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Families of faith that dwell in older buildings eventually have to struggle with the issue of restoring stained glass windows. Such restorations can be exceedingly costly. Those same families of faith often struggle to meet their normal operating budget responsibilities. What's more, within a short distance of most church families are community people who struggle to provide the basics for the people whom they love. Can one not therefore argue that spending thousands and thousands of dollars on stained glass repair is a form of poor and reckless stewardship?


Or perhaps there was a time when you went to an art event and you quickly spied an absolutely gorgeous vase. To your eye, it was singularly beautiful and you had to have it, and to this day you enjoy it. However it cost you $450 and every time you pass by it, you still feel a twinge of guilt. Should you have spent that much?

Our text is about such seeming extravagance. Jesus is in Bethany at the home of Simon the leper and while he is at table, an unnamed woman comes up with an alabaster jar in hand and pours over his head an extremely expensive ointment called nard. Nard was a fragrant ointment prepared from the roots and hairy stems of an aromatic Indian herb. How expensive was it? Plenty expensive. A worker in Jesus' time would have labored a full day for a denarius. In order to pay for this amount of ointment, a worker would have had to labor for three hundred days. Talk about pricey!

Her action evokes, on the part of some, a heated response. "Why was this ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denarii, and the money given to the poor" (Mark 14:4). The practical-minded folks then commence to scold her, but Jesus comes to her defense. She has honored Jesus, and his anointing is in anticipation of the dark hours that soon will befall him. Were all this happening in our day, the rebuke might take this form: "How dare you engage in such an extravagant gesture in our cost-effective world?"

Often there are strong reactions to extravagance. The minimalist school of architecture -- a movement strongly associated with Mies van der Roe -- was a reaction to the perceived excesses of other forms of architecture. The same has happened in music and art. Such reactions have also occurred in the history of the Christian church. We might call the Puritans theological minimalists, who reacted to ecclesiastical excesses.

Today, reactions to perceived extravagance occur in a cost-effective world. The prevailing mind set goes like this: If it doesn't pay for itself and more, it needs to go.

From the standpoint of the Christian faith, do extravagant gestures have a place in a cost conscious world? Jesus seems, in our text, to say they do. Let's look a bit more closely at this account.

Note first that this extravagant gesture is not an act that occurs in a vacuum. The extravagant expression is directed to a person and the extravagance itself is seen as a manifestation of the value of that person, in this case Jesus. There is a world of difference between sharing a bottle of vintage wine with a spouse or good friend, and dumping the wine down the kitchen sink. The former is extravagance with purpose; the latter is utter waste.

In our families and friendship circles, we gather at various times for a special, or extravagant, meal. We spend more money on that meal than we normally spend to eat, but it is a special meal because it is shared with people we love. The food we prepare is a reflection of the affection we have for these people.

Note, too, that this extravagant gesture is not in competition with other expressions of generosity. When Jesus reminds this lady's critics that they will always have the poor with them, he is not for a moment suggesting they be put off to one side and forgotten. Tending to their needs is a given, but what this lady has done to Jesus is in a special class all by itself.

Then third, something that is extravagant is, by definition, beyond what is usual. It's not done all the time, else it would not be special and extravagant. "... but you will not always have me," says Jesus. This seeming extravagance was a one-time event.

But let's get even more specific. This woman's act can be seen as an affirmation and celebration of the arts. Funding is usually a problem for the arts. When the numbers crunch is on, what first gets cut in a public school curriculum are programs related to the arts. If it's a choice between chemistry and music, chemistry is probably going to win out.

It was David H. C. Read who first established the link for me between the alabaster jar and art. Said Read:

Suppose we take this box and its perfume as a symbol of the beautiful. The response of the disciples to the incident is then typical of what many Christian people feel about the arts. They are an extravagance. They are not something on which a religious man will spend his money. The good, the moral, the correct thing to do with the alabaster box is to cash it in and use the proceeds for social work among the poor.1

Read went on to say, though, that both the scriptures and the arts are concerned with the ultimate mystery of life and should, as he put it, "join hands in the service of the soul."

It is not happenstance that church buildings, mosques, and synagogues are often repositories for beautiful art. Certainly every sanctuary has its share of that which reflects beauty. What's more, that which reflects beauty occasionally needs to be restored and protected. We do that because beauty is its own form of ministry. Beauty also participates in, and reflects, the mystery of God's gracious countenance. Therefore we invest in that beauty, even if at times the cost seems extravagant. How much is beauty worth?

The late Henri Nouwen put it well:

The dominant question in work has become: "How practical is it and what does it cost?" Whole cities have been built so exclusively useful that their sheer ugliness did visible harm to the physical and mental health of those who live there. The irony of usefulness is, that, when beauty is no longer part of it, it quickly becomes useless. In the days when houses, churches, and cities were built which now attract tourists from all over the world, beauty was not perceived as an added decoration of useful things, but as the quality to which all work was directed.2


But appropriate extravagance is not alone connected to that which is inanimate. Not only was the essence the woman used costly; her act was an expression of extravagance, too. To be extravagant literally means to "stray beyond." We need parents who "stray beyond" an average commitment to their children; pastors who "stray beyond" a minimal level of pastoral care; doctors who "stray beyond" ho-hum medical care; teachers who "stray beyond" lick and promise pedagogy. The list is endless.

Jesus is saying, I believe, that there are those times when we should feel free to let go and be extravagant, in the service and praise of God.

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1. David H. C. Read, The Arts and the Scriptures (From a series titled The Bible and the Daily Paper, aired on the National Radio Pulpit during February, 1972).

2. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Care and the Elderly (An address to the biennial luncheon of The Ministers and Missionaries Benefit Board of the American Baptist Churches USA, delivered on June 25, 1975, in Atlantic City, New Jersey).