Extravagance. This word quietly pulses in the background of the stories of the Bible, starting at the very beginning. A world is pulled out of nothing, flooded with light and given a lush garden full of animals and fruit and two beautiful people at the center. And also from the very beginning we see the brokenness that can come when this word is hemmed in by human greed and disobedience, when God’s extravagant goodness is exchanged for a serpent’s song and dance, when the abundance of creation is fought over instead of shared and given freely.
I want to share a story of a woman who knew how to break out of that natural human inclination to cling to what is dear and expensive. She knew the value of Jesus and her response to his worth was to count her own luxuries, reputation, and dignity as worthless. Her name is Mary. John’s account is what I’ll quote, however, we can meet her in all four gospels. For example, Luke tells of a meal her sister Martha hosted for Jesus. In this account we find Mary in a jarring and surprising place for that culture—she is sitting with the menfolk, drinking in Jesus’s every word instead of bustling in the background like her respectable sister. Martha often gets a bad rap for not being at Jesus's feet too, but it is clear that both sisters loved Jesus. I often think of how Mary couldn’t have taken that place at Jesus’ feet had it not been for Martha’s initiative in making a place for Jesus in her home. However, Mary is the one who was willing to put aside social norms for the sake of being close to Jesus, and Jesus sticks up for her. He loves her decision.
We see later in the book of John that Jesus has a special love for all three of this “Bethany Family.” In the story of Jesus raising Mary’s brother Lazarus from the dead the text explicitly says “Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.” Some commentaries have suggested that there was some kind of familial relationship between them and Jesus. Whatever the case, his deep emotion and weeping at Lazarus’ tomb seem to indicate a special bond with these siblings and himself. The drama of this scene deepens as Jesus then calls Lazarus out of the tomb. You can just picture the surreal sight of a “dead man, hands and feet bound in grave clothes, face wrapped in a head cloth” coming out of a cave-tomb. It’s like a real-life Zombie movie, only full of life instead of death. I can just see a grateful Martha unwrapping the former corpse and a grateful Mary, once again, throwing herself at Jesus’s feet, but this time in shocked gratitude. They had expected Jesus to come and heal their brother before he died, and instead he took the stink of death away from Lazarus’ rotting body. This is extravagance.
So now here we are at the story that forever defines Mary, so much so that Matthew and Mark said “Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” Here’s the setting: in spite of being a fugitive and on the Pharisees’ “most wanted” posters, Jesus has returned to Bethany, a town only two miles from danger-ridden Jerusalem. It’s the quiet before the storm, six days before the Passover that will see him dead by torture on a Roman cross. These three siblings, who are some of his best friends, wanted to celebrate and thank him for his most remarkable miracle yet—the Lazarus-raising death-defying act where Jesus put power behind this audacious claim: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Now he is at a dinner party, and instead of being at the giving end, he is about to be at the receiving end of extravagance. Listen to what happens:
Six days before the Passover celebration began, Jesus arrived in Bethany, the home of Lazarus—the man he had raised from the dead. A dinner was prepared in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, and Lazarus was among those who ate with him. Then Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance.
But Judas Iscariot, the disciple who would soon betray him, said, “That perfume was worth a year’s wages. It should have been sold and the money given to the poor.” Not that he cared for the poor—he was a thief, and since he was in charge of the disciples’ money, he often stole some for himself.
Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. She did this in preparation for my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”
When all the people heard of Jesus’ arrival, they flocked to see him and also to see Lazarus, the man Jesus had raised from the dead. Then the leading priests decided to kill Lazarus, too, for it was because of him that many of the people had deserted them and believed in Jesus.
What was it like to be in that dining room? They were at the home of Simon the Leper, whose background we know little about. Could he have been the siblings’ father? Uncle? The bible is gloriously obtuse in filling in all the details, but this story has just enough to engage all of our five senses. Martha served up a feast, and you can be sure of that under her direction the table was a riot for one's taste buds, with mouth-watering smells wafting up from a multitude of dishes. The disciples must have been reveling in this chance to sit down to a proper meal after being on the run. You can just see them reclining, relaxing, enjoying the comfort we all feel when we are with our homies, our cliques, our close friends. I can almost see Mary on the fringes, watching her lucky brother who gets to be close to Jesus, longing to join the party.
