Expensive Perfume
I drove past the Episcopal church I have been attending today and it is a grand building. A beautiful stone structure with marvelous stained glass and a spire which reaches above all its neighboring structures. There really is no other building like it in the city. For a moment I thought, what a waste, that opulence should be brought down and the wealth used to aide the poor.
Does this sound familiar?
“Why this waste? This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”
The alabaster jar was broken so that the perfume could flow out, anointing a lover. It was reckless, it was a wild, and to many, it was a waste. We all think this way at times, as if we can make some sort of morally superior stance on the uses of the materials of this world.
Jesus's response has made me angry and challenged me over the past years as I have struggled with a lack of resources. Constantly being on the verge of losing house or losing food creates pretty furious emotions about the injustice in our world. “The poor will always be with you” is a phrase that has haunted the church and its relationship with politics. Like somehow Jesus's statement made it alright to throw up our hands and say “What can we do? The poor will just be poor. I will just make sure I am right with Jesus.” This story, emptied of the reckless love and the wilderness that acts like a fragrant perfume, leaves a heart calloused and cold.
The story with that love. With the wilderness. Makes the pouring out of expensive perfume all consuming. It is losing your life. It is breaking the alabaster jar. It is absolute freedom. Freedom to love and be loved in return.
The church building with its opulence may just be an alabaster jar but it contains the perfume. It pulls me in and lets me out so that I may remember that life is not about the right or wrong uses of our resources but the full embrace of reckless love. There are so few places left in our constructs that hold the space for that reminder. Being raised in a church with empty walls, commercial carpet, and a balanced budget was practical. The church of my youth taught me to be reasonable, to understand the proper way to construct myself and to construct my world around a perceived nature of the divine which can be found through study and obedience. It was a partial truth or even a twisted truth. It has left me tangled and confused. I have had to pull myself to pieces to understand it and to find the fuller truth.
The injustice of the world still hurts. I still grieve for the lost, the oppressed, and the exploited. But instead of making charts and graphs, weighing pros and cons, I want to love in complete freedom. I want to carry the wild perfume with me so that I never forget it and can anoint anyone who walks on this path with me.
Jesus's challenge to me now sounds more like this: The wealthy will always be with you but the I AM that is me, my relationship to this place and with the wilderness and to you (to the I AM that is you) will not always be.
I want to enjoy the places I can find beauty and the places I can smell the perfume and carry the perfume without a calculator for a brain. I want to love the wild, have the wild consume me.
Love recklessly.