Sermon shared with Southfields Baptist Church, 11th Mar
So, what I would like to do this morning is to really get into this passage in some detail.
First of all I want to identify the two main groups of people in the passage, ...then I just want to try to really get into the minds of these people - to identify WITH them, ...and then I want for us to be able to see where it's all gone wrong for them, and why Jesus praises the woman so greatly.
But I'll start by setting the scene a bit. It’s easy to gloss over parts of the story without a second thought but I think it will help to immerse ourselves in the details for a moment…
So, it’s two days before The Passover. Now, The Passover was the great New Year celebration for the Hebrews. It was given to them to celebrate new beginnings.
It was given to them both to remember the new beginnings God gave their ancestors - in The Promised Land of Canaan - after rescuing them from the slavery and oppression of Egypt.
But it was also given as an opportunity to look forward to the new beginnings that God will give all of his people - in The Promised ‘New Heavens and New Earth’ - when he rescues us from the slavery and oppression of sin.
Now, if we look down at verses 1 and 10 (just outside of the text we've had read), we have two groups of people awaiting this new year celebration in our story: the “Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law” and Jesus’ disciples, eating with him in Simon’s house
I’d just like to spend a little time getting into the minds of each group of people, using our understanding of Scripture.
First of all we’ve got the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law - what are they thinking about? What do they think of themselves? What is going through their minds?
Well, these guys are looking forward to leading the nation in the pomp and circumstance of the traditions and rituals built up around this event. They’ll be looking forward to getting their glad rags on – looking pretty tip-top as the nation looks to them to lead the event … and then: the feasting! ...Roast lamb with all the trimmings!
Of course all of this costs money - but the revenue they’ll make from the seasonal swell of tourists and pilgrims will more than cater for all they could need or want.
This is all of prime importance too, of course: this is 'The Religion' (the way of doing things) that God has given us – this is how we please him. And, clearly, the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law are the special, deserving, righteous ones entrusted with the important administration of these rituals. It is important to get them right … and those shouldering the burden of this great responsibility should be looked after – financially, and in any other way they might need looking after.
But, society today isn’t what it used to be when God gave Moses The Law, is it! So, in addition to taking tithes, it’s necessary to supplement the Temple income. And why not use the very resource that the Temple has plenty of: sheltered space? If we hire that out to market vendors selling sacrificial animals and birds and flour and oil, as well as light refreshments and snacks for the weary pilgrim, everyone’s a winner! The pilgrim doesn’t have to travel with all those bullocks and hins of oil and ephahs of flour, which reduces “sacrifice miles”, local businesses are given a much needed boost in these austere times of Roman occupation, and the ministers of the Temple and the Law are kept in a manner to which they have become accustomed.
It’s a good system! It works! Let’s not rock the boat.
And if anyone else rocks boat … well, they will need to be dealt with: pay off the Romans for a start … and then use the Romans to deal with any individual upstarts who might object.
Speaking of which, that Jesus fellah, with his constant criticism of ‘The System’, is exactly the kind of trouble-maker who would come in and drive our precious vendors from the Temple courts and put our more A-list clientele off giving ‘much’ in tithes.
He is – actually – going to ruin everything … and, seriously, The Passover is a key earner for us. He needs to go.
… “But...” (if we look down at verse 2, here) “not during the Feast,” they said, “or the people may riot.”
The second group of people are Jesus’ disciples - what are they thinking about? What do they think of themselves? What is going through their minds?
Well, this second group of people see through the first group of people and their ostentatious leanings, thanks to Jesus, who has opened their eyes and exposed their misdeeds.
This second group of people are true heroes: they loyally follow their itinerant, rebel leader – a teacher rejected by the teaching establishment in authority – with nowhere to lay their heads at night and surviving day to day by eking out the accrued savings and meagre earnings of the handful of women amongst their number.
They mingle with society’s outcasts: the poor, the leprous, the prostitutes.
