Sunday Reflection – April 3, 2022

Extravagant Love

John 12:1-8

“Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” (John 12:3)

One can’t help when reflecting on the gospel (John 12:1-8) this week,  feeling the extravagant gesture Mary makes in anointing Jesus’ feet.  Not only did she use a costly perfume made of pure nard, which would normally be preserved for the anointing of the dead for burial, and what she had likely saved up for some time, in order to purchase perhaps for her own burial; and the scent too was an indulgence that couldn’t be ignored.  “The whole house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume” (12:3). 

And perhaps too why Judas objected to what she was doing, because the extravagant love which Mary showered  on Jesus  was almost too much for him to bear.  Judas couldn’t look on such an abandonment act of love without feeling the guilt of his own conscience weighing in on him, because of what he was about to do.  “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor? he asks”(12:5).  Judas of course, was using ‘the power of deflection’ or persuasion here, trying to defuse the power of what was happening in that room, Mary’s devotion toward Jesus, wanting to turn it into something distasteful.  Perhaps he thought the others would jump on board with him in doing so.  Jesus had often stressed the need to do for the poor (Matt 25:35-40; Mark 10: 21).  So Judas was not entirely wrong in that, but neither was he right, because Jesus knew as John states in the gospel, Judas’ concern wasn’t about the poor, but only about himself.    “Leave her alone’, Jesus says, ‘she bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial,”(12:7).

What Mary was doing was not being wasteful as Judas would have it made to be, but an act of devotional love, for what Jesus had done for her brother Lazarus in raising him from the dead. (John 11:38-44); Lazarus too was sitting at that table now in full life with them, when only a few days ago he was lying buried in a tomb, not something one could ignore or overlook, and Mary’s act of love was a testimony to that; but also I believe it spoke to what Mary already knew in her heart, that what Jesus had done for Lazarus would cost him far more than she or anyone could ever repay; and extravagant love as that, requires an extravagant response. 

“You will always have the poor, Jesus says, but you will not always have me” (12:8). Jesus was not saying here that it was ok to overlook the poor, or that an indifference should be shown to those in need in the world in anyway; as these words are often misinterpreted, to support one’s own interest, in not wanting to do more.  It’s a self-serving tactic, as it was for Judas in using the cause of the poor for his own self-serving interest.  

No, Jesus wasn’t just referring to the charitable work we might do in serving the poor here, but the real action that needs to be taken to undo the systems of injustice that cause so much poverty as there is in our world.   Action that requires a lot more lavishly giving in love, then most in the world are willing to give. 

And so these words should challenge us to think about our own giving and how lavish we might be in helping to alleviate some of the suffering that is in the world.

And so my friends as you reflect on the gospel and Mary’s own act of Lavish self-giving love this week, I pray it will inspire you perhaps to do, to be, to give…. a bit more, in doing the real work of the gospel that is needed in our world today, giving testimony to a God who cares, a God who loves greatly, a God of compassion and mercy for the suffering and lost.

For as Mary knew, and as St. Paul gives testimony to in his letter, Philipians(3:8) For when you know the true value of knowing Christ, all else will seem as loss, (worth nothing) to you.

I pray you will have a good week, take care, God Bless.

“For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish,

in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” (Philippians 3:8-9).