There is a wonderful story by the name of Babette’s Feast, by Isak Dineson. The setting is a small village on the coast of Denmark many years ago. Two spinster sisters provide leadership for a small church, which was founded by their now dead pastor-father many years before. The group has dwindled to eleven sour-faced, self-righteous, elderly people filled with pride and suspicious of each other.
One stormy, rainy night Babette arrives at the door of the sisters. She is drenched, exhausted and needing refuge. She is a middle-aged refugee from France bearing a letter of recommendation from an old friend of the sisters. The letter simply says, “Babette can cook."
Babette ends up staying 14 years with the sisters, cleaning and cooking for her own room and board. Then comes the exciting news that a lottery ticket, which a friend in France has renewed for her every year, has won 10,000 francs. The two sisters celebrate her good fortune but begin to grieve what they believe will be the leaving of their friend, Babette.
What Babette does next is an exuberant expression of love and gratitude. She proceeds to give an extravagant gift to the sisters and the small group of pious elders. She asks permission from the sisters to prepare a meal in honor of the 100th anniversary of their pastor-father’s birth. Furthermore, she wants to pay for this with her own money. Reluctantly, the sisters agree.
The eleven members of the church and a few other guests are present at this feast. As the cold wind howls outside Babette treats them all to an incredible, gourmet dinner of turtle soup, caviar, quail, pastries, champagne and rare aged wine. It is unlike anything the village has ever seen. After the feast Babete reveals that she was once chef at a world-renowned cafe in Paris. The sisters are aghast to discover that she has spent her entire 10,000 francs on the feast.
At first glance it would seem that this extravagant gift is wasted on an unappreciative group of pious sour-faces. But, that’s not the way it turns out. The gourmet dinner has a transforming effect.
The amazing grace of turtle soup and caviar creates a space in which old feuds are settled, friendship and love are rekindled, and genuine fellowship is experienced.
Babete’s extravagant gift was one of genuine love. Jesus’ experienced Mary’s gift just this way. In fact how Jesus received her gift ensured that she would forever be an example to us of genuine worship.
Mary shows us one of the most important things we need to understand if we want to draw near to the heart of Jesus. We need to learn to love him extravagantly with our whole heart.
As we look at Mary’s extravagant love I hope we’ll see what true worship looks like and learn to practice it in our own lives. The first thing we should understand is that Extravagant Love
Doesn’t Count the Cost
3aThen Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair.
Many of you know that Kathleen and I are in the process of adopting a baby girl from China. It’s a long and costly process but something that we strongly feel the Lord is directing us to do. One of the things we’re doing in preparation for our adoption is saving money in a plastic jar. But I don’t want to tell a story about my wife and me, I want to share a story about our son Aaron.
At Royal Rangers on Wednesday he earned a dollar for learning books of the Bible. I found it in his pocket as I picked up his pants off the floor. He told me where he had gotten it and I said I would put it on his shelf so he could spend it at the dollar store—there’s nothing he likes better than being turned loose knowing he can get anything in the store. But he said “No, put it in the jar for the Chinese Baby.”
What a wonderful picture of what Mary did for Jesus. Aaron wanted to give all that he had for the love of a baby he’s never seen.
Judas helpfully tells us that the perfume Mary poured out was worth a year’s wages. In the ancient world perfume was one of the commodities that people used to store their wealth—there were no banks or stock market. In all likelihood this box of perfume represented Mary’s life savings. And she recklessly spilled it out for love of her Lord. You see he had brought her brother back from the dead and she wanted to show her gratitude in the most meaningful way she could.
In less than a week Jesus would pour himself out for herand for us as well, giving his life on a cross to pay for our sins so that we all might live forever with him.
In light of what He’s done for us, how extravagantly have you demonstrated your love for Him? Have you given to Him from your substance or merely from your excess?
Have you surrendered your life and all your plans to Him or have you surrendered Sunday mornings, Sunday Evenings and Wednesday nights to Him—And that only if you don’t have something more interesting to do?
Mary challenges us to give our all, but beyond challenging us, I think her story is meant to inspire us, to demonstrate the joy of pouring out our most precious gift upon Jesus.
And you know when we express our love to him so unselfishly it…
Makes an impression on others
v. 3b And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
Hey do you smell something in here?
You can’t hide it when you’re baking bread in the house. And you can’t hide it and don’t want to when you give yourself extravagantly to the Lord. Mary’s perfume was pure Nard, not diluted in oil like it would have normally been for use. Not only did everyone in the house immediately realize what she had poured out upon Jesus, everyone in the neighborhood knew what was being poured out.