At The Revolution that their leader is clearly and inexorably leading them on towards, they will be the next generation of leaders who, taught well through their years in the wilderness, will lead in a whole new way of justice and righteousness.
No adulation for cold, bookish intellectualism for them! No, their praise will come hard-earned at the coalface of serving the poor and widowed no matter the cost … for they have already given up everything to follow Jesus!
So, we see two groups of people anticipating this great new year celebration of The Passover: on the one hand, the national authorities, ordained by God to lead the ignorant masses through the mysterious ways of God … and, on the other hand, the enlightened servants of the down-trodden, throwing off the shackles of convention to do good in the name of God.
… And yet – the first group are hell-bent on killing the Son of God, and the second group do not consider him worthy of being honoured by his own creatures as The Great High Priest of God, King of all Creation. What has gone wrong?
It takes a woman (so neither Chief Priest or Teacher of the Law, nor one of The Twelve) to show them - and us.
Who was this woman? We’re just given the briefest information about her in Matthew 26 and here in Mark – can we see, in verse 3? Basically that she has just spent a considerable sum of money on making Jesus smell nice; she has entered the house of an 'unclean' leper, and, crucially, Jesus ensures that her praise is everlasting.
Let’s just explore this for a minute or two.
So, Simon, being a leper, is likely to be living in the equivalent of a leper colony.
Lepers, by virtue of their ‘unclean’ condition would have had pretty limited career opportunities. Most careers in this time (particularly being prior to the “Telecommunications Age”) are going to necessarily involve personal contact – be that trading or banking or tax collecting or working on the fishing boats or on an ox plough team - there just wouldn’t be as many opportunities to just pick up the phone or get onto email and conduct business from the couch!
But personal contact with lepers requires a special cleansing routine afterwards and, frankly, who wants to have to do that after every purchase or meeting or sealing of a contract?!
So this particular community is likely to be poor. This woman would have had to have carried this alabaster flask from whichever fashionable perfumerie she bought it in, through the leper colony slums, and into Simon’s house.
If we look down at verse 5, our church NIV Bibles tell us that the perfume cost more than a year’s wages. This is helpful, but I’m always keen not to just take the translators’ word for it - who knows where they got that from? I want to use the Bible to understand the Bible.
So the original text, as translated in the King James for example, says that it was worth 300 denarii.
Now, of course, I don’t know what current exchange rates are, exactly, but – using the Bible to understand the Bible – Jesus, in telling the parable of The Good Samaritan, seemed to think that 2 denarii would be sufficient to keep an inn-keeper’s mind on the task of looking after the man set upon by robbers, whilst trusting that the Samaritan would keep to his word and come back to pay the difference next time he had the opportunity to make the Jerusalem-Jericho trip. ...These days, Premier Inn’s best offer is £29pppn! ...Using these calculations, the woman’s perfume is worth a cool £8,850 – if you'll pardon the pun, not something to be sniffed at!
Actually, a friend who would know recently told us that a simple hospital bed with a shared nurse costs closer to £400 a day - this alabaster flask would certainly not be something one would want to be flaunting around the poorest part of town!
… And it's not something you’d want to use up all in one application … especially on someone else’s head ... no matter how smelly that head might be!
… Unless, that is, the head belonged to one who had already given you all you ever needed, and who had promised to give you all you could ever want forevermore (… including, should you so desire it, more nard!)
So the costliness of the nard gives us an idea of how this woman valued Jesus. But why nard? Why not gold? Or a nice case of wine? Or a donkey? (He was about to be in need of one of these over the next day or two!) Why this ointment?
And why did she pour it on his head? Most guests have their hands and feet washed … having one’s head anointed speaks of something a little deeper going on.
It may be that she knew exactly what was going on here: that Jesus was going to Jerusalem to be the Passover lamb, sacrificed for the salvation of the family of God. It may be that she wished to express her anticipated mourning by preparing Jesus’ body for burial, perhaps knowing that she might not be able to honour him in such a way after what was, after all, going to be a very public death.
