Sign of Abandon

And being at Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as He sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. Then she broke the flask and poured it on His head. But there were some who were indignant among themselves, and said, “Why was this fragrant oil wasted? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they criticized her sharply.

But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for Me. For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always. …” – Mark 14:3-7

As humans, symbols and symbolic acts are vital to us. We just aren’t human without the symbolic. This is where the eternal and ideal intersects the temporal and derived and begins to transform it. We can’t just ignore the material world and hope it goes away because it is God’s creation and destined to be redeemed and renewed in some incomprehensible way that somehow involves man.

Honestly, there’s a good chance I’d have been with the critics who asked what the point was of wasting a commodity so valuable. I like to do things that are practical. If it doesn’t make sense to my rational mind, I have trouble with it. I can have sympathy for the working man who doesn’t understand why his wife left him for someone more romantic when he was doing all he could to provide for her. If you are bringing home the bacon, do you have to bring roses as well? The answer is, of course, yes.

We all want to hear words of love, respect, and admiration. A laundry list of “all I do for you” is not the same thing. Symbolic acts of extravagance and excess expose, if only for a moment, the mystery of existence. They point to a greater truth and a more perfect reality, to the fact of our being one in spirit.

The more prosaic among us may not see the practical virtue of traditional actions like laying on of hands, baptisms, marriage ceremonies, infant dedications, speaking a blessing over our children, or even kneeling when we pray. And done mechanically, they are meaningless. Yet these actions are powerful connectors to the Divine and transcendent when we approach them with awareness and the appropriate awe.

But Me you do not have always. The routine and practical can be done mindfully, too, as we talked about last week. Giving to help others is a good thing for both the one who receives and the one who gives, but that avenue is always available to us. It is important that we look for those unique opportunities to pour ourselves out for Lord. There are times when we may be utterly broken and lavishly spilled and be seen as fools for Christ. We need to take advantage of those moments and be fully in them, never allowing them to become mere ritual.