Extravagant and Lavish Devotion

John 12:1-8
Fifth Sunday in Lent 2010


The entire house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. No one at the dinner party thrown in Jesus’ honor could possibly have missed Mary’s extravagant and lavish act of devotion to Jesus. It was, to be sure, an extravagant act. The text says that the perfume that she poured out on Jesus’ feet could have been sold for 300 denarii, roughly the equivalent of a year’s wages for a laborer in first-century Palestine.

If we wanted to translate that price into twenty-first century South Carolina, it would go something like this. Someone who worked full-time for 50 weeks in a year for minimum wage, which in this state is $7.25, would earn $14,500. Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, poured $14,500 onto Jesus’ feet at a dinner party. That’s the kind of excess that offends us in Hollywood and on Wall Street. $14,500! Mary how could you?

Do you know how much good that amount of money would do at A Child’s Haven? Or Serenity Place? Or A Shepherd’s Gate? Or Project Host? Or Loaves and Fishes? Or Triune Mercy Center? Count me with Judas on this one. $14,500 would pay for nearly an entire year’s college education—tuition, fees, room and board—for a deserving student at South Carolina State University. Almost an entire year. It would pay for two weeks at Furman. Just kidding. It would pay for nine weeks at Furman. $14,500 would have been the twentieth largest gift last year to the First Baptist Greenville Mission and Ministry Plan—for the entire year. It would more than fund our Children’s Ministry for a year. It would put back into our budget for this year the cuts from our Youth Ministry we’ve taken. It would fund what we want to give to United Ministries and to scholarships but right now we’re projecting that we cannot. It would totally fund the commitment we had been making several years ago to the Alliance of Baptists but didn’t make last year and don’t project to make this year. What we could do with $14,500! Mary, how could you?

And yet, when the propriety of Mary’s extravagant act of devotion is questioned, look at what Jesus says: “Leave her alone.” “Leave her alone.” The inimitable Bill Hull, in his commentary on this passage, says there are always volunteers ready to offer their opinion on how other people’s money should be given. There were volunteers then, and there are volunteers now. But don’t count Jesus among that number, because Jesus says to Judas and to Jeff and to anyone else who criticizes an extravagant and lavish act of devotion directed to Christ, “Leave her alone!” What Jesus sees and understands is that an act of devotion is not measured by how much it costs—or by how little. An act of devotion to Christ stands alone on its own terms. Every act of devotion to Christ is price-less, whether it is Mary’s expensive perfume or the widow’s two copper coins (Mark 12:42).

By the way, while we are looking at this passage, I’d like to suggest to you that it is one of many passages in the Gospels that contradict what I would call a sloppy liberalism among some scholars and preachers who make out as though all the followers of Jesus were poor and that Jesus only loved poor people. You’ll hear it taught and preached that way. There is no question that there are hard words about wealth and hard words for wealthy people in the gospels. But unless you’ve sold out to class warfare inside the church or through the church, then you should not be blind to the fact that here is Mary of Mary and Martha fame, Mary the sister of Lazarus, one of the most devoted and beloved followers of Jesus, who can afford perfume costing $14,500. This woman is not poor by any standard. And she loved Jesus, and Jesus loved her. And Jesus said, “Leave her alone!” to those who were critical of how she chose to use her wealth in devotion to Jesus.

Don’t make the mistake of falling into the class-warfare trap. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that in the gospel of John in that famous third chapter, verse 16, it says, “God so loved the poor that he gave his only Son, so that whosoever among the poor believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” That’s not what John 3:16 says. It says that God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever—rich and poor, black and white and Asian and Hispanic, male and female, homosexual and homophobe, socialist and capitalist, Republican and Democrat and Independent—whosoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Don’t get caught up in the class warfare or the culture wars. Get caught up in the gospel instead.

The gospels show us followers of Jesus of all kinds of conditions and convictions and propensities. Even tax collectors. The gospel of Matthew says they flocked to Jesus. They were wealthy, and they got their wealth off of people like you and me. Tax collectors, centurions, women of means, and men and women of no means. The diversity of the folks who followed Jesus and were close to him and he to them is mind-boggling, and it’s something we should never forget. We should never fall prey to the perpetrators of class warfare and the culture wars who try to make it out otherwise. Mary’s story in John 12 is a perfect example. It was an extravagant gift offered as an act of devotion to Jesus by a woman with wealth.

