I’d like to share with you a story I came across few years ago from a pastor in the mid-West. One of his parishioners came down with an incurable disease.

Over the succeeding months she and her husband, a poor farmer, saw everything they owned slip away to pay for her hospital and medical bills.

One evening the minister was invited to the couple’s home to share a meal.  The couple was celebrating their 10^th anniversary. By this time the woman had less than a year to live. 

After dinner, as the minister was getting ready to leave, the husband brought out his wife’s anniversary present.  He asked his wife to close her eyes.  As she did so, he took out a string of beautiful pearls and put them around her neck.

When she opened her eyes she was stunned and immediately burst into tears.

“They’re real.  I can’t believe it!”

Then, the husband told them both his story. “You know before we married you said you thought pearls were the prettiest jewelry in the world.

“So when we got married, I asked the Lord to help me put this string of pearls around your neck. You never knew about this box. I started dropping money in it, nickle by nickle, dime by dime.

“I was fond of tobacco. I gave up tobacco. I was fond of cold cokes. But for the last ten years, I haven’t spent a nickle on either of those. Instead, the money went into that box. And now these pearls are yours and they’re paid for.” 

“Joe,” she asked, “what made you do it?” 

He fell down on his knees and put his face in her lap and cried.

As the pastor stole quietly from the home, he heard that husband saying, through his tears, “I did it because I love you.” 

That’s what I call extravagant love. 

Our text this morning is another example of extravagant love. It’s also about giving yourself over and not counting the cost or worrying about what others will think.

Let me set the stage.  It’s Saturday.  In less than a week, Jesus will be hanging on a cross.  As the scene opens, we find Jesus and his disciples arriving in Bethany for a banquet – possibly to celebrate Lazarus’ return to life. 

Remember it was Lazarus who Jesus brought back to life after he had been dead for four days.  Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha are also there.

Martha (as usual) was busy serving, taking care of the practical end of entertaining. Mary, ever the intuitive and impractical one wasn’t helping serve – but was reflecting, feeling, listening and savoring this moment with Jesus. Then she disappears, which no one takes notice of since she often seems to be on another wave length.  

 She returns with a slender clay jar, and without a word kneels at Jesus’ feet and breaks the neck off the jar. The smell of this expensive, rare perfume, pure nard, fills the room– a sharp scent somewhere between mint and ginseng.

It’s such a rare perfume, in fact, we’re told a bit further on, that it would have cost a year’s wages: maybe, $35,000 in today’s terms. Who knows how she came by it. Perhaps it was a family heirloom. Perhaps it had formed part of her dowry. But in any case it’s an incredibly extravagant act on her part.

 I’m not sure we have an equivalent in our modern terms. I can’t imagine a bottle of perfume costing $35,000. Perhaps you could liken it to someone spending their entire savings on a bottle of very, very, very rare wine to toast someone they admired.

Then Mary does four remarkable things, which we easily miss due to our cultural distance from that time. First, she pours out all that perfume, a whole pint, on Jesus’ feet.

Now, this is just not done. Anointing someone’s head, maybe, but never their feet. Unless they were dead.  And Jesus definitely wasn’t dead. Not yet at least.

Then, she loosens her hair in a room full of men. This is another social miscue. Something respectable women never did in that culture.

Next, she touches Jesus’ feet. A single woman touching the feet of a rabbi was considered extremely inappropriate.

And then finally, using her loosened hair, she wipes the excess salve off. Can’t you just feel Mary’s utter humility, not caring what anyone thinks – even knowing that what she does will be misunderstood by some, if not all.

Obedient to the Spirit, not counting the cost. 

I’m sure all those sitting around the table were both shocked and amazed. Certainly a little perfume would be a wonderful gesture, but $35,000 worth of perfume is just a tad excessive and unnecessary.

Can’t she show her love for Jesus with a little less? Besides, who wants a whole pint of ointment poured on their feet? It is a waste by any standards. 

I am the tight wad in my family.  Just ask my wife.  While I am probably considered a liberal in my politics, I am definitely conservative when it comes to my money.  Mary and I would have definitely been polar opposites. 

I have to confess, had I been there, I might have been the first to question the appropriateness of her actions.

Well, I wasn’t there, but Judas was, and he objects, claiming the perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor.

Of course, Judas wasn’t suddenly seized with great compassion for the poor. In a parenthetical note, John lets us know Judas was stealing from the treasury. Had the perfume been sold, Judas would have had a golden opportunity to skim a little off the top.

While not many of us are thieves, what Judas says about the poor reflects a tendency common in us all. Don’t we always dress-up our motivations to make them sound holy and pure?

Few of us would be so crass as to admit we’re driven by greed, selfish ambition, or wanting to be in control. We find some high principle we can expound upon, like making it an issue of justice and fairness, rather than saying, “I’m ticked off because they didn’t do it my way!”

