A Costly Gift

“A Costly Gift”

by Rev. Jennifer Lapinskas

for Grace Lutheran Church, Green Bay, Wis.

March 24 & 25, 2007

Sometimes Mary still can’t believe her eyes. She’ll see him out of the corner of her eye, laughing with his friends, she’ll bump into him as he is carrying in wood for the fire, and still, she can’t believe that he’s really there. Even now, sitting across from him at the table with Jesus and his disciples, Mary can’t believe that’s really her brother, Lazarus, sitting there among them.

By rights, he should be dead. In fact he was dead. For four days he was dead, he was in the tomb, the tomb had been sealed, all hope had been lost, Jesus had arrived too late. Only, he hadn’t arrived too late, somehow he’d arrived at just the right time, and he did what only the Son of God could do, he brought Lazarus out of the tomb, back from the dead, he restored order to the world of Mary and her sister Martha.

The mood that evening is festive, after all it’s not every day that you get to have dinner with the man who raised your brother from the dead. And yet mingled with the joy and laughter there is also some tension. The gift of restored life that Jesus gave to Lazarus did not come without cost. Ever since that fateful day, rumors had been circulating about a plot to arrest Jesus. As a result, Jesus no longer walked about as freely as he once had. The gift of life had cost him his freedom, indeed, might even cost him his life.

And so despite the festive atmosphere, the rumors and their implications hung about the room like a foul odor, casting a shroud on what might have otherwise been an entirely joyful evening.

The dishes now mostly cleared, Mary notices the conversation beginning to drag a bit. Perhaps now that Jesus wasn’t so distracted, this was the time for her to carry out her plan. Before she can lose her nerve, Mary jumps to her feet, retrieves the perfume from its hiding place, and kneels at Jesus’ feet.

The room falls silent; Mary could feel all eyes upon her as, hands trembling, she carefully unseals the perfume and pours it onto Jesus’ feet. She hears a few gasps as the fragrance from the perfume begins wafting through the air, but for the moment, all that matters was showing Jesus, in the only way she could think of, just how grateful she and her family were for all he had done for them. Although it was tremendously expensive, the perfume seemed like a pittance in comparison to what Jesus had given them – the life of her brother, new hope, a better future than she and Martha would have known if Lazarus had remained dead and gone.

She pours until every last drop of the perfume is spilled out onto Jesus’ feet. He had held nothing back in raising up her brother, so why should she? Why should she?

At the first hearing of this story, the question always seems to be, “How could someone do that? How could she pour out an entire pound – 12 ounces in our modern system of measurement – of perfume on Jesus’ feet like that?” Judas is going to ask that very question, albeit for more sinister motives than honest confusion. Nonetheless, it’s not such a bad question – how could she waste such a precious gift?

And yet, given the circumstances, how could she not? Jesus had brought back her beloved brother Lazarus from the dead, he had done something that no one else could do. Jesus had restored life and joy to a household that had been doomed to know only death and sorrow. Somehow a thank you and a handshake, however heartfelt, just didn’t seem like enough. Mary needed something lavish, something memorable, to express the gratitude and love that she felt for Jesus. How many of us, in that same position, wouldn’t do the same thing? How many of us have said, when faced with the death of a beloved family member or friend, “I would give anything for just one more day?”

So how could she not give him the most expensive and precious thing she possessed? And how can we not give just as lavishly in response to all that Jesus has done for us? For all the ways Jesus has brought us back from the dead, has called us out from the tomb of despair, or sorrow, or fear, or pain?

Mary is not unique, by any stretch, in the gifts that she received. We all have received life, we all have received the promise of resurrection and a joyful reunion in Christ with the saints we have loved. We all have received resurrection through the promise of forgiveness. We all have received resurrection in the breath of new hope that carries us through when the world crumbles around us, hurts come at us from places we’d never expect, or illness grabs on to someone we love. How can we hold back either? Why would we want to?

As the fragrance from the perfume begins to fill the room, Mary can hear the murmurs also rising up into the air around her. She pays them no mind, her gift is not yet complete. Having brought no towel with her to wipe Jesus’ feet, she unbinds her long braid, and uses her own hair. The fragrance, the sweet aroma that fills the air, now begins to permeate her hair – she will carry the scent of this moment with her for many, many days beyond this one. It will accompany her through days even darker than those she had endured while her brother was dead.

Her reverie is broken when one of the murmurs rises to a shout. “This is ridiculous, that must have cost a year’s wages, if not more. Why on earth didn’t we sell that perfume and use the money to feed the countless hungry mouths that fill the streets of Bethany and Jerusalem?” Judas’ glares at Mary, who ducks her head in shame.

Her eyes sting with hot tears. Judas was right, of course, what a wasteful thing to have done. What had she been thinking dumping all of that expensive ointment onto Jesus’ feet? She could have used just a little bit and then done and Judas had said and so much more good might have been accomplished.

On the other hand, what else could she do? She needed to give thanks, she needed to show Jesus honor and gratitude, she needed Jesus to know that his costly gift of life meant something to her, she needed to give a costly gift in return. But what a fool she had been. She dared not look at Jesus now – she couldn’t bear to see him nodding in agreement, shaking his head over her folly, and looking at her with disappointment written across his kind face.

Ashamed, Mary begins to rise, planning to flee out the nearest door and hide until all of the guests had departed. But then Jesus speaks: “Leave her alone, Judas.”

Mary’s heart leaps. Could it be that Jesus is not disappointed in her? The rest of what he says is a jumble in her mind, something about saving the ointment until his burial...Jesus wasn’t going to die was he? I mean not soon anyway. Did he think that she was preparing him to be buried? Was that what she had done, even without knowing it?

Only later would Mary and the others fully understand what had happened on that day, in that act of thankfulness. Only later, after the disciples had had their own feet washed by Jesus himself, and been given the instruction to go and do likewise for one another and for the sheep as yet to be added to the flock, only then would they see that Mary had the right idea all along. Loving service, overwhelming gratitude, unasked-for and unexpected hospitality, these are the things the followers of Jesus are called to.

Judas opens his mouth to protest again. “No, Judas, it is finished. Leave her alone. You will always have the poor with you, there will always be mouths to feed, bodies to be clothed, persons in need of shelter. You will not always have me with you in this way. What she has done is right...for now.”

And oh how right that statement has turned out to be. We have always had the poor with us, it is just as Jesus said. Yet this isn’t a reason to just throw up our hands and say, “Well, that’s something we can’t fix, the problem is too big, so we may as well not even try...” No, the point of that statement is more to highlight the significance of Mary’s act – what she did means more than she or the other disciples understand. And what she did was the right gift, for that time.

But the time will come, Jesus promises, when he won’t be present in the same way he was that night in the home of Lazarus and Martha and Mary. We are no longer able to show our deep and intense gratitude to Jesus for what he has done for us, the resurrections he has made possible in our lives, in the same way that Mary did. We must find other ways of doing so, which leads us to the instructions Jesus gives the night he was betrayed, the night he wiped the disciples’ feet the way Mary had wiped his own: Love one another as I have loved you.

Show that you are grateful, express your love for Jesus not in pouring out perfume on his feet, but in turning your love, God’s love made real and alive in you through Jesus, turning that love loose on this world. Turning that love loose on the poor, who are always with us.