Show Notes
One particular day about forty years ago — as a new youth pastor at Bel Air Presbyterian Church — a missionary took me, a friend, and my father on a tour of the Old Tijuana City Dump. I saw the worst poverty that I’ve ever seen, all within a couple of miles from California. For $1,000, my youth group could build a little house in that dump that might house 12 people — and over the next few years, we built several.
On the way home to L. A., near Disneyland, someone spotted the recently finished “Crystal Cathedral,” and we decided to pull off and take a tour. At one point, our tour guide showed us the organ. With great admiration, she gave us the specs and the cost (something like $2 or 3 million). Then she caught herself and said, “But of course, it’s not our organ. It belongs to Jesus.”
In an instant, I thought of the people in the dump and the fact that whatever we do to “the least of these” we do to Him. I did some quick calculations in my head and then grabbed that woman and screamed in her face: “Jesus doesn’t want a pipe organ! Why wasn’t this organ sold, and the money given to 26,000 of ‘the least of these’ just a few miles away from this very spot?” I grabbed her and I screamed . . . in my mind — not in reality. However, I was filled with what I would call “righteous anger.” I felt wrath; I was a vessel . . . of wrath.
In John 12, Jesus stops in Bethany, where He recently raised Lazarus, on His way to Jerusalem to be sacrificed for Passover.
John 12: 2-7, “So they gave a dinner for Him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples... said, ‘Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?’ He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief ...Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone, she has kept it for the day of my burial.”
Ouch! Judas makes a lot of sense to me. A denarii was a day’s wage. If you have a full-time job, how much do you make in a year? That’s what Mary poured out on Jesus’s feet (as well as body and hair, apparently) at a dinner party! And in Matthew and Mark, Jesus calls it a “kalos ergon: (beautiful thing).” This is the first and only “work” that Jesus calls “kalos: beautiful and good” in all of the Gospels.
People want “practical application points.” Here it is: Do this. Next Sunday, we’ll invest the annual budget in a communal holy pizza party and foot massage to the glory of God! ...Or not. Although we’d have the facts, we might be missing the plot. So, what was it about Mary that made her deed so “good”? Here are a few ideas.
Something about Mary:
#1. Mary was impractical. When people ask, “Why be good?” it just reveals that they don’t know The Good and don’t love “The Good.” What Mary did was good for nothing, just Good. . . like God. #2. Mary was unrestrained. She was following no program. There was no “law” that she was trying to fulfill. Mary chose the Good in freedom. That’s what I call “free will.” #3. Mary was free. So, what was she thinking? Maybe she wasn’t thinking.... #4. Mary wasn’t calculating. She wasn’t asking “Is 10% enough?” She broke the bottle. #5. Mary was passionate.
I’m guessing that Mary doesn’t even know that Jesus is going to die in six days; she just knows that He is Good and in Him is Life. “It is for my burial,” says the Plot . . . after the fact. Mary wasn’t comprehending; she was being comprehended — seized by the power of a great affection.
I once experienced Jesus, weeping in me, for me, and through me. We wept over a trauma that I had refused to feel that had turned into anger, bitterness, and wrath, all dammed up in my soul... We forgave it, we “let it be,” and wept it out of me. He wept the trauma out of me and turned it into Joy. It was the Mary
More from The Sanctuary Downtown / Relentless Love
Here in Denver, at our local amusement park, we used to have a “Haunted House.” It was fully mechanized. One would ride through in a cart on rails. No monsters, just darkness, swirling things, and automated mannequins. It was really spooky as a child, but pretty boring for adults who had gained the knowledge of mechanical automation.
“The mere idea of you, the longing here for you. You'll never know how slow the moments go till I'm near to you. I see your face in every flower, your eyes in stars above. It's just the thought of you, the very thought of you, my love.” My wife and I have spent a lot of time on romantic vacations listening to those words sung by Billie Holiday or Nat King Cole.
Sometime around 1968, I learned about germs in school. They can be found in dirt and most of all, in the very pinnacle of depravity: poop. So, I began to wash my hands... a lot. I washed and washed, but I am a producer of human excreta, and so is everyone I know. So, it felt as if I was never finished. I was driven to cleanliness and then to the doctor, for my hands were red, raw, cracked and bleeding — open wounds susceptible to germs! I had been better off with no knowledge of “germs” and “not germs.” The doctor looked at my hands and said, “Stop (Shabat in Hebrew)! Stop washing your hands.” They hurt like hell, but it was hard as hell to stop.
John 18:38-40: “Pilate said to [Jesus], ‘What is truth?’ After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, ‘I find no guilt in him. But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?’ They cried out again, ‘Not this man, but Barabbas!’ Now Barabbas was a robber [lestes: a taker].”