And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” (Mark 14:3-9)
I often find myself feeling the need to clarify. A big reason for this is that misunderstandings are the biggest problem in communication!
An example of good clarifying is when Paul was teaching that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. He immediately interjected a potential misuse of this teaching, the claim that we should sin more to get more grace. His response was, “By no means!” (Romans 6:2), and then he explained the extreme to avoid to stay true to the plumbline.
As I was processing my own thoughts for today’s post, I kept hearing ways that people could misuse this beautiful picture of the woman’s worship of Jesus. Someone could say that, if Jesus approves of us doing what we can, I will decide what I can do and nothing more.
Someone else might interject that this woman’s expression of worship was so unique that no one else even recognized it, so we are free to express our worship no matter how uniquely we desire, and no one needs to agree with what we’re doing.
The fact is that these two extremes are a huge hindrance to what Jesus called worshiping God “in spirit and in truth”. People who contain their worship in a box of preferences that even God can’t question are just self-centered. People who promote the anything-goes expressions of worship are… well… just self-centered!
We don’t know how this woman was moved to pour her perfume on Jesus. We only know that it was hers to use for God’s glory, she felt led to pour it on Jesus in worship, her focus was him and not anyone else, she was not doing anything out of character with Jesus or his word, and she knew him well enough to feel confident to worship him in that way.
It is interesting to me that it was the Samaritan woman of John 4 who gave us the encounter with Jesus where he taught about worshiping God in spirit and in truth, and it was this woman in Mark 14 who showed us what that looked like for her on the night before Jesus’ death.
And the fact that his disciples on both occasions had no clue what was going on is a good reprimand to humble ourselves and make sure we have the mind of Christ when we look at what others feel led to do in worship, and in serving the body of Christ in love.
No, I don’t expect to set everyone straight on what pure worship looks like. After all, it is in spirit, so I can’t assess whether someone is or is not attaching to God spiritually when they worship. And it is in truth, but part of that truth is that each of us is gifted differently, so how can I know that someone isn’t truly worshiping just because it’s different from me? Plus, Jesus promised there would be all kinds of false teachers, false signs and wonders, false disciples, false everything, so how could we possibly think we will stop deception from happening?!
Instead, I share what is mine to share in the hope that someone will hear what they need to hear so that the “few” will be encouraged to bless others with whatever is ours to do.
Ultimately, we will give account to Jesus, so it’s up to us to be sure we are living “in the obedience of faith”, especially in what we claim to be doing to Jesus and his body, the church.
© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
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