perfume

Tuesday March 31st,  Mark 14:7 She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her."  Jesus has been telling the twelve disciples, on their journey from Caesarea Philippi to Jerusalem, what leadership entails.  They, like you and I most of the time, didn’t get it.  Judas takes a very pragmatic approach to ushering in the kingdom by forcing a confrontation between Jesus and the authorities.  Some say it was a plan he and Jesus had worked out all along, most others, and I agree, say he didn’t get it either.  I think most of us, most of the time, don’t get it.  Mark inserts the story of this unnamed woman between those two points.  In the midst of it all, she gave of herself totally and worshiped Jesus.  She was at her wits end which means she had very little of her ego to push and only Jesus to seek.  She exemplified the idea of the servant leader Jesus was trying to get through to the disciples.  She becomes the first Christian, worshiping what would be the risen Christ even before the crucifixion.  She got it.  Sometimes in the midst of life and, yes, even death, we forget what the center of both life and death is all about.  Sometimes we don’t get it.  We still think it is about “us” singular and not “us” as a part of the body of Christ.  Look to the example of this unnamed woman and follow Christ by being a servant leader.  In the midst of it all, she got it, and it starts with loving the Lord your God with all you heart, soul and minds.