Mark 14:1-9

A Lenten Parable in Response to Mark 14:1-9

Breaking an expensive jar of perfume and pouring the precious liquid over Jesus’ head is an extravagant act. The jar is shattered; the precious perfume is soaking into the soil at Jesus’ feet. That perfume is worth over a year’s wages, perhaps $50-$60,000 in today’s economy. That money could build a house for Habitat or feed hundreds of children through World Vision. It could fund the travel of Jesus’ disciplines as they disperse to spread the gospel. Why would Jesus commend a person for this impulsive, irresponsible and wanton act of extravagance?

If the woman could find a jar of perfume worth a year’s wages, she probably was not going to acutely miss the money invested in this gift of perfume; this is not a story of sacrificing self for others.  Moreover, she was not acting to meet another human’s acute needs, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the cold, and healing the sick; this is not a story of compassion or justice for others.

This is a story of loving with abandon, from a place of infinite abundance.

God created the earth with abundance—fruits, vegetables, fish and animals for food; trees, minerals, mud, and wool for comfort. “Go!” God said, “Give with abandon and live in abundance!”

But God’s people could not trust this wealth and hoarded the gifts of survival. At first they were greedy; they wanted more of God’s gifts. Then the people were fearful. Others might take God’s gifts away, and the people would have none. So, they scavenged God’s gifts and hoarded their supplies. When their stores were overflowing and God thought they had nothing to fear, the people found they enjoyed their gifts more when others had less. In some bizarre inversion of God’s plan, the value of God’s gifts increased, it seemed, when people made access to the gifts scarce.  God cried in frustration and despair. Perhaps this is when God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden of abundance.

But being a God of giving and abundance, God could not turn Adam and Eve’s people out of the garden with no supplies, so God gave the people infinite gifts that never ran out. In a rash act of abandon and abundance, God filled the people with love, mercy, forgiveness and gratitude. “This will teach the people that I will always provide,” declared God, ”for love, mercy, forgiveness and gratitude are by definition endless! At last, the people will learn.”

But alas, the people were slow to learn and the cycle repeated. At first they were greedy; they wanted more love, mercy, forgiveness and gratitude. They tried to coerce others to love them. They transgressed relentlessly and asked for forgiveness again and again and again. They withheld their giving in order to demand greater and greater gratitude. Once again, they became fearful that others would take God’s gifts away and they would have none. They scavenged for love, mercy, forgiveness and gratitude and hoarded their supplies. These gifts were no longer freely given, as love, mercy, forgiveness and gratitude became conditional. When their stores were overflowing and God thought they had nothing to fear, the people found that these gifts, too, were more enjoyable when others had less. They actively deprived their neighbors, their co-workers, even their own families, of love, mercy, forgiveness and gratitude.

And so it was that God sent Christ to pour love, mercy, forgiveness and gratitude over all the earth. But it was not to be. “It is wasteful,” the people shouted. They rebuked him for his extravagance, and hid behind their righteous piety: “Those gifts could be used for the poor.” The people were set in their greedy, fearful, and vindictive ways, and this Christ must die for his wanton extravagance. It was at that time that a nameless woman, who remembered how to give with abandon and live with abundance, broke a jar of perfume and poured it over Christ’s head.  Christ said, ”…wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will be told, in memory of her.”  And so it was that giving with abandon and living with abundance lived on in her memory, for she alone had acted with extravagance before God.

Prayer: Gracious and giving God, help us to use this Lenten season to prepare ourselves for your ultimate gift of abandon and abundance, the gift of Easter. Help us to receive this gift and learn to live our lives pouring out our love, mercy, forgiveness and gratitude with extravagance.  Let us, “Go! Giving with abandon and living with abundance.”

                                                                                 —Deirdre Johnston

Romans 4:13-15

God’s promise to Abraham was not earned through Abraham’s works, nor was it given following a particular religious practice (circumcision). Today’s passage makes clear that God’s promise did not come to Abraham through adherence to the law either. In fact the law brings wrath. Abraham simply believed God (v. 3). He trusted the One who made the absurd promise that even in his old age he would father descendants more numerous than the stars. Abraham had faith in God. He believed God’s promise.

