Read: Mark 14
Verses chosen for reflection:
Mark 14:3-9 "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. 4 There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? 5 For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. 6 But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 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. 8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. 9 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.”
Reflection:
Conceptually, it was not wrong for the people to want to use the money sold for the pure nard for the poor. The issue was with the timing of the comment and the true heart of those who made the comment. While those who wanted to use the money for the poor; they did not really care much for the poor.
They just felt that it was such a waste to pour pure nard on someone whom they probably had little regard for. However, for the woman who anointed Jesus with the pure nard, He was everything to her. The people might be more agreeable if the woman had pour the nard on an earthly king. That would have made the pouring "worthwhile". Who was Jesus? Just a poor Teacher who might not be able to do any good favours for the woman. Or so they thought.
So Jesus' comment was fair. The people always had the poor with them. However, were they as generous and compassionate that they sounded it out to be? Were they really caring much for the poor? Seemed to be unlikely based on Jesus' rebuke of the Pharisees and those in power. Or did they wanted to sound compassionate just because they felt it was such a waste to pour nard on a poor Teacher? They probably wanted the nard themselves!
At the end of the day, the people who commented did not really care for the poor. They were quick to judge but slow to love. They cared more for their own sense of what is right and wrong. Or worse, they cared more about how other people's sense of righteousness disturbed their own guilt of not doing enough. That was hypocrisy at its finest.
Relate
Are we quick to judge and slow to love? I believe we do that at times. We see something that we do not agree with and so we make a quick comment. We do not ask why something out of the ordinary is being done and made a judgement that this person must have done it wrong. Worse, we hear a piece of information from a third party and decided that a person must have sinned.
We did not even ask. We did not bother to find out the truth. We can even use that piece of information to defame someone during crucial moments. All the while, we are not even sure if that is the truth! Yes, quite often, we failed to see what the woman saw in Christ Jesus. We are not truly compassionate. We just want to judge so that it made us feel better. Or we have other motivations and just wanted to use the opportunity to further our own agenda. That is one sure way of how Christians emotionally destroy one another.
Yes, we need Christ to help us be truly compassionate and pure. We need patience to discover the truth than to make worthless judgements that harm others. We need to understand that our words have powerful effects on others. Especially if we are church leaders, we need to be quick to love and slow to judge. We can only do so, if we are like the woman, who regarded Christ as her top priority in life. Let us therefore, seek to anoint Christ with the pure nard of our lives; and as a result, be of good benefit to one another. Amen.
Rest
Alabaster Jar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6GeVG1CNso
Jason
p.s. - Apologies for the lateness of the devotional as the system did not capture what I wrote at first.
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