What are some of the ways we measure things? Are our recipes in ounces or kilograms? in teaspoons? cups? Perhaps you know a good cook who can't give you her recipes because she just puts in "a bit of this and a bit of that"!
How many litres of fuel does your car use? or do you still convert it back to miles/gallon for comparison? And that new baby - do you think of his/her weight hi grams or in pounds? And do you measure that growing girl/boy in centimetres - or in feet and inches to make the comparison with parents or aunt and uncle?
It may well be, as Mary Poppins says, that "a teaspoon of sugar makes the medicine go down", but the medicine itself had better be measured in millilitres!
Of course, for some things the ways of measuring can't be metricated - it is a hard as ever to give them just exactly! The little boy came up to his mother with his arms stretched wide. "I love you, Mummy! This much!" That's a good demonstrative measurement, because the arms can then wrap around Mummy! But does it mean that he will love Mummy more next year when his arms have grown longer? Perhaps so, but we can hardly call it a very exact measurement!
Of course, love is, in fact, a very elastic word - we stretch it to mean so many different things. One minute we may be talking about how we just love butterscotch brickle ice-cream. The next we are talking a piece of music we love. Then we go on to talking our love for a person. Are we really talking about the same sort of "love"?
So what do we mean by "love"? What do I mean if I say I love ice cream? Probably that I enjoy it, it gives me pleasure, it makes me feel good.
When we lived in Stanthorpe, the leader of Weight Watchers (who also happened to be the local Civil Celebrant) would call every Tuesday night for the key to the Church Hall. One Saturday afternoon I saw her in the church for a wedding. I made some casual remark to her about "checking up on how I did it". Then in the service when I was giving words of counsel to the couple... "What do we mean if we say we love ice-cream?" I said. "We mean we like what it does for us." At that point, I happened to catch the eye of the Weight Watcher lady! Her job is to convince people not to like what ice-cream and other fattening foods do for them!
The point is that so often what we call "love" is always looking for a return - it is looking for my pleasure, my satisfaction, what I get back out of it… It is very me-centred.
This is very different from the love portrayed in the Bible - the love God has for us and expects us to have for others.
Paul describes this kind of love as "patient and kind… not jealous or conceited or proud… not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable… does not keep a record of wrongs, not happy with evil, but happy with the truth. Love never gives up, and its faith, hope and patience never fail" (1 Cor. 13.4-7).
John writes that this kind of love comes from God because "God is love" (1 Jn.4.7).
Paul says
that "God has shown us how much he loves us - it was while we were still
sinners that Christ died for us!" (
Of course, God's love is still looking for a return - our love, trust and obedience - but it is not conditional on that response. "God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life" (Jn 3.16). What extraordinary love!
In his first letter, John states that this kind of love "comes from God" (4.7) and that "we love because God first loved us" (v. 19). In other words, our love comes as a response to his love for us and as an expression of his love within us.
In today's
Bible reading we see Jesus in Bethany the home town of
In the
previous chapter, John records the death of Lazarus and how they had returned
with Jesus from across the
Jesus is
still in
"Then
Mary took half a litre
of a very expensive perfume made of pure nard, poured it on Jesus' feet, and
wiped them with her hair. The sweet smell of the perfume
filled the whole house" (12.3).
Nard (or
spikenard) was the fragrant oil obtained from the roots of the Himalayan plant,
Nardostachys jatamansii.
It is still used in
Judas complained that the perfume was worth three hundred silver coins, that it could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Reckoning that the silver coin (the denarius) was the daily wage of a rural worker, that represents a year's wages. John makes the comment that Judas didn't really care for the poor. "He was a thief. He carried the money bag and would help himself from it".
Let us be quite clear that Jesus believed that we need to care for the poor. We think of his picture of the final judgment in Matthew 25.31ff. We hear the Son of Man as King saying, "Come, you that are blessed by my Father! Come and possess the kingdom which has been prepared for you ever since the creation of the world. I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me." But those addressed are puzzled. They have no memory of treating Jesus in this way. The King replies, "I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important of these brothers of mine, you did it for me!" (vv. 34-36,40).
Jesus has a real concern for the poor and needy of this world, and calls us to responsibility and practical help. But he defends Mary's extravagant love. Jesus will not be with them much longer. Now is the time for her to express that love which is a true response to his divine redeeming love for her.
A little
over a century ago, Leo Tolstoy tried puzzling out a plan to rid
Jesus said, "You will always have poor people with you, but you will not always have me."
Sometimes there is strong criticism of the money the Churches have tied up in buildings and property. Think what might be done, we are told, if that all became available to help the unemployed. Yes, there is no excuse for bad stewardship. But there is a place for extravagant love! And if we forget our need to reflect on and to respond to what God has done for us in the coming, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we will short-change the poor every time!
God has
loved so much… How do
we respond in love to him? Back in the 1700's, Count Zinzendorf saw the
painting "Ecce Homo" in the gallery at Düsseldorf, which graphically
portrays the Saviour crowned with thorns. Over the picture were the words,
"All this have I done for thee. What doest thou for
me?" The challenge of the picture and those words changed the
direction of his life. A century later, Frances Ridley Havergal was in
Thy life was given for me,
Thy blood, O Lord,
was shed,
That I might ransomed be,
And
quickened from the dead:
Thy life was given
for me;
What have I given for Thee?
O let my life be given,
My years for Thee be
spent,
World-fetters all be riven,
And joy with
suffering blent:
Thou gav'st Thyself for me;
I give myself to Thee. (MHB391)
We will never grasp the extravagant love of Mary in today's story until we grasp the extravagant love of God for Mary and for us all. God has loved you so much. Come to him now with all that you have and all that you are.
© Peter J. Blackburn,
Except where otherwise noted, Scripture
quotations are from the Good News Bible, © American Bible Society, 1984.
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