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Something I have learned over the years is that love makes you reckless. And the more you love, the more reckless you become, the more extravagant.
I used to think that spending money on flowers was a needless extravagance – they were here today and drooping tomorrow – and the money was gone for good. But I have learned that money spent on flowers is worth every penny – because they are a visible expression of love, and you can’t count the cost of love.
I think Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, reasoned along those lines, when she made that recklessly extravagant expression of love for Jesus. She took a whole pint of nard, worth a year’s wages, and she poured the lot on Jesus’ feet. What a crazy, extravagant, reckless, irresponsible outpouring of love!
I doubt very much if Gordon Brown would have approved, or considered it “prudent”. In fact it was the very opposite of prudent – as Judas Iscariot was quick to point out. That was the first thing I note about Mary’s act of love – its sheer extravagance.
Secondly, as William Barclay points out, its humility. The normal thing would have been for Mary to anoint Jesus’ head. Instead she knelt at Jesus’ feet, and anointed them.
She didn’t consider herself good enough to anoint His head. In His presence she was conscious of her own complete unworthiness.
Extravagance. Humility.
Thirdly, Mary’s act was one of unselfconsciousness. She didn’t care how it made her look.
In Jewish culture no self-respecting woman let her hair down in public. That was a sign of immodesty. But Mary not only let her hair down – she wiped Jesus’ feet with it! For her, a cloth was not good enough. She forgot herself – her reputation and her pride – and used her hair.
Extravagant. Humble. Unselfconscious. Mary’s outpouring of love for Jesus.
And, we read, “the fragrance filled the house”. What she did affected the whole place; it spread to, and enveloped, others.
I wonder, is our love, is my love, for Jesus anything like that? So often I am not extravagant, but mean, with the time I give for worship and adoration. Making sure that it doesn’t cost me in inconvenience. I am mean with the money I give to God – “prudence” is the watchword. Like the Chancellor, appearing to be generous, but making sure that it actually doesn’t cost me too much!
So often I am not humble, but proud in my worship. I want worship to be the way I like it – no thought for whether others, or whether God, likes it. I want my reading, my preaching, my singing to be admired. Worship becomes an ego trip.
So often I am far from unselfconscious in worship, but rather very constrained and restrained; no sign of emotion; nothing excessive; but everything tight, and decent, and in order, and very CofE! King David’s wife despised him when he let his hair down and danced before the Lord.
The people mocked the disciples when, on the day of Pentecost, they thought they were all drunk.
You know, I sometimes think that we resemble Judas more than Mary in our attitude and approach to Jesus – sensible rather than sensing. Afraid to let our hair down.
When we really love someone we let go of constraint and convention. We become a bit reckless. Like Mary. May God give us love more like hers.
But why? Why all this reckless, extravagant love? For one reason and one reason only – that is the sort of love that God has shown to us. On this Passion Sunday we think how crazily, recklessly, extravagantly, God sent His Son to die for us.
There is no cold logic to the cross, nothing sensible about it. We didn’t deserve it. We hadn’t earned it. We weren’t worth it. God just did it, at huge cost to Himself. Because actually, in His eyes, we were worth it!
The Bible has a word for this sort of reckless, extravagant love of God – it is called “Grace”.
Grace – a word with a stoop in it. Grace – the letters could stand for God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. And what expense! What cost!
Jesus’s everything – His family, His friends, His dignity, His freedom, His ministry, His comfort, His blood, His very life – all poured out, recklessly, extravagantly, undeservedly for you and me, and for the whole world. “He emptied Himself. He suffered death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8)
This Passiontide, as we look again at the cross, as we contemplate the depth of Jesus’ love, of His grace doesn’t it put our wretchedness into proportion? Doesn’t it eclipse our arrogance and smugness and self-righteousness?
St Paul, in our epistle reading, said to the Philippians: “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the 8th day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness faultless!” Gosh! What a guy!
In modern terms Paul might have said: “As for me, British by birth, respectable middle class, baptized CofE, a first in Physics at university, regular church member, in the choir, on PCC; a good, clean-living person, pillar of the community”.
“BUT” Paul goes on – one of his many big buts (v7): “ALL THIS I consider loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own, but that which is through faith in Christ.”
Nothing that we are, or do, or strive for, or achieve is worth a thing compared to the joy of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord and Saviour, of experiencing and receiving His amazing grace.
John Newton, born in 1725, went to sea at 11, and was press-ganged into the navy at 17.
He led a dissolute life of wine, women and song, and became involved in the lucrative slave-trade. He was an atheist who had, you might say, life on a plate, everything going for him.
That is, until his ship went through a violent storm, and he thought his end had come, and he realised how empty and worthless his life was. He read Thomas a Kempis’ “The Imitation of Christ”, and his life was turned around. He came to faith in Christ, and in due course was ordained into the Church of England ministry.
He became a much-loved pastor, a tireless opponent of the slave trade, and the writer of many hymns, some of which we still regularly sing, and one of which we shall be singing later.
“Amazing grace!”
Yes, it is amazing! It is astounding! It is breath-taking! God’s love for us, poured out recklessly and extravagantly on Calvary. It puts our love and faith into perspective.
And what can we do in response except, like Mary, fall down at Jesus’ feet, And forget all our pride, and self-righteousness, and reserve, and smugness And acknowledge our sin, and wretchedness, and worthlessness, And pour out our love for Him, in response to His love for us.
“Amazing grace – how sweet the sound –
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.”
Many years ago a small boy, called Mlee (or “Bag”), was brought to our hospital in Uganda by his father. He seemed to be losing his sight. And he did indeed have juvenile macular degeneration, an untreatable cause of blindness in children. His father abandoned him at the hospital. A home was found for him, and he went to school. Gradually, as he lost his sight, so he found the Lord Jesus. He was baptised “Joshua”. As his sight grew dimmer, so his faith grew brighter. Eventually he went away to Blind School, then, having totally lost his sight, returned home to help other blind people in his tribe, and to give them hope.
And Joshua would give his testimony, his blind eyes blinking, almost twinkling, and an enormous smile across his face. He would tell the story in the Gospels of the blind man healed by Jesus, and how when the Pharisees told him that Jesus was a sinner, he replied: “Whether He is a sinner or not I don’t know. But one thing I do know. Once I was blind but now I can see!”
“This” Joshua would add “is also true for me!” “But it isn’t true for you!” people would say. “You are still blind!” And Joshua would reply, his face positively glowing: “My eyes may be blind, but in my heart I can see. Once I didn’t know Jesus. I was spiritually blind. But now I know His love for me, and I can see!”
“Amazing grace – how sweet the sound
–
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found.
Was blind, but now I see.”
May you and I kneel in awe at God’s amazing grace this Passiontide and Easter time, and may we, recklessly humbly unselfconsciously pour out, in response, our love for Him.
David Webster
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