If we look at verse 8, Jesus certainly says that she did what she did for his burial. The question for me is whether she knew exactly what she was doing or did Jesus use what she was doing in her ignorance as yet another pointer to what he was about to do.
What if she didn’t know what she was doing? What might have been going through her mind? Let's get into her thinking...
First and most importantly of all, she knows that Jesus has come to save his people - this lies at the heart of everything - it’s what his name ("Jesus") means: "The Lord saves".
Beyond that? Well, we’re 2 days from the Passover - she knows that this is all about the sacrificial slaughter of an innocent lamb for the salvation of all who are covered under the blood of the lamb, historically symbolised by daubing the blood over and around the front door into the house. But this was a family thing, administered by the household - if Jesus were to save the whole nation of Israel he would have to make a sacrifice appropriate for the whole nation; he would have to administer a ‘sin offering’, … in which a young bullock is sacrificed by, specifically, an ‘anointed’ Priest.
What else might be going through her mind?
Well we know that recently Jesus has been talking to his disciples about this final march on Jerusalem, when a sacrifice would be made that would save Israel. The gospels tell us that the disciples didn’t really understand this but were too afraid to ask him about it.
I wonder if this woman, hanging out on the fringes of the discipleship party, has picked up gleanings of these conversations, come to understand what the disciples did not - that her beloved Jesus (the real Great High Priest) was on his way to administer the mother of all sacrifices in the Temple - and so decided to honour her beloved saviour herself with a proper anointing ceremony.
… This is all speculation on my part. Either way, whether an anointing given before time - because she couldn’t serve him in this way later - or whether an anointing given without fully understanding what Jesus’ role was in what was about to happen, this woman did what she did out of her unashamed love for him...
A love that surpassed her understanding of Scripture; a love that surpassed her passion for the poor; a love that surpassed her desire for even just his gifts (like the perfume).
And this is how she shows us the problems with the two groups of people I mentioned earlier: they had taken FROM Jesus rather than taken Jesus.
What does this mean? ...And can I stand here with a finger-point at them, secure in the knowledge that I'm any different?
In the first group, Jesus had offered himself in the Scriptures and the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law had taken the Scriptures but not Jesus.
We surely don't do this - do we?
Well, the church through history has.
The Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law and subsequent church leaders and teachers down the ages have fallen foul of this: the invention of “Purgatory” and the practise of extracting ‘indulgences’ ...
... (do we know what these are? "Purgatory" was a place invented to explain how people could die whilst sinning and still get into heaven - it was a place where individual sins are purged from an individual before he or she can be found worthy of entering God’s presence. And ‘indulgences’ were payments to the church of man-earned currency in order to be some kind of substitute for purgatory in an individual's sin repayment plan.)
... so the invention of Purgatory and the practise of extracting indulgences are only two examples out of a myriad in which all the different church denominations have led the way in making the fulfilment of Scripture about the individual Christian rather than about Jesus.
Ok, that's the church ... but what about me?
Well, for my part, I can't tell you how many times have I found myself being reminded, with great relief, that God’s enjoyment of me is NOT compromised by the hundreds of ways in which I have not loved him already today, from hating the bin-men for waking me too early to not having a ‘Quiet Time’ this morning!
When we take the Scriptures and take Jesus out of them, we have to fill the void with ourselves. So WE become the ones fulfilling Scripture … the problem is, we DON’T fulfil Scripture!
We’re NOT the ones who live righteous lives and so can carry our beloved through the judgement to eternal life with the Father. But all the while we refuse to take ourselves out of the focus of Scripture and put Jesus back where he belongs at the centre of Scripture, we whip ourselves up into a frustrated frenzy of adding law upon law, trying to square the circle of making Scripture about us.
The second group of people - the disciples - are offered Jesus in the practical service of others in love. This group had taken the practical service of others in love but not kept Jesus as the focus of this.
