What a Waste

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 -- Week of Proper 16, Year One

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 980)
Psalms 119:1-24 (morning) 12, 13, 14 (evening)
1 Kings 3:1-15
Acts 27:9-26
Mark 14:1-11

Extravagant. Wasteful. That money could have helped the poor.

Our gospel story today features an unnamed woman who takes perfume worth a year's wages and pours it on Jesus.

The reactions are swift. Most of the party is outraged. Imagine how this might play out today. What's a year's wage for a common laborer today? If I'm looking at the right number, the current U.S. poverty threshold is just over $10,000 a year. (Side conversation -- what would it be like to live on $10,000? My insurance costs more than that.) Imagine a stranger coming into a dinner party and anointing a guest with perfume worth $10,000. What might the reactions be?

Good, conscientious liberals would be outraged by the waste. $10,000 could feed a roomful of people at Community Meals for over four months.

But Jesus commends the woman and her act. "She has performed a good service for me," he says. He doesn't release the community from their obligation to care for the poor -- "For you will always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish..." We are still charged with the responsibility of showing kindness to the poor. But Jesus complements her loving action toward him. "She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her." Today, we retell the story.

Her's is an extravagant, wasteful act of love. It has little practical value, except to perform a duty of honor and respect toward Jesus. She expresses her love with costly generosity, and her act is to be remembered. Her name is lost to history.

Shortly before I was to move to Fort Smith to start my service at St. John's, I was in town to look for a home and start some orientation. There was a wedding that weekend, and I was invited. I sat in the side chapel. In front of me were two young men. In the mumble of conversation that sometimes precedes weddings, one of them patted the solid oak of the pew. "What a waste," he said disgustedly. "Yeah," said the other, "pity the trees." The wood in the pews of that churcyh could have made furniture for fifty homes, I guess.

Then I thought of the generations before and to come, finding solace, vision, hope and divine love while sitting in those pews. How people would be connecting with God in those pews long after these two young men were gone from this earth. Maybe their great-grandchildren would find their way to those pews, and learn the stories of Jesus and be loved as God's own children.

In years to come, every morning I would sit across from the pew they so disdained, taking my place for Morning Prayer in the chapel. I would watch the light come through an enormous, beautiful Tiffany-style stained glass window that catches the eastern sun. How many hours have I been entranced, uplifted, inspired, gladdened by the beauty of that window. It came from Belgium, sometime around 1900. I can imagine the Vestry conversations. "You want to spend how much for a window? From where? What a wasteful extravagance! That money could be more practically spent for ..."

But somebody had a love and vision like the anonymous woman who anointed Jesus. And I remember and thank them. That widow filled my heart with joy and gratefulness over and over. When I left St. John's, someone framed a photograph of that picture for me as a going-away gift. It hangs in my office.

Thank God for those who set aside the Buffalo River as a protected place of recreation and retreat. And for the people who saved Muir Woods. And for Gully Park. Thank God for the benefactors who commissioned Hank Kaminsky's peace fountain at the Town Center, and the team that plants and tends the landscaping on the Fayetteville square.

Thank God for random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty; for beautiful places to worship, and for the generous kindness that is inspired out of those holy places.

I'm grateful for those who invested in the architecture, windows and beautiful appointments of our little church. Its beauty helps make it holy. Its setting inspires and uplifts. And I am grateful for the kindness and good will that emerges from the worship in that place. From the prayer and communion of our gathered community comes food for the poor, healing for the hurting, hospitality and creativity that touches the lives of thousands who may never walk into that holy place.

"What a waste," the young man said, patting a pew that he figures gets sat in maybe once a week. You could buy a lot of perfume with what it cost to make that pew.

Lowell