The Extravagance of Worship - Murray Lambert

Mark 14:1-11

Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. “But not during the festival,” they said, “or the people may riot.”

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of 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.

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hey, welcome to The Centre podcast. We're a church based in general, Sydney, who loves Jesus. And so want to make him the center of our lives, community and world. We pray that you, blessed by this word and that it reveals God's love for you in a new way.

Why this waste of perfume? It's pretty good point, really, isn't it? Why this waste of perfume that could have been sold for a year's wages? I think he passed his desk. I sort of estimated, depending on how you want to calculate the average income of an Australian salary between 85 to $100,000 worth of perfume just poured lavishly on Jesus's head.

It's not a bad point. Why this waste of perfume? I mean, couldn't Mary, who John's gospel tells us this is Mary. Jesus, sorry, Lazarus and Sister couldn't marry. Have, you know, taken a quick trip up to Aldi and gotten some coconut oil to use or at no. Maybe ducked off to the local chemist and saying which of David Beckham's perfumes was on sale and use that?

Couldn't she have even maybe just like pulled out half the perfume? Like, why such an extravagant act of worship? It seems wasteful. It seems unnecessarily over the top. This is what the people who again John's Gospel tells us of the disciples themselves, saying why this waste of perfume? But Jesus actually corrects them and tells them it's a beautiful thing.

In verses 6 to 7 he says, leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me, the poor you always have with you. You can help them any time you want, but you're not always have me. Which seems like a bit of an uncharacteristically harsh thing for Jesus to say there, but he's actually referencing Deuteronomy 1511 that this idea the poor will always be with you, thereby continue to actually give to them, is what he's saying there.

But ultimately, he doesn't rebuke this woman. And what's really interesting, even more so, is if we look at chapters 14 and 15 of Mark, biblical historians actually understand these two chapters as a manuscript, a record that was actually circulating around before Mark collated his gospel, that the early church took these stories of Jesus's anointing of the First Communion, the Last Supper that he takes, and then his subsequent betrayal by Judas, an arrest as a first document that informed their worship.

And I find it really striking, then, that this document that was going around before Mark's gospel of this story starts and opens with this act of abundant, extravagant worship, extravagant worship. I want to call today's sermon the Extravagance of Worship, which might be a little bit jarring for some of us because extreme evidence is a bit of a loaded word.

And I think the reality is I want to explore a little bit today how maybe as Baptists in particular, we are a little bit more averse to the idea of extravagant worship than the Old Testament Christians were, than Jesus was. And even the early church going all the way up into the second century, third century, going all up until even today.

Other denominations extravagantly worshiping in beautiful ways that we kind of struggle with. Why is that? Because I want to explore, first and foremost, God's heart for worship this morning and the Old Testament first and foremost shows us that God loves beauty, and he actually loves extravagance. When it comes to worship. God loves beauty. We see this all the way back in Exodus.

The first person in the Bible who is described as having been filled with the Holy Spirit is an artist. Bezalel and his friend, the Holy, who helped build the Tabernacle, helped make the ornate decorations. It says in this 31 125 then the Lord said to Moses, see, I have chosen Bezalel, son of Uri, the son of her, of the tribe of Judah.

And I have filled him with the spirit of God, with wisdom and understanding, with knowledge, and with all kinds of skills to make artistic designs for working gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts. We're not talking about some little arts and crafts installation made from Paddle Pop sticks and PVA glue.

We're talking about gold. We're talking about precious cut gems. We're talking about the finest wood. While they're wandering through the wilderness for 40 years, God chooses to prioritize this beauty and extravagance in the midst of the wilderness as a way to worship God, as a way of creating a space for people to come into, to experience God's presence.

If God doesn't love, beauty and extravagance is a way of worship. He's got a funny way of showing it. We see continued on when the following chapters four chapters all the way 36 to 39, in intricate detail, tell us all about the inner workings of the Tabernacle, about the tabernacle itself, which was ornately woven with patterns and beautiful fibers and fabrics, about the lampstands which were made of gold, about the incense altar.

I mean, God's not just trying to ask these people to curate a space of visual beauty, the space of aromatic beauty, of smell that's beautiful and extravagant as well. There is something here that we're seeing that God's heart of worship is one of extravagance and beauty. Even in the midst of wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, God loves beauty and he loves extravagance.

And we see that sort of the pinnacle of this in Solomon's temple in one king, 6 to 7. It took seven years to build. The whole inside was covered in gold and conservative modern equivalent estimates pitch it at half $1 billion to build. This is seen as something good in the Bible. This is something that is God's desire, an extravagant, beautiful act of worship.

Because ultimately this space was supposed to represent God's character, so that when people saw it and experienced it, they were getting an insight into the fact that God is extravagant. Beauty. And this gives an insight into how we are to worship him. So when we then jump forward to the New Testament and see this extravagant act of worship in this moment with Jesus, we suddenly understand that it's perfectly in line with the heart of worship.