We surely don't do this - do we?
Well, the church through history has.
Disciples and subsequent Christian organisations down the ages have fallen foul of this: our colonial history is littered with stories of missionaries succumbing to the grasping attitude towards natives of the sailors and settlers with whom they travelled. Modern urban folklore is equally littered with stories of how Christian workplaces suffer the ‘office politics’, back-biting, and gossip of their non-Christian counterparts.
... That's the church ... but what about me?
For me, I know that every day a child at my school will suffer a symptom of my forgetting that Jesus is the reason I’m there - whether that be that I just can’t take the time to make sure that they can cope with the work I’m setting them or whether it be me shouting at them for talking out of turn in class.
When we take the font of all love out of the centre of this service, we fill the void with ourselves … but WE are NOT an unquenchable overflow of love … so the service becomes duty, and duty becomes chore, and all the while we grow bitter and grasping as our innate resources are expended without replenishment.
It’s so interesting: Jesus said that the whole law can be summed up by: “Love the Lord your God …” - which the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law have corrupted - and “love your neighbour as yourself...” - which the disciples have corrupted.
(… By the way, before we get too precious about the disciples, let’s not forget the difference between Jesus’ reply to the response of one of his disciples on hearing of Jesus’ imminent death - “Get behind me, Satan!” - and his reply to this woman in verse 9: “wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her”)
But here’s a question: how do we proclaim the gospel in the light of this? DO we remember this woman? Do our Alpha courses or Christianity Explored courses mention this woman? If they do, HOW do they mention her? What do they say about her?
I suspect that, however WE proclaim the gospel as we see it, it only ends up being fully and most truly proclaimed when the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to how beautiful and joyful it is when Jesus is indeed the centre and focus of whatever we do.
And how liberating!
For those who love the Bible (the Scriptures ... the “Law and Prophets”) … for those who love looking into the Law and meditating on the Scriptures - how wonderful to do this PURELY to know Jesus more! How wonderful to be able to share heart-warming discoveries or reminders with others in conversation (… or in preaching opportunities!)
For those who love to serve others, bless others, and do good to others - how wonderful to do this PURELY to make Jesus known better to those we are serving! How wonderful to share in the goodness of his gift of loving through the very act of serving others.
Whilst we are in the flesh, we will - every day, most probably - be like the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law in some areas of our lives and like the disciples in others. Thank God that there are still times when he reminds us of who he is and how much he loves us and, unintentionally … helplessly, we are like the woman: free to enjoy his grace, his gifts, his love, his protection, and his praise forever.
This is how I would like to finish, with the encouragement that even though we will daily fall like either the Priests or the disciples, yet - because of his love for us - we enjoy the everlasting praise of Jesus.
... But I know that some of us like some challenge to our current state, that we can think on through this week. Well, how about this, from verse 6: “Leave her alone” (...from the King James version: “Why trouble her?”) “… she has done what she could.”
Can we look upon our brothers and sisters in Christ and the peculiar ways they might live out their faith, love, and worship of Jesus and, as long as it doesn’t cause brothers and sisters to stumble, just let them be?
In Matthew 21:16, Jesus quotes Psalm 8:2 at the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law, telling them how God has ordained praise from the lips of children and infants - these little people who have yet to learn about the restrictions of social conformity. Let us, too, enjoy the variety and quirkiness of Jesus’ family as HE does …
... as Jesus does … the one who, at the cross, gave his body to be broken, like the alabaster flask, so that, like the alabaster flask, abundant riches of sweet life everlasting would overflow with abandon.
Let me finish by praying for us to this limitlessly generous God ...
[I then went on to thank God for his abundantly rich, sweet gifts of life and love everlasting for all of us who have responded to his approaches, without discrimination, to thank him for the beauty and richness of a world full of differences and diversity, and to ask that we'll be made more like Jesus - by Jesus - including in the way we enjoy all the many ways that each of us is different to one another.]
