City Life Starter

Written by Paul Lane

The Word

“What is man, that thou are mindful of him? And the son of man that thou visitest him?  For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and has crowned him with glory and honour.”

Psalm 8:4-5 (KJV)

“Those who worship worthless idols forfeit the mercy that could be theirs.”

Jonah 2:8 (NET)

“Those deceived by worthless things lose their chance for mercy.”

Jonah 2:8 (CEB)

“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii, and given to the poor people?”

John 12:5 (NASB)

Reflection

As Christians we know that Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost.  He told us how to live and things that we should do.  Be humble, feed the poor, love one another.  And we do.  Yes, we struggle with it, but I think that is what we are trying to do.  Of course, if you approach the Christian life as a list of things to do, it can get a bit rigid and you might miss out on the main point.

Maybe there is a bit of confusion over the point here.  Jesus reclines in a house.  A woman pours expensive perfume on his feet, then wipes them with her hair.  The house is filled with this over concentrated smell, the scent of perfume applied by a teenager on their first date.  A man complains that the money for the perfume could have been better spent on the poor, a thing that Jesus told us to do.  We think the woman a hero and the man a jerk, yet he wanted to feed the poor. 

“Oh, sure,” you can say. And John does say that the man wasn’t really thinking of the poor, and perhaps not.  But regardless, could you still say that the perfume was well used?  It is a legitimate question, even if a bad man asked it.  Shakespeare loved to put some of the most important words of his plays in mouths of some of the most ignoble characters.

“My words fly up.  My thoughts remain below.  Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go.”  So prayed King Claudius, the villain of Hamlett.  It’s funny really.  This prayer illustrates an important Christian concept; prayers without God’s fellowship are useless.  Yet this prayer saved his life.  Hamlett thinks that if he kills the king while he is praying, the king will go to heaven.  So, he doesn’t do it.  Prayer works?

Back to the perfume.  How elevated a thing is it that is done here?  Pure essence of the fragrance, poured out onto the feet of Jesus.  Human hair used as a towel, and the whole house filled with the stench of the moment.  It was a milestone in human history.  People could say, “where were you when Mary anointed the feet of Jesus?”  While they would not say that in the news papers of the times, they do say it in the news that will be read for all eternity.  This marking of the moment was an end to the way of one type of life and perhaps the final birth pain of a new kind of man.

So, it is to you.  Do you take up the forms and the structures that are approved by the world around you, and sail or drift into the uncertain ways of this world?  Or do you follow the scent of the eternal, and in accepting ruin or honor commit to the thing that only Jesus can secure?

Application

Jesus came to redeem something in everyone.  With each person that you meet, think on what that was. 

Prayer

Oh Lord, what is man that You do think of us.  Why crown us with glory and honor when we don’t pursue it ourselves?  But I accept that this is my low thought and that Your thoughts of the world, and of man, and of me are much higher.  I pray Lord that You teach me Your thought and that You make Your ways my ways.  In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.