September 22, 2013 | 8:00 a.m.

A Costly Demonstration

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 31:9–16
Philippians 2:5–11
Mark 14:3–9

O loving God,
to turn away from you is to fall,
to turn toward you is to rise,
and to stand before you is to abide forever.
Grant us, dear God,
in all our duties your help;
in all our uncertainties your guidance;
in all our dangers your protection;
and in all our sorrows your peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Augustine of Hippo

Don’t you hate it when people don’t follow the rules? Maybe what I mean to ask is “Don’t you hate it when people don’t follow your rules?” For example, about a month ago I was trying to park my car in the park close to Montrose Harbor. There were no places that I could see that were available anywhere except I saw a family loading up their car and so I rolled down my window and asked, “Are you leaving?” They nodded in the affirmative, and so I pulled my car up ahead of theirs and put on my blinkers and waited for them to load up and then pull out. But then I noticed another car, a car that appeared after me, after my lights had already been blinking, waiting behind the space that was about to be vacated. This driver was obviously going to try to take the parking place too and seemed to have no regard for the fact that I’d been there first and was obviously waiting for the same thing.

Sometimes this happens and it’s simply because the second driver hasn’t spotted the first driver yet, and then they eventually move on, because they know there is this unofficial pecking order. If you get there first and if you are waiting first, your place should be honored. We both waited the entire time. I stayed, vigilantly ready to back into the space. I’m here to report that I won this little competition, and it wasn’t until I got my car into the space that the other driver drove away.

I was disgusted that this guy didn’t seem to get the rules.

The people gathered around Simon the leper’s table probably felt disgusted too when this woman came with her beautiful alabaster jar, broke it open, and before they knew it, poured its valuable contents out, over the head of Jesus. She wasn’t following the rules at all. She wasn’t doing what was normally done. Her actions were out of the ordinary, and she was making life difficult for them. They were surprised and then angry. For them, her actions had seemed careless or frivolous or even self-indulgent. The value of that perfumed oil in that alabaster jar was a whole year’s worker’s wages. Priceless. And think about it—think about how the value of the contents of that jar could have been used for the poor!

You and I know that giving money to the poor is a constant requirement of the moral life. And a constant requirement of the Christian life. So why does Jesus stand up for this woman? He says, “You will always have the poor with you, but you won’t always have me.” His words puzzle us. They have been often misunderstood as if Jesus was dismissing the needs of the poor. But that’s not the case. The focus on the poor in this story is not the point. The woman’s act and the emotion that motivated her is the point, because it was a costly, costly act of love. It was costly because of the value of the perfume. And it was costly because of the risk she took in her action. And it made the people gathered around that table really angry because she wasn’t following the social norms of the day.

At a typical dinner, all of the guests reclined on low couches around the table. In that day, a woman was never to stand higher than a man. For the woman to anoint the head of Jesus she would have had to stand over him. A woman standing head and shoulders over Jesus, performing an act of hospitality usually provided by the host, would be out of the ordinary and would be counter to all social norms. What would have been more common and readily accepted would have been a woman kneeling at the feet of Jesus, washing his feet. So what this woman with the alabaster jar did was bold and dangerous.

Do you think she was scared when she broke the jar? I bet she was. But her love for Jesus led her, gave her courage, and kept beckoning her to do something that didn’t seem to make sense but seemed to be what she was called to do.

Those around the table were focused on law and rules and what made sense. She was focused on a love for Jesus she wanted to show. Those around the table were focused on bottom line and balance sheet, and she was focused on an act that would show love and devotion. Those around the table were focused on how things usually were done, on routine and predictability, on the norm, and she was focused on being faithful to the call she felt to lavish Jesus with care.

We all know there are good reasons for rules and for order, that there is certain doctrine in the church that simply can’t just be brushed aside. There is truth in some of our long-held belief and good reason for some of our reliance on rules and order.

But breaking the jar of costly perfume over the head of Jesus tells us again that love must lead, that love has authority. The point of the story and the point of Jesus’ words are that love must lead our actions and our decisions and must guide our law-making and undergird our entire life as a people of faith. The story reiterates Jesus’ message that the spirit of love fulfills the letter of the law. And sometimes that kind of love and the actions it motivates are costly and dangerous.

This past Friday, the Chicago Tribune carried the headline “Pope faults small-minded rules.” He said, “The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules.” He criticized the church for an over-focus on rules of abortion and gay marriage and contraception. He said, “I see the church as a field hospital after battle. . . . It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about these other things” (“Pope Faults Small-Minded Rules,” Chicago Tribune, 20 September 2013,) Like Jesus’ words, the Pope’s words are an attempt to make a course correction—stating again that the gospel should lead us, even when the good news of Jesus Christ and the love and forgiveness that is promised to us don’t make one bit of sense.

Costly demonstrations of love. The woman with the alabaster jar took a risk and broke with tradition. She was blamed and chastised and ostracized for it, and yet Jesus stood by her side and valued her action, because she got it. She got who he was. She got his message. Costly demonstrations. Rosa Parks went against all standard rules of the time, because something deep down inside of her told her she was a valued child of God and she and her people need not any longer be treated as less than that. So many others did the same. There are much quieter demonstrations of costly acts of love, too. A person who quietly keeps feeling that he or she should give more to the church or charity than it seems like he or she can, just because it feels as though that’s what God is calling them to do. It doesn’t make sense, but the internal tugging won’t stop because they have received so much love and grace from God and feel an overwhelming desire to show their gratitude in this way. The act is costly because it takes courage to make the promise and other things have to change and someone might think they are crazy. Costly demonstrations of love. Someone asks you to take on a big responsibility that has something to do with your faith and being called—or so it seems—and nothing about it makes sense or lines up on the ledger sheet, but it won’t let you go and you feel as though God is calling you to do it. Those are costly demonstrations, too.

The image of the alabaster jar is such a beautiful one. I hope we can hold the image throughout this week. A beautiful jar filled with expensive and wonderful smelling oil—broken and poured out on Jesus’ head, anointing him with love and care. Jesus’ body, broken and poured out for the world, for us, because of God’s love and people not being able to understand the message at all. Our bodies, clay jars, vessels, filled with treasures. Sometimes we, ourselves, are broken too, so that the treasures we all have inside of us can be poured out—poured out and shared with the world, because of love given and love received and knowing that love must lead.