So, what I would like to do this morning is to really get into this passage in some detail.
First of all I want to identify the two main groups of people in the passage, ...then I just want to try to really get into the minds of these people - to identify WITH them, ...and then I want for us to be able to see where it's all gone wrong for them, and why Jesus praises the woman so greatly.
But I'll start by setting the scene a bit. It’s easy to gloss over parts of the story without a second thought but I think it will help to immerse ourselves in the details for a moment…
So, it’s two days before The Passover. Now, The Passover was the great New Year celebration for the Hebrews. It was given to them to celebrate new beginnings.
It was given to them both to remember the new beginnings God gave their ancestors - in The Promised Land of Canaan - after rescuing them from the slavery and oppression of Egypt.
But it was also given as an opportunity to look forward to the new beginnings that God will give all of his people - in The Promised ‘New Heavens and New Earth’ - when he rescues us from the slavery and oppression of sin.
Now, if we look down at verses 1 and 10 (just outside of the text we've had read), we have two groups of people awaiting this new year celebration in our story: the “Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law” and Jesus’ disciples, eating with him in Simon’s house
I’d just like to spend a little time getting into the minds of each group of people, using our understanding of Scripture.
First of all we’ve got the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law - what are they thinking about? What do they think of themselves? What is going through their minds?
Well, these guys are looking forward to leading the nation in the pomp and circumstance of the traditions and rituals built up around this event. They’ll be looking forward to getting their glad rags on – looking pretty tip-top as the nation looks to them to lead the event … and then: the feasting! ...Roast lamb with all the trimmings!
Of course all of this costs money - but the revenue they’ll make from the seasonal swell of tourists and pilgrims will more than cater for all they could need or want.
This is all of prime importance too, of course: this is 'The Religion' (the way of doing things) that God has given us – this is how we please him. And, clearly, the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law are the special, deserving, righteous ones entrusted with the important administration of these rituals. It is important to get them right … and those shouldering the burden of this great responsibility should be looked after – financially, and in any other way they might need looking after.
But, society today isn’t what it used to be when God gave Moses The Law, is it! So, in addition to taking tithes, it’s necessary to supplement the Temple income. And why not use the very resource that the Temple has plenty of: sheltered space? If we hire that out to market vendors selling sacrificial animals and birds and flour and oil, as well as light refreshments and snacks for the weary pilgrim, everyone’s a winner! The pilgrim doesn’t have to travel with all those bullocks and hins of oil and ephahs of flour, which reduces “sacrifice miles”, local businesses are given a much needed boost in these austere times of Roman occupation, and the ministers of the Temple and the Law are kept in a manner to which they have become accustomed.
It’s a good system! It works! Let’s not rock the boat.
And if anyone else rocks boat … well, they will need to be dealt with: pay off the Romans for a start … and then use the Romans to deal with any individual upstarts who might object.
Speaking of which, that Jesus fellah, with his constant criticism of ‘The System’, is exactly the kind of trouble-maker who would come in and drive our precious vendors from the Temple courts and put our more A-list clientele off giving ‘much’ in tithes.
He is – actually – going to ruin everything … and, seriously, The Passover is a key earner for us. He needs to go.
… “But...” (if we look down at verse 2, here) “not during the Feast,” they said, “or the people may riot.”
The second group of people are Jesus’ disciples - what are they thinking about? What do they think of themselves? What is going through their minds?
Well, this second group of people see through the first group of people and their ostentatious leanings, thanks to Jesus, who has opened their eyes and exposed their misdeeds.
This second group of people are true heroes: they loyally follow their itinerant, rebel leader – a teacher rejected by the teaching establishment in authority – with nowhere to lay their heads at night and surviving day to day by eking out the accrued savings and meagre earnings of the handful of women amongst their number.
They mingle with society’s outcasts: the poor, the leprous, the prostitutes.