Throughout the entire Bible so far, we see that Mary's doing some profound things in this moment. As Jesus says in the passage, she is prophetically preparing him for his impending burial as he's crucified and then set in a tomb. This was a Jewish custom that people who were dead would be ornately anointed with perfume. But she's actually also anointing the new temple Jesus's body.

Michael spoke about this morning about the church in Israel being the Messiah's body. This is what she's doing. She's recognizing that Jesus's own body, which is going to be an extravagant sacrifice soon, is to be worshiped in such a same way. And the reality is that the early church understood this. I'm going to take you on a breakneck speed through church history, both to save you falling asleep, but also to maybe pick out the mountaintops along the way.

And a really, really important moment in church history is the year 312. It's the year that the Roman Emperor Constantine converted, somewhat miraculously and suddenly, to this weird little Jewish set called Christianity, and suddenly the entire Roman Empire became one which was first and foremost recognized as Christian. There was still religious freedom to worship in different ways. People weren't actually persecuted for having different religious beliefs in the way that Christians had previously up until that point in the Roman Empire.

But Constantine suddenly says, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior of the universe. And hence, if I'm going to look at the history of God working through the Bible, I want to build something beautiful for God. So he builds Saint Peter's Basilica, a profound architectural monument which became a place of meeting for Christians and pilgrimage for Christians for hundreds and hundreds of years up until about the 16th century.

The 1500s at which you understandably 1200 years, Saint Peter's Basilica started to become a little bit dilapidated, to the point where it was past any hope of renewal and renovation. So the Catholic Church decided to build a new Saint Peter's Basilica. And this is actually a really important moment in church history in the 1500s, in which suddenly the Catholic Church are concerned that they don't have enough money, that they want to build this extravagant, beautiful declaration of worship, new Saint Peter's Basilica for the glory of God.

And then they make it pretty unwise decision, I would say, and I probably would say as Protestants, we would agree as well to raise money through the selling of indulgences. So Pope Leo the 10th, he sends monks out to the furthest reaches of the Christian empire to start selling indulgences. What were indulgences? Ultimately, you would pay the church to alleviate some time or penalty that you would experience in purgatory, right?

This was the idea. It wasn't necessarily theologically sound. And it probably wasn't a very right thing to do. But ultimately, this is what that informs, and this is really important for us. If you've fallen asleep, wake up. At this point, the Protestant Baptists, what happens is Martin Luther, a German monk, thinks that this is a barn, thinks that this is not the heart of God.

And he writes what we know is the 95 faces a critique of the selling of indulgences to raise money for the rebuilding of the building, I should say, of the new Saint Peter's Basilica. And he nails these 95 theses, these 95 points of critique about this act to the door of the church in Wittenberg, which is kind of like the corkboard at your local Choco chicken shop back in the 1500s.

Right? It wasn't as dramatic of an act of nailing it to the door of the church as we might think. It was sort of the community noticeboard where everyone would walk in that and see it. But ultimately, this is the pinnacle moment in which the Catholic Church, Catholic, quite literally meaning the one United Holy Universal Church, suddenly isn't Catholic anymore in that sense, because there is a split.

For the first time ever in church history, there's a thing called a denomination, something that is separate from the Catholic Church, the Protestant Reformation. And it's really, really important for us to understand when we, as Protestant Baptists are viewing our theology of extravagant worship where we come from, what our foundations are, what might inform some of our prejudices and presuppositions around worship and extravagant worship.

One of the faces is the 86 theses that Martin Luther wrote, for example, is why does the Pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the Basilica of Saint Peter with the money of poor believers, rather than his own money? Again, a fair critique. Why is the Catholic Church putting burdensome fees on people who can't really afford it, to build something that is extravagant and over-the-top?

It's a fair critique, but I think ultimately what we find a lot of times I've said this before in culture, we find the culture is a pendulum, right? And when it swings too far, one way, it is prone to swing too far back the other way. And what happened was the Protestant movement for all of its great things.

I say, could be fairly critiqued on losing the theology of the extravagance and beauty of worship. There was a lot of great things to come out of the Reformation, but I think we lost something. I think we may be through the baby, out with the bathwater a bit, and as we jump forward again, another some 300 years in history to Baptists and Australian Baptists, we have two.

Well, we have quite a few Baptist distinctions, but there's two that I really want to focus on which really inform our theology around extravagant worship. One, we believe in autonomous local churches, and we believe in the separation of church and state. What does that mean? Well, first and foremost, this really influenced the way in which we built buildings as Baptists, because we were autonomous in local churches, which meant, unlike the Catholics and the Anglicans.

