{"id":248,"date":"2014-03-28T09:39:23","date_gmt":"2014-03-28T09:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parkwood.org\/blog\/?p=248"},"modified":"2015-03-03T18:45:58","modified_gmt":"2015-03-03T18:45:58","slug":"an-inconvenient-faith-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/an-inconvenient-faith-21\/","title":{"rendered":"An Inconvenient Faith (21)"},"content":{"rendered":"

“While He was in Bethany, in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on His head. Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, ‘Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a years wages and the money given to the poor. And they rebuked her harshly. ‘Leave her alone,’ said Jesus, ‘Why are you bothering her? she has done a beautiful thing to Me.\u00a0 The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them anytime you want.\u00a0 But you will not always have Me.\u00a0 She did what she could.\u00a0 She poured perfume on My body beforehand to prepare for My burial.\u00a0 I tell you the truth, wherever the Gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.’\u00a0 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them.” <\/em>(Mark 14:3-10)<\/p>\n

This is a beautiful story of sacrificial love on the eve of the greatest act of love that ever occurred.\u00a0 This unnamed woman crashes a dinner party, where the disciples and Jesus were guests, in order to express her love to the Lord.\u00a0 She is carrying the most valuable thing to her…a jar of perfume.\u00a0 It is worth a years wages but she isn’t focused on that.\u00a0 In reckless abandon she breaks the jar and pours it on Jesus’ head.\u00a0 It is an act of worship.\u00a0 It is an act of love.\u00a0 When we are in love we do the craziest things!<\/p>\n

Her act, however, is seen as a waste by those closest to Jesus.\u00a0 Their thoughts turn toward practical matters of ministry rather than expressions of worship.\u00a0 They are evaluating the gift in terms of it’s value and usefulness and, therefore, do not see it as a sacrifice.\u00a0 What is it that causes the disciples to see “waste” instead of “sacrifice”?\u00a0 I wonder how many times we have done the same thing?\u00a0 Someone we know is moved by their love for Jesus to give sacrificially and we criticize them, or worse, stop them.\u00a0 The Gospel tells us that it was after this event that Judas decided that he would betray Jesus.\u00a0 This may have been the last straw.\u00a0 Judas was a practical man and Jesus had proved Himself to be an impractical Savior.\u00a0 Jesus was more concerned about dealing with individuals than the greater issues of a self proclaimed Messiah.<\/p>\n

Maybe this is why the disciples missed the significance of the cross at first.\u00a0 They saw it as a “waste” of a great man instead of the sacrifice of a loving God.\u00a0 We could apply their critical words in the story above to the cross.\u00a0 “What a waste.\u00a0 He could have done so much more.”\u00a0 Really?<\/p>\n

Jesus describes the loving act of this woman as “beautiful”.\u00a0 What his followers saw as a waste, He saw as wondrous!\u00a0 We look at the story of the woman and we get it but, when we look at the cross, which is the Heavenly Father pouring out everything to show His love for us, do we see it as “beautiful”.\u00a0 Today, lets look at the cross and see it as the greatest act of love that ever was…Jesus laying down His life for His friends.<\/p>\n

“You are My friends”<\/em> (John 15:14)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“While He was in Bethany, in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-an-inconvenient-faith-2014-lenten-blog","category-all_posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions\/258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}