Love most extravagant
SECOND PART

In the Gospel of John’s account, Mary wiped the feet of Jesus with her hair. The aroma must have filled the room. The whole body of Jesus was drenched with the expensive perfume. As Charles Swindoll correctly puts it, “Whenever Jesus moved in the next 48 hours, the perfume was with him so that it would go with him to the Garden of Gethsemane, into Herod’s home, into Pilate’s tribunal, even into the cruel hands of the soldiers at the cross who gambled over his clothing. And even into the tomb where Jesus was buried.”

What Mary did was something for royalty. It was an act of extravagant love — extravagant because it was an act of sacrifice. Mary poured the most precious possession she had on the Master she loved. It was extravagant because it ran contrary to what was temperate in those times and also in our time. Jesus called her act beautiful because it showed the abiding wisdom of sacrifice.

The extravagant love of Mary was opposed by those who witnessed the anointing for it all spilled to the floor, “What a shocking waste!” they said to one another. They figured that if the perfume had been converted into cash, it would amount to three hundred dinar and the proceeds could have been distributed among the poor.

We have heard this kind of comment in our society. I recall going to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City to hear a famous preacher. The Indian student with me (C.I. Itty), amazed at the splendor of it, remarked that the building like the Cathedral would have given way to feeding and sheltering the poor in New York City.

“What lavishness when there is so much poverty in New York!” he said.

What does Jesus say to those who questioned the expensive act of Mary?

Why do you bother her? She has done a good deed to me. For the poor you always have with you, and whenever you wish, you can do them good; but me you don’t have always.

Given the teaching of Jesus, this was not to belittle the poor. No one has come into the world more concerned with the poor than Jesus was. He himself was poor and grew up in a poor home. No one had more compassion for the poor than Jesus. He quoted Isaiah in his sermon in Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor.”

Did he not tell the parable of Dives and Lazarus? Did he not take on the crowds and have compassion for them? TO BE CONTINUED*

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