Perfume

“Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” - Jesus (Luke 7:47).

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

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love,” John writes in 1 John 4:8. God is love. He is the source of the bond between husband and wife, parent and child. He gives the kindness and trust that forms friends. He is the one who helped you forgive the person who broke your marriage. God is love. We are not. Yet, to know God, to know his love, we must know his forgiveness too. We can’t just “connect” to God without Jesus (Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me” John 14:6). We might see God is the Creator, but we won’t know his love for us without Jesus (read more on this in Tears for Ida). And we cannot know Jesus without knowing what he did for us. It’s like focusing on “the other stuff” Abraham Lincoln did in his presidency rather than fight to free the slaves.

Jesus’ love for us gives us new hearts—crazy hearts. A woman extravagantly loved Jesus in a context where no one else did. She lavished her riches in perfume on him. She wept and washed his feet with her tears. John tells us the woman of Matthew 26 and Mark 13 is none other than Lazarus’s sister, Mary (John 12). She was so grateful for Jesus. He had raised her brother from the dead (John 11). He had spent time in their house. She knew danger was brewing; Jesus’ life was in jeopardy. The moment seized her and she poured out her most precious perfume on his head in the company of scrutinizing eyes. A year’s wages gone in a gift.

Jesus knew he would be betrayed and killed in two days. This passage is surrounded by that evidence. The religious leaders “plotted” his death just before this scene (Mark 14:1,2). His own disciple, Judas, secretly makes a deal with those leaders to hand Jesus over just after this (Mark 14:10,11). The woman who anoints Jesus is surrounded by people who could not receive his love, did not want his forgiveness, and hated his claims to be the Son of God. They had no love. They had hate, contempt, bitterness. True, Jesus was bringing an end to Judaism as they knew it. But he was also showing their Judaism to be a sham anyhow. God was always going to adopt us by faith, even Abraham knew that, not by birth or bloodline (Galatians 3:5-7). He was going to atone for our sins. Moses knew that as he spread the lamb’s blood over the door post to make God’s judgment “pass over” the Jews (Exodus 12). Jesus was grabbing the Jewish narrative and saying it all led to him, it all came from him in the first place (Colossians 1:16). I get why they were mad. Jesus was both uncovering their sin, our our sin and then forgiving it! That is what God has been doing since we left Eden. He was creating a language between us that we could understand—the deliverance from slavery, the sacrificial animals that represented forgiveness of sins, the Temple as a gathering place for forgiveness and worship. All those symbols were pointing to Jesus; they were not an end in of themselves. Jesus was breaking their cultural norms, threatening to overthrow the temple system, and stealing their narrative (or rather accusing them of stealing God’s narrative). These religious leaders had no time for it. I think we can relate. None of us likes Jesus’ narrative that out of our heart flows sin. Jesus explained, “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matthew 15:17-19). Jesus knows our hearts. Our hearts are like the temple: white washed yet full of robbery and gossip. We need a new heart. We killed the One who could give it. We proved his point.

On the other side of the perfume story we have Judas. Judas was mad at Jesus because he was greedy. Judas was terribly disappointed that Jesus was not the Savior of the Jews on earth. Jesus’ kingdom was not of this world. Judas had no time for Jesus anymore. He didn’t want forgiveness. He wanted power here and now. He found the people who were mad like him and they hatched a plan. Ever done that? Gathered with people over a common enemy and fueled each other’s anger? Me neither.

“What a waste!” The disciples said. John says it was Judas who objected. They had gotten the message that they were supposed to be generous to the poor. They understood law, expectations, commandments. The old heart loves that stuff. They had not “gotten” grace. Grace belongs to the new heart, the one that lives by “faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20) Grace knows Jesus love for you, for me. Jesus puts it in context for them: “She has anointed my body beforehand for burial.” Mary probably didn’t do this on purpose. She didn’t know this would be the last kindness he would receive before he died. Jesus roots her love in the cross, his death on her behalf. He roots her love for him in his love for her. God loves us in a particular way: he washes us from our sin. Only his grace gives us fellowship with him, the one-ness we crave. We don’t move on from his atoning love. We go deeper in.

Chuck Collins, Director of the Center for Reformational Anglicanism, explains Jesus’ love as the theology of the cross. Martin Luther coined the phrase in his Heidelberg Disputation. Gerharde Forde spent his life expounding it for our generation. Collins writes, “We don’t need a coach to fuss at us to get better, we need a Savior who suffered and died to accomplish our full salvation - the theology of the cross.” Mary didn’t love Jesus that extravagantly because he fussed at her to improve. She poured her perfume all over him because he died and rose again and said You are forgiven; my peace I leave with you (John 14:27).

Mary’s love is a prophetic picture of what Jesus would do for us. Jesus was surrounded by the total opposite. They didn’t know God or his love. Yet, he knew how the cross would change us. He sees what the church, with her new heart—his heart in her—would do back to him. He was that costly perfume poured out, “wasted” on selfish, sinful people. His death for us redefines us - as precious to God. He IS love and for his own sake the Father, Son and Spirit would work in unison to save hating hearts like us. He gives us new ones.

Jesus defends Mary. He honors her saying, “Wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” The Gospel is rooted in the cross. We share God’s love by his first loving us. He pulled us out of the grave. He did not condemn us when we were caught red-handed. He knows our old, hating hearts. When we have been forgiven and loved in our worst place – watch out! We will do the craziest things out of love for Jesus. It is his new heart in us, his Spirit in us that is doing it. The Spirit makes us able to receive Jesus’ love, his forgiveness. He makes us lavish love back. The new heart can do nothing else. For now, we have the old and the new, but the new is all God sees, and all that will remain when Jesus brings us to heaven. This new heart does not speak the language of the law, of right vs. wrong, of obedience and submission. It speaks the language of the cross - of being fully known and fully loved. The perfume flows from our forgiveness. We don’t move away from “sinning” and into “perfection” but rather we lavish our love on Jesus where we have sinned and have been forgiven. That is the love that others need so much.

I am so glad Chuck Collins brought us back to Matthias Grunewald in his post, “Matthias Grunewald: Theologian of the Cross.” This painter “wasted” months and years and money on painting pictures about our forgiveness. Those who could not read could look at them and understand Jesus’ love for them. (Those who could read could too!) What a beautiful aroma.