At The Revolution that their leader is clearly and inexorably leading them on towards, they will be the next generation of leaders who, taught well through their years in the wilderness, will lead in a whole new way of justice and righteousness.
No adulation for cold, bookish intellectualism for them! No, their praise will come hard-earned at the coalface of serving the poor and widowed no matter the cost … for they have already given up everything to follow Jesus!
So, we see two groups of people anticipating this great new year celebration of The Passover: on the one hand, the national authorities, ordained by God to lead the ignorant masses through the mysterious ways of God … and, on the other hand, the enlightened servants of the down-trodden, throwing off the shackles of convention to do good in the name of God.
… And yet – the first group are hell-bent on killing the Son of God, and the second group do not consider him worthy of being honoured by his own creatures as The Great High Priest of God, King of all Creation. What has gone wrong?
It takes a woman (so neither Chief Priest or Teacher of the Law, nor one of The Twelve) to show them - and us.
Who was this woman? We’re just given the briefest information about her in Matthew 26 and here in Mark – can we see, in verse 3? Basically that she has just spent a considerable sum of money on making Jesus smell nice; she has entered the house of an 'unclean' leper, and, crucially, Jesus ensures that her praise is everlasting.
Let’s just explore this for a minute or two.
So, Simon, being a leper, is likely to be living in the equivalent of a leper colony.
Lepers, by virtue of their ‘unclean’ condition would have had pretty limited career opportunities. Most careers in this time (particularly being prior to the “Telecommunications Age”) are going to necessarily involve personal contact – be that trading or banking or tax collecting or working on the fishing boats or on an ox plough team - there just wouldn’t be as many opportunities to just pick up the phone or get onto email and conduct business from the couch!
But personal contact with lepers requires a special cleansing routine afterwards and, frankly, who wants to have to do that after every purchase or meeting or sealing of a contract?!
So this particular community is likely to be poor. This woman would have had to have carried this alabaster flask from whichever fashionable perfumerie she bought it in, through the leper colony slums, and into Simon’s house.
If we look down at verse 5, our church NIV Bibles tell us that the perfume cost more than a year’s wages. This is helpful, but I’m always keen not to just take the translators’ word for it - who knows where they got that from? I want to use the Bible to understand the Bible.
So the original text, as translated in the King James for example, says that it was worth 300 denarii.
Now, of course, I don’t know what current exchange rates are, exactly, but – using the Bible to understand the Bible – Jesus, in telling the parable of The Good Samaritan, seemed to think that 2 denarii would be sufficient to keep an inn-keeper’s mind on the task of looking after the man set upon by robbers, whilst trusting that the Samaritan would keep to his word and come back to pay the difference next time he had the opportunity to make the Jerusalem-Jericho trip. ...These days, Premier Inn’s best offer is £29pppn! ...Using these calculations, the woman’s perfume is worth a cool £8,850 – if you'll pardon the pun, not something to be sniffed at!
Actually, a friend who would know recently told us that a simple hospital bed with a shared nurse costs closer to £400 a day - this alabaster flask would certainly not be something one would want to be flaunting around the poorest part of town!
… And it's not something you’d want to use up all in one application … especially on someone else’s head ... no matter how smelly that head might be!
… Unless, that is, the head belonged to one who had already given you all you ever needed, and who had promised to give you all you could ever want forevermore (… including, should you so desire it, more nard!)
So the costliness of the nard gives us an idea of how this woman valued Jesus. But why nard? Why not gold? Or a nice case of wine? Or a donkey? (He was about to be in need of one of these over the next day or two!) Why this ointment?
And why did she pour it on his head? Most guests have their hands and feet washed … having one’s head anointed speaks of something a little deeper going on.
It may be that she knew exactly what was going on here: that Jesus was going to Jerusalem to be the Passover lamb, sacrificed for the salvation of the family of God. It may be that she wished to express her anticipated mourning by preparing Jesus’ body for burial, perhaps knowing that she might not be able to honour him in such a way after what was, after all, going to be a very public death.
