This morning, I woke up thinking about the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume.
Here is the paraphrase of the story, courtesy of The Message found at the beginning of Mark 14:
“Jesus was at Bethany, a guest of Simon the Leper. While he was eating dinner, a woman came up carrying a bottle of very expensive perfume. Opening the bottle, she poured it on his head. Some of the guests became furious among themselves. “That’s criminal! A sheer waste! This perfume could have been sold for well over a year’s wages and handed out to the poor.” They swelled up in anger, nearly bursting with indignation over her. But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why are you giving her a hard time? She has just done something wonderfully significant for me.”
What can a person really say to summarize the beauty of this story? I’ve heard this story discussed from numerous angles and have even participated in a drama that reenacted the story as the vocal stylings of Cece Winans filled the room. There’s an incredible amount of depth to the story.
I spent a few minutes this morning thinking about things from the woman’s perspective. Sure, the perfume was expensive, but what did it stand for? During drama practices, we often discussed the idea that this woman had to place great importance on this expensive item–items, considering the preciousness of the Alabaster. Heather always acted out the part of a woman who constantly pours her life–her painful experiences with parents, her struggles with sexual purity, her inadequacies in social situations–into this box. Later in the drama, she poured this same liquid onto Jesus’ feet, rejoicing in the freedom she found in giving her cares to The Christ.
This morning, however, I was thinking about her and about sacrifice from an angle I hadn’t before. That perfume. That Alabaster. So expensive. I could never own a $40,000 bottle of perfume. I could never own a container that costs forty grand. However, there are things that I hold dear to my heart–people and abstracts that are valued far more than a measly forty thousand dollars–that I might allow to come between God and me. My inclination should be to destroy those things before I let them separate me from the Grace, Love, Patience, Glory of Christ.
There are examples of such acts of destruction for the purpose of reconstructing a focused relationship with Christ. In the movie Fireproof, there’s a scene where Kirk Cameron’s character takes his computer to the lawn and destroys the machine by baseball bat. (I haven’t seen it, but I hope he used a Louisville Slugger.) The pornography he viewed on that PC was preventing him from living a life that pleased God and his wife. He destroyed it. At church camps of my past, I saw campers bring items that they knew were keeping them from following Christ; they brought them to the altar, destroyed them, and [hopefully] never returned to them again.
I can’t help but wonder what that woman was really giving up. No one in that room, aside from Jesus, knew what she was really sacrificing. Maybe that perfume was her inheritance and, by sacrificing to the Lamb, she was committing her past and future to Him. Perhaps she allowed events of her past or actions of her forefathers to haunt her so much that, by desecrating the symbol of her past, she was able to be freed to enjoy a future without bondage, guilt, and shame. It may also be possible that she had worked her whole life to earn the money to buy that perfume before she realized that, after all the sweat and blood she poured into getting what she wanted, its fragrance paled in comparison to the sweet aroma of grace, peace, and freedom.
What is your Alabaster box?
Loving God, give me the wisdom to see the things that I allow between us, preventing us from the intimate relationship I truly long for. Be my strength; help me to destroy the bulwark between us. You, alone, are mine.