The Wastefulness of Jesus

 But I am a worm and not a human being,
    a disgrace and an object of scorn.
Everyone who sees me laughs at me;

    they whisper to one another I’m a loser; they sneer and mock me. 

(Psalm 22:6-7)

 

 

Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”

“A staff,” he replied. 

The Lord said, “Throw it on the ground.” 

(Exodus 4:2-3a)

 

While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.

When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” 

 (Matthew 26:6-13)

 

God tells Moses to throw down even the one thing he still holds in his hand. 

 

Jesus, having come to our world as a human being, becomes more humbled still, his life taken from him in the ugliest of executions - what a wast it looked! His life was poured out in intentional uselessness, like the expensive ointment the woman poured on his head. 

 

 Some of us are indignant at the waste, like Judas was. 

 

Some of us are envious of her - at least she had the ointment. 

 

We would like to have something to give, to pour out for love of him, but we don't have even that. It seems we don't have anything. 

 

Nothing to offer except are uselessness, and our choice to be with him: and that is a choice that no one but him is likely to put any value on.

 

(Northumbria, Aidan readings, Dec. 3)