Go ahead. . . Give away the store. . .
Have you ever noticed how young children have an almost insatiable need to give? One of the joys of being the priest in a church with an abundance of children coming in, was that almost every week I was the grateful recipient of some masterpiece of art that one of our Sunday School children had worked on with patience and effort.
I’m sure that many of you remember your own children or grandchildren slaving over a drawing and when the creation was finished, they never tried to preserve it, but they always wanted to give it you. And the sheer delight of giving seemed almost addictive as they would return to the drawing room to begin another.
I wonder if other parents were ever as shocked as I often was when one of my children would try to give away some prized and beloved possession to another child who might be visiting for the day, a possession that might have, by the way, cost a small fortune?
I almost always had the same response: Are you sure you want to give that away? Are you sure you don’t want to think this through?
But if I remember way back, and I do mean way back, I used to do silly, random acts of reckless kindness like that when I was young. I have a theory that this unquenchable need to give isn’t a learned behavior, but that it’s INNATE within the very heart and soul of humanity! In fact, I think it proves more than anything else that we are truly created in the IMAGE OF GOD.
However, something happens over time. I’m not sure what it is really, but in many of us something happens to that childlike pleasure of giving for the sake of giving. Suddenly, we wake up one day and find that every act of giving must have a reason, and the reason had better be reasonable.
In our Gospel this week, Jesus is visiting his good friends in Bethany: Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. As dinner is cooking, suddenly Mary comes out from the other room, and with the look of a child’s love in her eyes, she bursts open an outrageously expensive bottle of perfumed ointment and begins to apply it to the feet of Jesus, her friend who is visiting for the day. Her reason for doing this doesn’t seem to be reasonable at all. And so, Judas speaks up, and I’m afraid he sounds an awful lot like me!
Oh, he tries to sound ever so reasonable, and he says, Shouldn’t we sell this perfume and give the money to the poor? Are you sure you want to give that away? Are you sure you don’t want to think this through, Mary?
What happens to us over time? What happens that makes us eventually adopt the calculating, cost analyzing, bottom-line attitude of a Judas? When, I wonder, did I begin to see every act of charity as an IRS deduction? When did I lose the ability to value indiscriminate and reckless acts of kindness as ends in themselves rather than as a means to an end?
Mary spontaneously finds the most expensive gift in the house in order to anoint Jesus. There’s no practical reason for it. Jesus didn’t demand it. No one expected it. It just happened.
Judas is absolutely right: that ointment could have fed a whole lot of poor people. He’s right it’s a reckless, indiscriminate act, but sometimes that’s how it should be. Love isn’t filling a grocery list of duties or checking off a check list of demands. Just look around you in your churches. Most every ornament and symbol in the church was given as a gift. The stained-glass windows weren’t given so you could have one up on the First Church down the street. They were given in love and joy. That’s what it means to give to the Glory of God!
Mary has only Jesus’ glory in mind when she breaks out the perfume. Jesus only has us in mind when he stands in silence before the Roman authorities. Judas would say, Jesus surely you could penetrate the world with your message in a more efficient way than by being crucified.
But Jesus demonstrates God’s selfless love to the very end! Jesus is caught up in the love and wonder of Mary’s gift. Good for him! Good for Mary who was willing to give in childlike love, out of pure response.
Don’t we wish that we could have given some extravagant gift of love to Jesus before his death upon the cross? That is a big part of what this season of preparation we call Lent is all about, and I submit to you that it’s not too late! It’s all a matter of what’s going on in the heart! Whenever you do it to the least of these, you do it to me! Jesus reminds us of this when he says, You will always have the poor with you.Perhaps the poor are worth a pound or so of expensive perfumed nard.
A wealthy socialite pulled up one day in front of the Catholic Worker Mission, and after she had taken her tour, she pulled a huge diamond ring off of her finger and gave it to the mission as a gift. The staff was excited because the ring could be sold for enough money to relieve the financial pressure for a considerable amount of time.
But the staff was in shock when they saw a street-person leave the mission a few days later with the ring on her finger. They confronted Dorothy, the Mission Manager, and asked her why she would just give such a valuable ring away like that? And Dorothy answered them, That woman was admiring the ring, she thought it was so beautiful. So I gave it to her. Do you think God made diamonds just for the rich?
Wasn’t Jesus being reckless with his love when he prayed for those who drove nails into his hands and feet. . . Father, forgive them.
Lent is our time to prepare for the great events of the Christian Passover. Lent is our time to learn to appreciate the lavish and extravagant gift that God gave us in those three days between our Lord’s arrest on Maundy Thursday and his Resurrection on Easter Sunday. I suppose you could say that Lent is our time to get used to the idea that we don’t have to be reasonable in our love of God and neighbor; that we can be as extravagant and as rash and as daring and even as wild as a child in our giving. It’s our time to reclaim our image and likeness of God by becoming unscrupulous and unprincipled in our loving!
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