For instance, in the 1800s, when Australians started building churches, they, the Baptists, weren't getting subsidies and handouts from the larger denomination. They were raising money independently by themselves. This is a Baptist, distinctive that each church is autonomously run and thereby any building projects. For instance, are independently fundraised for. Secondly, independence of church and state, while Catholic and Anglican churches, for instance, were getting subsidies.

Also from the government to build their buildings, Baptists also wanted to stay away from that. They didn't want to be, I suppose, entwined with a government and who could later maybe influence them because we'd been given a generous handout at some point to build a building. Right. So what that ends up meaning is that while Catholic and Anglican churches look like this.

Baptist churches can tend to look like this.

Tell me that that's not going to inform our theology of extravagance and worship right? It's in our DNA. And so that's what I just kind of wanted to take a very long run up to say that we need to recognize what the foundations are, that we build our own theology on. And when it comes to extravagant worship, I think we can agree that we might have some biases, that maybe our pendulum has swung a bit too far the other way, and we can end up finding ourselves being in a very similar mindset as Jesus's disciples.

On this evening, before the Passover meal, where we say, why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year's wages, and the money given to the poor. But I think we can focus a lot of the time on sins of commission. So bad things, negative things, ungodly things that we do, and we sometimes forget that.

There's another side to that coin, which is sins of omission. Times that we missed the mark, which is literally one of the original words for sin. An archer who's trying to hit the bullseye. It misses the mark. I think we can miss the mark a little bit when it comes to understanding how extravagant and abundant and beautiful our worship can be in all senses.

Because the Word of God, Jesus himself rebukes this frugal, stingy, minimalist mindset. Again he says to his disciples, leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me, the poor you will always have with you, and you can help them anytime you want, but you will not always have me. She did what she could.

She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Truly I tell you, whenever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her. See, just as Mary in this moment dramatically cracks open, this alabaster jar of precious perfume and lavishly pours it over Christ's head, so too is Jesus.

Very soon going to commit the most extravagant act of worship that anyone could ever imagine. Because just as Mary broke that jar and lavishly poured out that perfume, so to Christ, when he brings his disciples in for the Last Supper, only a few verses later takes the bread, and when he is given thanks, he breaks it and gives it to the disciples, telling them, this is my body which is going to be broken for you.

And then he takes a cup, and when he gives thanks, he gives it to them, and they drink it. And he says, this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. A more precious libation offering than all the perfume in the world. The blood of God poured out extravagantly for us.

Maybe that there was some wisdom in the early church using this image of an alabaster jar, broken open and abundantly poured out as the opening frame to inform their worship. So I want to ask you all this morning what's in your alabaster jar? What is the precious thing that you might still be unwilling to pour out to Christ?

I don't know how many of you may be continuing on with the Lent Challenge series. This week was giving up screens. I realized that I might be holding screens in my alabaster jar. It's very hard to give up time on my side watching TV, even listening to podcasts and music. It doesn't have to be a year's worth of wages or precious perfume that we are being called to pour out this morning, but we may, in our own humanly flawed hearts, be elevating certain things to a point far beyond a year's worth of wages.

Mary's alabaster jar was most likely a family heirloom. It was so precious and expensive that it was probably something that had been handed down from generation to generation is the thing that you're holding in your alabaster jar this morning. Something that has been ancestral, an ancestral anchor that generations of your family have been holding on to. The generations of your church, your denomination, have been holding onto that this morning.

Jesus wants to challenge you to abundantly pour out onto him.

Because Mark's gospel reveals to us that when we break ourselves and give everything over to Christ, that it is in Jesus's own words, a beautiful thing. So I want to do something a bit weird, something a bit different. You can ask everyone to close their eyes for a second, and I want you to imagine that you were in that room some 2000 years ago with Jesus and his disciples eating a meal around a table, and he was standing there next to Jesus.

You're standing above him. You look down at his head, and in your hands is a jar, an alabaster jar of the thing that you hold most precious in the world, a thing that would be costly and scandalous and extravagant to let go of.

I want to ask you right now, I think you know what's going to happen. How do you feel about the thought of cracking open that jar right now? What emotions are going through you as you consider what it might be like to crack open that jar and extravagantly pour out whatever it is onto Jesus?

Maybe you want to take a second to ask the Holy Spirit to just take those feelings of resistance away, to take those feelings of fear away.

In your own time, I want you to imagine you cracking open that jar and pouring every last drop of what's inside onto the head of the Messiah. Onto the head of Jesus. Onto the head of the church. Onto the Son of God. Because no matter how priceless it may seem, it does not hold a candle to the blinding glory of God.

Thanks so much for joining us. Don't forget to write and subscribe to help others discover this channel. Check out the description if you want to find out more or get in touch with us at the center. Gerald. But in the meantime, praying for God's hand over you as you continue to step into everything Jesus has in store for your life.

Be blessed.