Abundant

John 12:1-8

It was extravagant. She decided to do it maybe because she sat and listened to him. Maybe it was because she saw what he was getting at. Talking with women at wells, feeding the 5000, healing all who came, and lastly coming to raise her brother from the dead. Mary knew of Jesus' generosity to others. Mary knew Jesus was extravagant as well. So she takes the most expensive thing, the thing she has been hanging onto for a special occasion and anoints him with it. 

There is no denying what she has done. The rooms fill with the smell. It probably drew everyone around them. Maybe they were all around Jesus anyway. Whispering, knowing this thing he did, this raising from the dead was going to get him into trouble. And Mary does it anyway. She gets into trouble. The debate about where the money could have gone, trying to shame her gift, trying to take away it's potency. Jesus won't have it. What she has done is pure, abundant, gift.

It seems fitting that today, before Palm Sunday, before the hails and hosannas, before the passion reading and silence we are in a reading of abundance to Jesus. What have you done lately which is abundant to Jesus? Have you taken time out in your day to even consider? I'm talking about more than the morning devotions you do. Have you sat at his feet? Have you even considered taking time, abundant time, to be with Jesus? 

Next week we start to get wrapped into the fast track of all the happenings of Holy Week. This week we can consider Jesus. This week is a slow week. This week is our next to last in Lent. This week doesn't exhaust us or drain us, or take us to the joy of rising from the dead. This week we can sit and consider how extravagant Jesus was and what might we do to share the extravagance he gave with him. 

So much of what we do is to be extravagant to others. We act like we are being extravagant to Jesus by serving, working, doing to others what Jesus would have done. I challenge us to think more like Mary. What can we do this week to be extravagant to him? What can we do this week to spend time with Jesus? To give ourselves the connection, the break to be with Jesus before we go through Holy Week and end at the cross and grave?

Time in our world is an extravagance. We are to be doing. We are to be about the work of the world. Taking time to just sit, to just read, to just be is not something we value, yet it is the most extravagant thing we can give. Because when we slow down like that, we can actually listen. Listen to the creation which has been every since the first day. We can know how amazing it is Jesus was there with the trinity divine taking the time to slowly start this world. Day by day, and we, we see it passing before us and forget to take the time to notice or hear it.

Time is precious, time passes quickly, and then we are left with what we have done and what we haven't. And when we think over that time the highlights aren't in work, they aren't in the things we did, they are in the time spent with others. This week make that other Jesus. Turn your full attention. Make space for Jesus. It will be time well spent and something you remember as we go into the chaos of Holy Week. The grief of death and the joy of the tomb. Spend some time anointing your Lord.