Broken And Spilled Out

Broken and Spilled Out

Pastor Glenn Newton 3-18-01

Mark 14:1-11Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days

away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to

arrest Jesus and kill him. 2 "But not during the Feast," they said, "or the people may

riot."

MK 14:3 While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table 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.

MK 14:4 Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, "Why this

waste of perfume? 5 It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the

money given to the poor." And they rebuked her harshly.

MK 14:6 "Leave her alone," said Jesus. "Why are you bothering her? She has done a

beautiful thing to me. 7 The poor you will always have with you, and you can help

them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8 She did what she could.

She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9 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."

MK 14:10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray

Jesus to them. 11 They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So

he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

How many of you have done something crazy because of that thing called love? You say

things you wouldn’t normally say. You spend more time looking in the mirror. You try

to write poetry even though you don’t have a clue. Being in love makes you do irrational

things. You carve your names on tree trunks. You hold hands while trying to eat

burritos. You can sit two people where normally one person could barely sit. Being in

love can be excessive. The practical question “Does this make sense?” doesn’t apply to

people deeply in love. Would you agree?

I still remember with cold chills the day I asked Nola’s Dad for her hand in marriage. You

talk about scarred. I think that day, I kind of felt what Daniel was feeling as he was being

lowered into the lion’s den.

I think I had already been at the house for about an hour and hadn’t been able to

bring it up. And what made it worse was that Nola had told her mom that I was going to

do this, so there both staring, and snickering, which made it 10 times worse.

Finally Jim went outside to water the cattle, and I followed and made small talk, and then

because my Love for Nola was bigger than my fear of Jim, I finally told him what was on

my mind. I still think that he knew the whole time what was going to happen that day, and

he was making it kind of hard on me. Of coarse, as any concerned father, he asked me

some silly questions like, “How are you going to make it financially?” Where are you

going to live?” You know silly things like that. If I remember right I said something

profound like, were going to live on Love. I’m sure that gave him great comfort.

But you see, when love is involved, being excessive, and extravagant and

impractical many times isn’t far behind.

But as you know, something can happen to us the longer we are in love. It happens

almost by osmosis. We grow up, and sometimes we grow out and up. It’s not something

that happens overnight. But slowly, and ever so surely, we replace costly with practical,

we exchange the extravagant for sensible, spontaneous for responsible, and the lavish for

the useful.

It’s not that we stop loving. It’s just that the more mature our love becomes, so

does our means of expressing it. We begin to pride ourselves in being thrifty and

conservative people, not given to indulgence in any area of our lives. We are much more

comfortable being in control. We would rather be considered economical than excessive,

and cautious rather than risky.

Can you relate to that transformation that can take place?

I want you to think about this from the standpoint of a new believer. We come into

worship and sit next to the brand-new Christians. It doesn’t matter if we are singing

hymns or choruses, it doesn’t matter if we are standing or sitting, it doesn’t’ matter what’s

going on, the tears roll down their cheeks. Whenever that alter is open for anything, they