20

Anointing 250 Feet.

Jesus had been invited to dinner by a man of means. Jesus’s disciples, ever his confused entourage, were in tow.

They’d barely finished their appetizers – which cultural propriety of the time dictates couldn’t have been Caesar Salads – when a woman came in a squatted down at Jesus’ feet. This woman, Mary, is presented to us almost completely anonymously save for her name and a wink in the wording that invites us to assume she was a hooker.

The room had smelled of veal, bread, words and laughs bouncing off the plaster walls. Now the room was silent, overwhelmed with the heavy bouquet of spikenard. This Mary was dumping a jar of the costly stuff all over Jesus’s feet.

Messiah, or Greek’s Christ, translates fairly well to “The oil-anointed one.” It’s an ancient picture of one having oil applied to their head or body as they become leader. Inanimate objects are also messiah’ed (oiled) when they become set apart for special use. Mary was doing a few things, but perhaps all four gospel writers capture elements of the scene so we can be a bit aghast at a woman-like-this anointing Jesus as King. It’s dark comedy if you’re given to prudence. The disciples were.

“What the heck is she doing?” they asked, now standing. Jesus was still reclined. Jesus is never as offended as his disciples.

“That perfume could’ve been sold and the money given to The Poor,” said Judas who would later sell Jesus and give the money to The Himself.

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “This is a beautiful thing. It’s an act of worship. It’s a very sincere act of devotion, with or without your appreciation of it as such.”

“But but but Jesus it’s 300 days wages! What about the poor?” Judas insisted.

“Well Judas, there will be plenty of poor people for you to serve once I’m out of the way.”

As the puddle under his feet leached across the host’s floor, Jesus made a prediction that’s held up fairly well; “I tell you the truth, whenever the Good News is told to others, what this woman just did will be part of it. The foolish thing you’re accusing her of doing will actually be memorialized forever!”

There’s a church south of my hometown that erected an enormous Jesus statue on its property next to the highway. It was rumored to cost between a quarter to half a million dollars. Us Christian leaders in town had a field day with that. The crazy thing looked like 250 feet of Crisco, with a price tag that could have instead paid off several low-income homes, fed thousands, all that.

Then I heard one of the leaders of that church explain how often lonely, tired, guilt-laden truck drivers would pull in from off the highway, weeping. That statues’ arms seemed to have a magnetic effect for folks who did little but think in isolation. It was a 250 foot semitic-looking lighthouse offered so a few ships and their captains might not run aground. The church I worked at also had a sign out front for passing traffic. I, of course, found its dimensions and its cost fully justifiable.

Lightning struck that statue one day a few years later. Another condescending field day ensued. Oh the irony we snorted.

The church responded by putting a bigger, wider-armed Jesus in its place. It’s still there today, at least twice as tall, and truck drivers are still pulling in with gratitude as I understand it.

There was an irony in the lightning strike as I think about it. But not how I framed it then. The irony now is this: The thunderbolt-chucking deity of religion, who must angrily strike down things it doesn’t understand, struck down an act of Compassion because, like its religion’s adherents, it couldn’t see its value.

And yet “Jesus” rose again, albeit now with a lightning rod poking from the top of his enormous head. The Alfalfa and the Omega.

Compassion is an astoundingly, frustratingly affirming force. It Loves the other enough to find beauty and meaning in what the rest of us lazily judge as good or bad. Ahava Love, the brand that has the other’s interests more in view than its own preferences being perfectly tended to, searches and finds the thing to celebrate. Jesus’ Compassion for Mary offended his religious minded-followers, but Love recognizes intent and contextualizes in the most favorable way it can. This woman isn’t wasting anything. She is showing me an act of love. Who cares about it being reasonable or fashionable or understood by anyone but me and her. It’s sincere!

We swoon over clay ashtrays from our children for this same reason. So we have it within us to reframe, to measure more deeply and allow the other’s context to tell us what the value of an action is. We have the ability to suspend judgment, criticism and condemnation because we possess within us a heart of Love that hopes others will assume that we are also, clumsily, ignorantly, doing the very best we know how to do.

To this day I still make fun of those church signs with cheesy puns on them. But those are objectively bad, right? Like billboards featuring Christ as a threatening sky-caucasian; there couldn’t actually be any legitimate, loving context there. Right?