If we look at verse 8, Jesus certainly says that she did what she did for his burial. The question for me is whether she knew exactly what she was doing or did Jesus use what she was doing in her ignorance as yet another pointer to what he was about to do.
What if she didn’t know what she was doing? What might have been going through her mind? Let's get into her thinking...
First and most importantly of all, she knows that Jesus has come to save his people - this lies at the heart of everything - it’s what his name ("Jesus") means: "The Lord saves".
Beyond that? Well, we’re 2 days from the Passover - she knows that this is all about the sacrificial slaughter of an innocent lamb for the salvation of all who are covered under the blood of the lamb, historically symbolised by daubing the blood over and around the front door into the house. But this was a family thing, administered by the household - if Jesus were to save the whole nation of Israel he would have to make a sacrifice appropriate for the whole nation; he would have to administer a ‘sin offering’, … in which a young bullock is sacrificed by, specifically, an ‘anointed’ Priest.
What else might be going through her mind?
Well we know that recently Jesus has been talking to his disciples about this final march on Jerusalem, when a sacrifice would be made that would save Israel. The gospels tell us that the disciples didn’t really understand this but were too afraid to ask him about it.
I wonder if this woman, hanging out on the fringes of the discipleship party, has picked up gleanings of these conversations, come to understand what the disciples did not - that her beloved Jesus (the real Great High Priest) was on his way to administer the mother of all sacrifices in the Temple - and so decided to honour her beloved saviour herself with a proper anointing ceremony.
… This is all speculation on my part. Either way, whether an anointing given before time - because she couldn’t serve him in this way later - or whether an anointing given without fully understanding what Jesus’ role was in what was about to happen, this woman did what she did out of her unashamed love for him...
A love that surpassed her understanding of Scripture; a love that surpassed her passion for the poor; a love that surpassed her desire for even just his gifts (like the perfume).
And this is how she shows us the problems with the two groups of people I mentioned earlier: they had taken FROM Jesus rather than taken Jesus.
What does this mean? ...And can I stand here with a finger-point at them, secure in the knowledge that I'm any different?
In the first group, Jesus had offered himself in the Scriptures and the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law had taken the Scriptures but not Jesus.
We surely don't do this - do we?
Well, the church through history has.
The Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law and subsequent church leaders and teachers down the ages have fallen foul of this: the invention of “Purgatory” and the practise of extracting ‘indulgences’ ...
... (do we know what these are? "Purgatory" was a place invented to explain how people could die whilst sinning and still get into heaven - it was a place where individual sins are purged from an individual before he or she can be found worthy of entering God’s presence. And ‘indulgences’ were payments to the church of man-earned currency in order to be some kind of substitute for purgatory in an individual's sin repayment plan.)
... so the invention of Purgatory and the practise of extracting indulgences are only two examples out of a myriad in which all the different church denominations have led the way in making the fulfilment of Scripture about the individual Christian rather than about Jesus.
Ok, that's the church ... but what about me?
Well, for my part, I can't tell you how many times have I found myself being reminded, with great relief, that God’s enjoyment of me is NOT compromised by the hundreds of ways in which I have not loved him already today, from hating the bin-men for waking me too early to not having a ‘Quiet Time’ this morning!
When we take the Scriptures and take Jesus out of them, we have to fill the void with ourselves. So WE become the ones fulfilling Scripture … the problem is, we DON’T fulfil Scripture!
We’re NOT the ones who live righteous lives and so can carry our beloved through the judgement to eternal life with the Father. But all the while we refuse to take ourselves out of the focus of Scripture and put Jesus back where he belongs at the centre of Scripture, we whip ourselves up into a frustrated frenzy of adding law upon law, trying to square the circle of making Scripture about us.
The second group of people - the disciples - are offered Jesus in the practical service of others in love. This group had taken the practical service of others in love but not kept Jesus as the focus of this.