We say, “It’s not that I don’t want to give, it’s just that I disagree with some of stuff they’re doing with the money – so I’ll hold back,” when the real issue is that we just want to hang on to our money.

We find an excuse and call it a principle. Ultimately, we even end up convincing ourselves, feeling noble in our ideals. 

The disciples, on the other hand, thought it was a waste, but not so much because of greed, but because they just thought that it was way too extravagant. You see, they didn’t understand Mary’s absolute love and total devotion to Jesus.

The disciples’ devotion to Jesus was moderate at best.

“Let’s honor JESUS but let’s not get silly about it. Let’s anoint JESUS but not with expensive stuff. Let’s serve JESUS but let’s not be crazy about it.”

The church has far too many who, like the disciples, respond to Jesus with Moderate Devotion, and when they see true devotion they don’t understand... They, too, shout “why the waste?”

“You mean you gave up a job promotion that would have doubled your salary, because it would take you away from the church too much? Why that’s a waste. Look at the extra money you could have made to help people.”

“You bought a new TV and gave it to the church? It would have been just as good to buy yourself a new one and let the church have your old one, your old one is better than nothing.”

But Mary’s action of anointing and wiping Jesus’ feet in public was an act of loving extravagance, of spontaneous generosity. Mary’s deep love and gratitude for Jesus was not expressed by carefully planned and calculated actions of expression.

Hers is a love that is full-to-overflowing with spontaneous, unmeasured giving towards Jesus in response to all that he had done for her and her family. Her loving extravagance and spontaneous generosity towards Jesus was an act of sacrificial giving.

Mary was not content with convenient “minimal requirements,” or half-hearted gesturing; she went all out; by anointing Jesus with all of the perfume; remember it represented nearly a whole year’s worth of wages; she was symbolically giving herself completely in loving service to Jesus.

Her loving, sacrificial example of serving Jesus in this way teaches us that we cannot fix a price on unconditional love; true love moves us to act with extravagance and generosity, like Mary.

When have any of us really expressed our love for Jesus? When have we been extravagant in our actions? When have we placed our money or our reputations at risk?

I am afraid that we are more like Judas. Throwing out jeers or excuses in response to other people’s worship.

The music is too loud or the wrong kind. It cost too much. I don’t have time.  I have done my part. It won’t work any way.

Anything that keeps us from trying or that keeps us from enjoying or stops us from a willingness to risk what we are and have, separate us from intimate moments with Jesus.

It stops us from being extravagant in what we will do for Jesus. How we will show we love him.

Have you ever fallen in love? I mean head over heels, off the deep end, stars in your eyes in love? Ever have someone love you like that?

When is the last time you felt that way about God? Or have you ever even realized that’s how God loves you, with an amazing grace beyond all deserving?

When was the last time you did something outrageously generous for someone else without expecting anything in return? When was the last time you worshipped God from the depths of your being without holding anything back, without rationalizing and contextualizing and compartmentalizing, so that it reached the very core of your soul and changed you?

This passage is about extravagance: not about spending lots of money, or about wasting things needlessly, but about love and service for Christ, extreme love, over-the-top love, extravagant love.

Jesus does indeed call us to live extravagantly. He said, just before this scene of anointing, that he came that we might have abundant, full life.

And we are called to be faithful in our extravagance, and extravagant in our faithfulness. Our world is filled with extravagant living, but like Judas, we too often direct our energies in the wrong directions.

We can never seem to get enough: enough possessions, enough food, enough money, enough time. We spend extravagantly - we use up our time, we use up our money, we use up our gifts and talents - but we are using it all up in the wrong direction.

Like Judas, our words say that our concern is for our neighbors, but too often, our actions tell a different story.

When it comes down to Mary and Judas, he might have the right words, but in the end, it is Mary who shows the faithful behavior, time and again.

So, in your own life, what is speaking louder - your words, or your actions? What is your life saying? What kind of extravagance are you indulging in?

Today is Palm Sunday – the day we celebrate with those who lined the streets and shouted their “hosannas” to Jesus as he rode into town on a donkey. 

Mary with her extravagant perfume.  The masses with their extravagant hallelujahs.

In this Holy Week, then, may I invite you to experience some extravagance of your own? Go to every worship service you can find and sit at the feet of Jesus. Hug a smelly street person and tell him God loves him. Give blood.

Or maybe make an unusually generous anonymous donation to a soup kitchen, and go serve in the line or better yet, sit and visit with the hungry because they’re hungry for human connection as well.

Since Jesus is not here for us to anoint, maybe the best way to express our love is to be extravagant with the poor. But let go and give yourself to Jesus this week just because you love him so.

Possibly, with some small extravagance on our part, we will understand a little better the extravagance we encounter at the foot of the cross.

Jim Eliott, a Christian missionary killed in the Amazon 40 years ago by the tribe he journeyed to minister to, said before he left:

 “He is no fool to give what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”

It’s all God’s anyway, right?  Be extravagant!

Amen