When our worship of the Lord is extravagant those around will know it and be blessed by it too. I’ve spoken to you many times about how when we genuinely worship the Lord in this place when those who haven’t received Him into their lives sense His presence here. He perfumes this place with His very presence and it piques their curiosity about Him.
Similarly when we live out our worship outside this place with lives devoted to Him our lives carry his perfume to those around us.
When we went on a Muffin March just to say to our community “we care. ” We spread the sweet aroma of Jesus. When you take time to listen to someone who is difficult to love, you smell like Jesus.
On the other hand when we don’t give ourselves completely to the Lord, we can smell differently and make the world around us think there’s something rotten in the church. When we are petty and bicker with one another, when we complain and criticize, when we are judgmental toward those who haven’t even come to know the Lord yet (so how could we expect their lives to be transformed), when we are uncaring.
God’s will is that you spread the real aroma of Jesus by living an unselfish life sold out to Him.
The apostle Paul writes that through us the Lord spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. 15For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 16To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. (2 cor 2:14-16)
That verse reminds us that even if we are faithfully spreading the aroma of Christ, there will be those who don’t like the smell. Mary found that out didn’t she? But she demonstrated that Extravagant love…
Doesn’t Care about Criticism
4But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, 5“Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” 6He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.
On July 31 2004 in Durango Colorado, Two teenage girls decided one summer’s evening to skip a dance where there might be cursing and drinking to stay home and bake cookies for their neighbors.
The deliveries consisted of half a dozen chocolate-chip and sugar cookies accompanied by big hearts cut out of red or pink construction paper with the message: "Have a great night."
The notes were signed, "Love, The T and L Club," code for Taylor Ostergaard, then 17, and Lindsey Jo Zellitti, 18.
Inside one of the nine scattered rural homes south of Durango that got cookies that night, a 49-year-old woman became so terrified by the knocks on her door around 10:30 p.m. that she called the sheriff’s department. Wanita Young ended up in the hospital emergency room the next day after suffering a severe anxiety attack she thought might be a heart attack. Wanita explained she thought the knocks might be from some neighbors she’d had an ongoing dispute with.
Because they felt bad that the woman had been so frightened, the girls families offered to pay her medical bills. She refused and instead sued them successfully. Two weeks ago a Durango judge awarded Young almost $900 to recoup her medical bills.
After the verdict Wanita young was quoted saying, “I just hope the girls learned a lesson."
Yeah—I’m sure they did. The same one that Mary did when she gave extravagantly to Jesus: That no good deed goes unpunished.
There’s always someone willing to rain on the parade. And Judas sets the tone here for all who would come after him—If you’re going to criticize, make it sound spiritual. Now Judas isn’t the focus of our study today, but let me just say this:
If you ever think you want to criticize or make a “suggestion” to someone about what they have offered to the Lord, think twice—no think three times and then read this story again.
Because you know what—Judas’ complaint sounds reasonable. It seems like giving that money to meet needs would have honored the Lord a lot more. But Jesus looked beyond the practical to the heart of the giver and received her worship because it was a genuine expression of the extravagant love she felt.
But you know I think Mary knew ahead of time she was in for criticism not only for the “waste” but she also let down her hair in front of a roomful of men—she didn’t care, in her heart she understood that this wasn’t an improper advance, but simply an expression of the intimacy and love she felt for the Lord.
When you give unselfishly to the Lord, there will be criticism. Give anyway. I hope those girls in Colorado celebrated their defeat in court by baking a bunch more cookies to deliver.
Because even if there are critics of extravagant love. mary found out that Extravagant Love…
Is Pleasing to the Lord
7“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. 8You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”
In the end it’s Judas who gets a rebuke for His “practical” observation and Mary is praised for her extravagance. Jesus told the woman at the well that the Father was seeking true worshippers, and Mary shows herself to be a true worshipper.
The Lord is pleased when we give not just out of our abundance but when we give our all to Him. When we seek pleasure not in things but in Him.
Conclusion
You know one of the things that struck me in studing this story is that it makes me aware of how much I am like Judas. How tight fisted and stingy I am—how stingy we all can be when it comes to giving of ourselves, our time and our money.
We need to ask ourselves, "When was the last time I did something extravagant because of my devotion to Jesus - not because felt I had to do it or that it was the right thing to do, or I knew I would feel guilty if I didn’t?
When was the last time I threw caution to the wind and went ahead fully committed as I gave of myself and what God has given me generously and sacrificially?"
Extravagant love like that of Mary, is the kind of love to which we are called.
Indeed it is the kind of love that Jesus himself showed us, when he, on the day after Mary anointed his feet and dried them with her hair, rode in Jerusalem and gave himself up to death.