And then she does.
Mary invades the men's space and overpowers their senses with the cloying smell of death—according to Judas, $24,000 dollars worth of Spikenard, a Himalayan funeral spice. She breaks her beautiful jar, kneels at Jesus’s feet and reenacts a scene they have seen before.
I’ve mentioned that this story is told in Matthew and Mark, but there is another one, almost certainly told about a different woman, in Luke. Similar to Mary, Luke’s woman had an alabaster jar, but she also had a reputation. She was sinful woman with loose hair and looser morals. We 20th century readers can’t quite grasp the significance of her wiping Jesus feet with her hair—uncovering your head and letting down your hair in public was so risqué. I've read that this action might be similar to a woman in a long formal skirt hiking it up mid-thigh during a business meeting or in the middle of a church service. The respectable onlookers could hardly handle the situation, saying “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.” In contrast, Mary seems to me to have been respected—for example, people flocked to grieve with her when Lazarus died. What I cannot prove, but suspect, is that Mary knew about Jesus’s response to this immoral woman’s anointing, and that that knowledge sparked a dream of showing Jesus a similar depth of abandon and love. Mary’s willingness to break social norms, to be vulnerable and perhaps impulsive, and, above all, to desire intimacy with Jesus at all cost is scary, but so attractive.
Back to this feast in John 12. The origin of this perfume drives me crazy with curiosity. For the immoral woman it is easy to imagine her acquiring the Nard from some lover--a well-traveled man who was eager to reward her well for her expert services. For Mary I wonder: Was her alabaster box a secret? Why didn’t she anoint Lazarus when he died? Was it a family heirloom, and if so, did her brother and sister share in this decision? Was this an impulsive decision or was it well thought out? Whatever answers I might make up, the fall-out from her actions was real. The air practically cracks with tension as Judas lights into her. “How could you be so foolish with such a valuable thing? What a senseless waste of money—so much good could have been done had she given it to the poor.” Once again, Jesus sticks up for her. He knows that Judas doesn’t value him, that Judas is about to sell him for a fraction of the worth of this oil. In deep contrast to Judas’s attitudes Mary’s actions essentially said: The least of Jesus is worth more than the best of me (Piper). Jesus's dirty feet are infinitely more valuable than my lovely hair--a part of me so glorious society demands that I cover it up.
Jesus knew that Mary had the quality of actively listening to what he said; that more than perhaps any other disciple she understood that he was going to die. Small amounts of nard might be used cosmetically, but no one used that much nard unless they were preparing a body for burial. Now, thanks to Mary, Jesus smelled like someone who was headed to their tomb. Significantly, after his fragrant anointing, the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus and Jesus. Passover and the cross were six days away, and that fragrance would linger as people shouted 'Hosanna' around his donkey and as they cursed him at Golgotha.
There is so much about the character of Mary that I like, and I love the impact her actions seemed to have on Jesus. At some point after Mary’s anointing Jesus said “Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity. Anyone who wants to serve me must follow me, because my servants must be where I am. And the Father will honor anyone who serves me.” (John 12:25) Was Mary’s service burning in Jesus’s memory as he spoke these words? I certainly think so. I also think that, in a way, in the Upper Room, he copied Mary’s servant position among a rabble of fishermen and zealots who, at that time, were constantly jockeying for power and position. Could it be that Jesus wanted her attitudes imprinted on the twelve disciples’ minds and hearts? I believe that as he washed their stinking feet, he wanted the future leaders of his church to be reminded of this woman’s beautiful lack of dignity and her willingness to serve at untold cost to herself.
How does all this apply to me and you? We know Jesus’s physical body is no longer with us; he said as much to the dinner-crowd in Bethany: “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” Where is Jesus today? How can I be like Mary—who was actually able to physically care for Jesus? I think Jesus’s model of foot washing in the Upper Room answers this question. I can serve my brothers and sisters. I can call them worthy. I can take that which is most valuable to me—my time, money, reputation, social standing—and do whatever it takes to honors them. And the dividend of caring nothing for my life is the paradoxical gift of extravagant, eternal abundance.
My apologies for incomplete citations and any glaring comma issues. I know they are there, but I wanted to go ahead and post this.
