Extravagant Worship Series

If you have your Bibles with you today, please open up to John 12:1. We have been looking through the book of John and we took a break from the book of John during Christmas and now we are picking it back up as we go from Christmas to Easter. It is very appropriate to pick it up here at chapter 12 because it is the beginning of Jesus’ last week on earth. Unfortunately, the gospel writer John takes about nine chapters to talk about the last week, so we will be into this last week for quite some time. It does begin Jesus’ last week on earth. If you were here in November, you might recall we finished talking about the raising of Lazarus from the dead. In today’s passage, we see Lazarus again. This time he is not coming out of a tomb. This time he is reclining at a table with Jesus at a dinner. A dinner that is given in honor of Jesus. It is at that particular dinner where Mary, out of the blue, does something very outrageous. She takes a jar of very expensive perfume and she pours it upon the feet of Jesus. We are going to read from John 12:1-8 (Scripture read here.)

The situation here is pretty straightforward. Jesus is at a dinner in honor of him. He is sitting there with Lazarus and also the disciples are there. There are some other people from the crowd that are just coming in because they saw Lazarus raised from the dead and also Martha and Mary were there. Mary is not the mother of Jesus. Mary is the sister of Martha, the sister of Lazarus, and good friends with Jesus. We saw Martha and Mary at the tomb when Lazarus was raised from the dead. You also may recall that we saw Martha and Mary at another dinner function. Remember Martha was serving the meal and Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus. During that particular time Martha was quite upset about situation because she thought Mary should be helping her serve. In this particular case, you get the sense that Martha really isn’t that annoyed this time. She is not complaining. Mary is no longer just sitting at the feet of Jesus as a student and he is the teacher. She is sitting there as someone who just experienced the resurrection of her own brother from the grave. She is sitting there now as a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. She is sitting there now looking at him as Lord in an amazing way. At some point, we don’t know when, she got this prompting by the spirit to get up and take this very expensive perfume called nard and she basically just dumps it on his feet and begins to wipe it up with her hair. We see that in verse 3 where it says “Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”

A little background on this word nard. I had to do a little bit of research but apparently nard is a fragrant oil that is prepared from the stems and roots of an herb that is found only in northern India. It is very expensive and because you have to import it in that adds to the cost of it. It actually becomes a very good investment too because it is small and very portable. It really can fetch some good money on the open market. This is a very expensive perfume. What Mary did would be considered extremely outrageous and very impractical because as we saw in the passage, it had the equivalent of a year’s pay of the common laborer. The equivalent today would be anywhere from $20,000 to $25,000 for a pint of this perfume. What she did was very impractical and also what she did was very improper. Back then, it was very improper for a woman to let down her hair let alone use her hair to wipe up the feet of Jesus. But you know what? Mary didn’t care. She really didn’t care at all what people were thinking at the time. All she cared about was showing love and devotion to her Lord. She did that by anointing his feet with oil.

As a side note, to anoint has a very rich history in the Bible. It can have several different meanings depending on when it is used. Sometimes anointing oil was used to anoint a king. They would pour it on the king’s head and that would symbolize that this king was being set apart for a divine purpose. In other instances, you have oil being used to set somebody aside for God’s particular care such as someone who has experienced some sort of a health issue or possibly about to encounter some sort of severe trial. In fact, at the church here sometimes people come and they are dealing with a health issue and they come and ask the elders to anoint their head with oil. It is very common to do in the church. It is in the book of James where we are instructed to do that. It is setting people apart for the specific care of God to the people. Another reason that particular oil could be used is for burial purposes. Particularly, it would be used for royalty or someone of high status.