This invites us to reflect on other promises of God found in scripture as well as Jesus’ promises to his disciples. Spend some time naming and reflecting on God’s/Jesus’ promises. Do you believe these promises? Do you trust the One who makes them? Do you have faith that God will do what God has promised? What evidence in the Bible and in your life shows you God’s faithfulness to God’s promises?

—Sharon Arendshorst

Psalm 25:1-10

This Psalm has often been pointed to as an instruction manual on how to pray:

• praise: “to You, O Lord, I lift up my soul” (1)
• call for God’s action: “do not let those who wait for you be put to shame” (3)
• motive for our action: “lead me in your truth” (5)
• forgiveness: “do not remember the sins of my youth” (7)
• resolution and trust: “All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.” (10)

But it is the tone of this Psalm that throws me a bit. David seems to be ordering God to teach him, lead him, and forgive him (3-5) — not asking for God’s love and strength. In verse 6 it is as if God needs a reminder to be merciful. Really?

I cannot help but feel that while David is calling out to God for direction and acknowledging his trust in God, he is doing so with the tone of a parent reminding a child of their daily chores.

Is there a difference between asking for forgiveness and telling God to forgive? Between requesting direction and ordering the understanding of God’s ways?

I believe tone matters because it puts the power back on God — but that it matters for us too. Could David’s prayer have as much to do with ordering ourselves as it did with requesting the assistance of the Lord? When he says, “Be mindful of your mercy” is he asking this of God or himself? If we are the hands and feet of Christ in this world, then should prayer be about directing ourselves to action as well as asking for God’s love in the process? It just comes down to: whom are we directing?

—Becky Schmidt

Psalm 51:1-7

…wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow…

I’ve seen some messes—I’ve really landed in a few. Some were my own doing, and the clean-up was also mainly my own responsibility. Some of the worst messes I’ve seen, though, have been the result of overwhelming forces of nature: storms, upheavals, floods or fires.

The same forces of nature occur in the emotions of human beings, and give rise also to messes of near-devastation. Outside help is called for in the wake of these messes. They’re too overwhelming and total for a single human being to ever clean up alone. When a person lands in a mess of this magnitude, and becomes aware that the resources of restoration are entirely beyond them, they have a brutal encounter with the absolute ground of being. We sometimes describe this experience as “hitting bottom.” It’s a place of no pretense. Pride and illusion are stripped away. 

When everything is shattered or ruined, wasted, lost or destroyed, an appeal for help is the one remaining link to hope that is left to us. Awareness of the scope of the mess and of the greatness of our need for help is a point of turning.

I experienced a time (and perhaps you have also) when I literally cried out for mercy on a daily basis for weeks and months—years, actually—because the devastation around me seemed so complete that I could make no order of it. I had no confidence in which way I should go. My spirit was broken—shattered, in fact. The storms of emotion had raged thoroughly, and yet it took some time before I came at last, limp and exhausted, utterly broken to bits, to a place of contrition—it was really all that I had left, yet I resisted it fiercely, clinging to my conviction that the mess had not been my doing. I’d been clinging for dear life to my own “righteousness.” My journal bears witness of that time in my life, and it’s not pretty to review. But I’m grateful that I recorded it, because it helps me to recognize the work of restoration and healing that’s been underway since then. I’m able to hear again the joy and gladness and the rejoicing of bones that had been previously crushed (vs. 8). It was some time before I became aware that the very mercy that I’d beseeched had indeed arrived, and I was standing in it up to my armpits! I laughed out loud that day; I remember that vividly, because it had been so long a time since I had laughed. I was some four months along into a commission for Mercy Hospital which took a year to complete. That art work (a series of six panels 4X16 feet) was a year-long turning which exists as a visible witness of the grace of healing that I received at that time in my life—through the art work, in fact.  That’s how Mercy came for me.

Hope for help from an Other is grounded on two pre-conditions:

1)  A degree of trust in the helpful character (mercy) of the one to whom we turn. Desperation may be one means by which we eventually arrive at that degree of trust, however frail it may be.

2)  A relationship with the Other, which, though it may be strained by the mess, is nonetheless the new essence of the stripped-down authenticity, or “ground,” upon which we now stand. From this condition, we’re positioned to receive the grace to begin again to build toward a restored future.

Hitting bottom, seen in this light, is a life-giving encounter with Love—a love mercifully poised with all the bleach this mess will require.

–Rachelle Oppenhuizen