner, and therefore you are damned) in this sort: Christ has given
himself for my sins; therefore, Satan, you shall not prevail against me when
you go about to terrify me in setting forth the greatness of my sins, and so to
bring me into heaviness, distrust, despair, hatred, contempt and blaspheming
God. As often as you object that I am a sinner, you call me to remembrance of
the benefit of Christ my Redeemer, upon whose shoulder, and not upon mine, lie
all my sins; for the Lord hat laid on him the iniquity of us all, and for
the transgression of people was he stricken (Isaiah 53:6,8). Wherefore, when
you say I am a sinner, you do not terrify me, but comfort me above measure
[because you drive me to Christ.] (Martin Luther: Commentary On Galatians, Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House 1998, p38-39).
When Luther writes you can smell the
fragrance of his love for God because he has come to know the God who comforts
him who loves him above measure
when the devil is against him playing on
his conscience with accusations, fear, distrust and despair.
Do we want what he had and do we want what
the woman had and what any Christian can have, that is: love at the core of our relationship with God? Yes, we do. We are tired of any other
religion of dry books and indignant advice. We want to know the wasteful love that sacrifices more than a years
wages on a single act of love.
How do we get this love? Let God convict
you of the truth. He made the first move. Before you even considered doing
anything in his name, he took his most precious jar of perfume the fragrance of Jesus broke the jar of his body and then poured out all of him his
sweet sacrifice of his blood on you
for the forgiveness of your sins covering
you with Jesus fragrance of holiness.
The Bible story of the wasteful woman
happened just before Jesus faced his final persecution and then death. And as we know now Jesus faced the agony of what was to come and the shame of what was to
come and the wasteful extravagance of sacrificing his very life he faced
all of that for love love toward us.
At the beginning of these events only the woman grasped the heart of Jesus and
in return poured out everything she had on him but after these events
contemplating his suffering and the cross of his death we may now all join the woman because by these subsequent events Jesus proved
that he was worth every drop of alabaster perfume.
In the next 35 days leading up to Easter
let God convict you of the truth as we read and meditate on Jesus story Bible passages like Mark 15:19 I read: Again and again they struck
him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they
worshiped him. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and
put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to
crucify him. God the Father did
break the most expensive jar of the body of his only begotten Son Jesus
for you and me. Receive the fragrance. Receive
the love. Be drenched in forgiveness, holiness, eternal friendship with God, mercy,
Dont rush off to the poor there is time for
that later but worship and dwell in
the presence of God and receive his love.
God will confirm his word his truth by
working faith in you and love. Whatever may cause you feelings of indignation,
fight them and simply allow God to love you spend the time seek the gift and it will come
Ephesians 3:16-19 I quote from the
Bible:
Christ may dwell in your hearts
through faith
you
may have [will have] power, together with all the saints,
to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know
this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of
all the fullness of God and I may
add that you likewise then have love that is wide and long and high
and deep ready to break the jar of your alabaster perfume and waste it
and love it on Jesus.
This is how Jesus concluded the story.
He said Mark 14:6-9: Leave her
alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me
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. The name of the woman is forgotten but not her act of love because her
kind of love belongs to the gospel the good news of friendship with God
in Jesus Christ. Hear the good news and learn
to love him. One day we will all say and we will all mean it: Im so in
love with Jesus. Hes won my heart. Amen.
[Further observations: They were in the house of Simon the leper whom
Jesus presumably healed. Remember the house in which you are and the healing
that Jesus has already done.
The woman did not wait for the moment of maximum
affect but came up to Jesus while he was still eating. Love cannot wait.
Then, while the womans name is forgotten, Judas name
is remembered (vv10-11). Love doesnt make a name for oneself
]