The Perfume Bottle Mark 14:3-9
Advent is just around the corner, so I wanted to explore an event near the end of Jesus life before we look at the beginning of his life. I picked this scripture because of the imagery given to us by a simple perfume bottle.
In a 1998 article titled “Perfume, the Essence of Illusion,” it says, “Perfume is a promise in a bottle. Perfume speaks more to our vulnerabilities than our strengths. (It) is hope.” I also read that it takes 800 pounds of crushed roses to make one pound of scent concentrate; and that one pound of concentrate can sell for over $3500.
This perfume bottle gives us the imagery of Jesus. He is most valuable. He is here because of our vulnerability, our inability to live as God asks. It shows us Jesus is our strength and our hope.
Think about this or any perfume. It smells good. Leviticus 1:9, “And the priest shall burn all of it on the alter, as a burnt offering, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord.”
God is pleased that man sacrifices for his sin, and it’s narrated through smell, something tangible that man can understand. Here we have perfume with a pleasing smell calling us to see Jesus’ sacrifice pleases God so much it only needs to be done once. Once for all sin.
Verse 5, “She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.” Here is Jesus on the cross. Jesus, body broken, pouring out his life blood for our salvation.
The perfume is made of nard, an aromatic oil from a flower in the honeysuckle family. It grows in Napal, China, and India. Ancient Rome traded for it and it was used to flavor wine and food, and of course to make perfume. Verse 5, “It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages.” For someone in that time, saving up this amount of money would entail a lifetime of commitment to the task. Again, an image of Jesus. Jesus, who committed his whole life to the task given by God, the task of our salvation.
And now we enter this scene from the point of the disciples. Verse 5 continues, “And (the disciples) rebuked her harshly.” The disciples spent the past three years with Jesus, and they are still self-absorbed and not focusing on Jesus and his mission. They are still focused on their own ideas of how things should be and not on God’s way of things. So, Jesus rebukes them, and he still tries to teach them two days before his crucifixion.
First Jesus tells them to focus on God and to turn to him for the sake of mankind, not themselves. Verse 7, “The poor you will always have with you…” The world is not perfect, our free will causes us trouble. As long as mankind exists, at least until Jesus returns, the world will have those with less, those in need, and those who suffer.
Verse 7, “…and you can help them anytime you want.” We can reach out and help the desperate any day of the week, any hour of the day. But we must take note of the last part of verse 7, “But you will not always have me.” In all our work for each other, as followers of Christ, we must cherish and protect our time with Christ.
Jesus tells us to honor and work for others, but we must not do so at the expense of Jesus. The disciples had Jesus right there with them and they forgot what he was about to do for them. Their work, their way, became more important than Jesus. This has ramifications for us both big and small. We can give everything we have to others, to a multitude of charities, but if Jesus and the cross is not our motivation, it simply is work and not an extension of God’s love for us, nor a demonstration of our love for God.
Jesus shows us that our work for him is important, but not more important than our time with him. Yes, life continues, and we nothing is absolute, we can and should spend time with Jesus other than at Church but sadly the norm is more like; “Hey Joe, can you help me move the couch Sunday morning?” “Sure, I’ll just skip church.” What’s wrong with, “Sure, I need to spend time with God so I will be there as soon as church is over.” Sadly, I know a lot of people where church is a priority, until something else comes along. I have several friends, good Christians, who plan church around everything else in their lives instead of planning their lives around church and their time with God.
Verse 8, “She did what she could.” What did she do? She loved Jesus. Could she have given the perfume to the poor, yes. But she knew it would do more good giving it to Jesus. Think of what Jesus did for you. He gave you life by giving up his. If we gave everything we have to thank him, it still would not be enough. Most of mankind still looks for the most trivial reasons to put Jesus second, or worse. To this woman Jesus is everything, the only thing. She could have used her perfume for something else, but she would not use her great treasure on anything less than Jesus. Jesus is salvation, he is everything to us, and yet we continually withhold from him our best treasure, our time, our worship, and our praise.
We see the disciples thought the perfume was wasted. It was not wasted; it was given to Jesus. Our intentions may be in the right place, but our priorities can be skewed. “I’ll help you move your couch Sunday morning, it’s better than being in church for an hour.” Your time with God is never wasted. In fact, I’ll tell you it’s just the opposite. Time spent with God re-enforces and amplifies the work you do in the world.
Jesus says in verse 8, “She poured perfume on my body before hand to prepare for my burial.” The perfume was not wasted. It was used as an act of love, an act of discipleship, an act of devotion, an act of understanding the truth of Jesus and what he does for the world.
What do we do with our life’s “perfume?” This woman didn’t waste the perfume by keeping it on a shelf, she used it to honor the living. This is Godly, using what God gives us to honor others. Hoarding the perfume would have been what wasted it.
God gives us so much, not the least is our very life. How do we waste it? When we hoard bitterness instead of letting go of past insults, we waste life. When we hoard anger instead of forgiving past hurts, we waste life. When we hoard jealousy instead of being content, we waste life. When we hold on to the past and try to recreate it, we waste what God has for our future. Hoarding our “perfume” will never be a memorial to God.
The article I read said about perfume, “Perfume is a promise in a bottle. Perfume speaks more to our vulnerabilities than our strengths. We sell hope.”
The perfume in today’s scripture gives us an image of Jesus and proves how he is the living embodiment of this quote. Jesus is the promise. Jesus came to earth because of our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Jesus is our hope.
Like the perfume today was of great value, demanding a lifetime of commitment; it reminds us that Jesus is the most valuable thing in the universe and his whole life is dedicated to God and to our salvation.
The disciples in today’s reading show us all that even as we know Jesus, we can all forget him and what he did at times. We can start concentrating on our own ideas of what holy is and not on God’s idea of holy. We can put life’s demands, and even the work we do for Jesus, above Jesus and above our worship of him.
And this woman, who did not hoard the perfume, shows us all that we should not hoard our blessings but use them to honor and memorialize Christ and his work.
And finally, we are shown that to honor God with the one life he gives us, we should let go of our bitterness, our anger, and our jealousy. We should not look back, but look ahead into whatever God has waiting for us.
Let us try our best to live our lives as Jude writes in his letter in the Bible, “to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power, and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.”
(Jude 1:25)