November 24th

Anointed

               While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head.  But some were there who said to one another in anger, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way?  For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.” And they scolded her.  But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me.  She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.  Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

Mark 14:3-9

             What an awkward situation.  Jesus was having dinner, sitting around the meal, talking and teaching when a woman slipped in.  She did not speak, she merely set upon her task.  The conversations began to die down when she shattered the bottle to open it.  They stopped completely as the heavy smell of ointment filled the room.  All of the aromas of dinner were overwhelmed and the room was filled with silence and fragrance.  She moved behind Jesus as everyone stared at her and then poured the oil over his head.  The dinner guests could see no reason to do this.  He was not a dead body that needed cleansing.  He was not a king being anointed by a prophet.  He was just a man who was having a meal who had thousands of dollars worth of oil poured upon him.  For all of His talk of social justice, should He not have been outraged at this woman’s wastefulness?  The silence hung in the room until the criticism started.  This woman who worshipped the only way that she knew how was called names and mocked and yelled at by men who were much further up the social ladder than she.

            Jesus would not have it.  He cut them off, mid-sentence, and told them that this anonymous woman had blessed Him in ways they never would.  Heaven had played out before their very eyes and they had missed it and then the woman went away, her offering received and blessed by the Master.

            What do we miss?  What holy moments do we not see because we are in the middle of something else?  When do we respond with frustration and criticism when we should be receiving a lesson in a state of humility and grace?

            For me, it is almost always happens because I am busy and trying to efficiently move on to the next part of my schedule.  I was working at a non-profit and we were in a money crunch, as nonprofits often are.  We had to raise thousands of dollars in order to pay off our debts and I was fairly stressed out.  My daughter came up to me at our house, a very serious look on her 5-year-old face.  She asked me to hold out my palm and then proceeded to give me a quarter, a dime, a nickel and two pennies.  It was all she had and she wanted the non-profit to have it. 

            I waved her off and said that she could keep it, we needed lots more from others, but she insisted.  She was doing what she could and her love for me was being shown in 42 cents.  I took it into the office and told my staff what I had in my pocket, expecting them to laugh.  My bookkeeper gasped, stood up and got a donation envelope and very solemnly put the coins in the envelope, entered the deposit and filled out a donation receipt.  She appreciated the value that had passed through her hands.  I wrote a blog about the power of 42 cents and that gift kicked off a series of donations that paid our bills. 

            I almost missed it.  I was almost so busy and so stressed and so wrapped up in the world of adulting that I almost missed the holy, powerful acts of my children.  May we have eyes to see those moments as we go through this parenting life.

A moment to reflect:

Where are your children teaching you lessons about God’s goodness?