It was also a lavish gift. I pick the word “lavish” because it’s derived from the Latin lavare, “to wash.” It’s the same root word from which we get our word “lavatory,” wash room. Lavish: it’s a gift that overflows. Mary’s act of devotion overflowed on Jesus’ feet, so much so that she wiped the excess with her hair, according to verse 3. Jesus’ feet and Mary’s hair. Remember that when we’re talking about the ancient world, the most common form of transportation was walking. Walking barefooted and sandaled, not shod. Jesus’ feet would have been dusty and dirty, calloused and cracked, having walked through the countryside and towns and cities where I would remind you there were no sanitation systems. Sorry for the image, but in the very next chapter of John’s gospel, John 13, Jesus says that a person who has bathed does not need to wash—except for their feet. Jesus’ feet, his foul feet, and Mary’s hair.

In 1 Corinthians 11:15, the apostle Paul reflects a first-century perspective on a woman’s hair. Paul says that a woman’s hair is her “glory.” “Her glory,” he says, doxa, the same word that the New Testament uses for the glory of God. Her hair is her glory. Now, we may feel like that’s an antiquated view of women, and that we are far more enlightened and liberated than that; but I would remind you that there are still places where what men call a “barber shop,” women call a “beauty parlor”—as though her “beauty” were all in her hair. I hope not. But in the first century context, what Mary did was wipe Jesus’ foulest with her very best. She gave her very best to Jesus’ worst. And it wouldn’t matter if there wasn’t a penny’s worth of perfume involved. It wouldn’t matter if it had been nothing but her tears or nothing but water, the wiping of Jesus’ feet with her hair would have been a lavish act of devotion to Jesus, even if she couldn’t have afforded a single ounce of that expensive perfume. An act of devotion is not measured by how much it costs or by how little. An act of devotion to Christ stands alone on its own terms. Every act of devotion to Christ is price-less, extravagant and lavish.

It was lavish in another way that I don’t want you to miss. The next meal that John’s gospel talks about, the first meal after the dinner party in Jesus’ honor in John 12, comes in John 13, the very next chapter. It corresponds to the meal that is conventionally called the Last Supper. Now, if you’ve read ahead into John 13, you know that the gospel of John doesn’t mention bread and wine at the table. What John 13 talks about instead is that after supper Jesus took a basin, filled it with water, wrapped himself in a towel and knelt down to wash the disciples’ feet and wipe them with a towel. And the very same verb that was used to describe Mary’s wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair is used to describe Jesus’ wiping the disciples’ feet with his towel. Before Jesus ever did it, Mary got it. That lavish act of humility and devotion that Jesus exhibited in relation to his disciples—and that Jesus called on his disciples to emulate in their relations with one another—Mary had already done for Jesus in her extravagant and lavish act of devotion.

And so, you see, there is a direct line from the dinner party in Bethany at which Mary wiped Jesus’ feet to the Last Supper at which Jesus wiped the disciples’ feet to the meal we share today that calls us to remembrance of the most extravagant and lavish gift of them all: that God so loved the world—the world, I remind you—that Christ gave his all. The gift of Christ’s all, like Mary’s gift, was given in grace to be received in grace. Perhaps the most amazing thing of all in that dinner-party incident was how much grace Jesus showed when he received so extravagant and lavish a gift.

As we come to this time when we share in this bread and in this cup, it reminds us of the One whose act of devotion not only to God but also to you is so large that it cannot be calculated. It’s priceless. And it was given for you and to you in grace; receive it now in grace. Let us pray.

O God, we lift up our words of thanksgiving in this moment, and we trust that when no words of our own will come, your Spirit will move in such a way that you will know our gratitude for the extravagant and lavish gift you have given us in Jesus Christ. Forgive us for when we have held that which we have been given and all that we are and all that we have so closely that we have been neither extravagant nor lavish toward you or toward others. But consecrate us now, nourished by this bread and sustained by this cup, that we may move from this place to the world where we may live lives of extravagant and lavish service in your name, in which we pray. Amen.


This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be reached at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.