We surely don't do this - do we?
Well, the church through history has.
Disciples and subsequent Christian organisations down the ages have fallen foul of this: our colonial history is littered with stories of missionaries succumbing to the grasping attitude towards natives of the sailors and settlers with whom they travelled. Modern urban folklore is equally littered with stories of how Christian workplaces suffer the ‘office politics’, back-biting, and gossip of their non-Christian counterparts.
... That's the church ... but what about me?
For me, I know that every day a child at my school will suffer a symptom of my forgetting that Jesus is the reason I’m there - whether that be that I just can’t take the time to make sure that they can cope with the work I’m setting them or whether it be me shouting at them for talking out of turn in class.
When we take the font of all love out of the centre of this service, we fill the void with ourselves … but WE are NOT an unquenchable overflow of love … so the service becomes duty, and duty becomes chore, and all the while we grow bitter and grasping as our innate resources are expended without replenishment.
It’s so interesting: Jesus said that the whole law can be summed up by: “Love the Lord your God …” - which the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law have corrupted - and “love your neighbour as yourself...” - which the disciples have corrupted.
(… By the way, before we get too precious about the disciples, let’s not forget the difference between Jesus’ reply to the response of one of his disciples on hearing of Jesus’ imminent death - “Get behind me, Satan!” - and his reply to this woman in verse 9: “wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her”)
But here’s a question: how do we proclaim the gospel in the light of this? DO we remember this woman? Do our Alpha courses or Christianity Explored courses mention this woman? If they do, HOW do they mention her? What do they say about her?
I suspect that, however WE proclaim the gospel as we see it, it only ends up being fully and most truly proclaimed when the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to how beautiful and joyful it is when Jesus is indeed the centre and focus of whatever we do.
And how liberating!
For those who love the Bible (the Scriptures ... the “Law and Prophets”) … for those who love looking into the Law and meditating on the Scriptures - how wonderful to do this PURELY to know Jesus more! How wonderful to be able to share heart-warming discoveries or reminders with others in conversation (… or in preaching opportunities!)
For those who love to serve others, bless others, and do good to others - how wonderful to do this PURELY to make Jesus known better to those we are serving! How wonderful to share in the goodness of his gift of loving through the very act of serving others.
Whilst we are in the flesh, we will - every day, most probably - be like the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law in some areas of our lives and like the disciples in others. Thank God that there are still times when he reminds us of who he is and how much he loves us and, unintentionally … helplessly, we are like the woman: free to enjoy his grace, his gifts, his love, his protection, and his praise forever.
This is how I would like to finish, with the encouragement that even though we will daily fall like either the Priests or the disciples, yet - because of his love for us - we enjoy the everlasting praise of Jesus.
... But I know that some of us like some challenge to our current state, that we can think on through this week. Well, how about this, from verse 6: “Leave her alone” (...from the King James version: “Why trouble her?”) “… she has done what she could.”
Can we look upon our brothers and sisters in Christ and the peculiar ways they might live out their faith, love, and worship of Jesus and, as long as it doesn’t cause brothers and sisters to stumble, just let them be?
In Matthew 21:16, Jesus quotes Psalm 8:2 at the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law, telling them how God has ordained praise from the lips of children and infants - these little people who have yet to learn about the restrictions of social conformity. Let us, too, enjoy the variety and quirkiness of Jesus’ family as HE does …
... as Jesus does … the one who, at the cross, gave his body to be broken, like the alabaster flask, so that, like the alabaster flask, abundant riches of sweet life everlasting would overflow with abandon.
Let me finish by praying for us to this limitlessly generous God ...
[I then went on to thank God for his abundantly rich, sweet gifts of life and love everlasting for all of us who have responded to his approaches, without discrimination, to thank him for the beauty and richness of a world full of differences and diversity, and to ask that we'll be made more like Jesus - by Jesus - including in the way we enjoy all the many ways that each of us is different to one another.]
