Who am I anointing?

I think about all the things I think are important. I think of all the cards I have bought to tell people how wonderful they are. I think of parties I have gone to, the special notes I have written and the ways we have celebrated people’s accomplishments. Wow..some have been really cool. Some of the 90th parties we have been a part of have been really cool…. but..I have never, picked up something worth a years salary and poured it all over someone. Not yet… Matthew 26:6-10. “While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of a man shamed Simon the leper, a women came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.” Of course , people were upset. I guess would have thought the same thing. Why waste all this money. What we could have done with the money instead of “waste” it. How did she earn the money? We can give money to the poor…. yeah right! We are very fickle people. At one part of our heart we want to honor people. The other part of our heart is jealous when others are honored. And then again, we have this tendency to criticize what others do seemingly regardless. The leaders of our world do not encourage us to go all out. We are told to be fragile, to save, to have a reason for the things we do, act with a plan, etc. For once, I would like to be known as someone who gave it all. I would like to be known for the person who dumped the bucket, who walked across the street and through the ditch and left the comfortable to jump into a pool of slime. That’s what I would love to be known for. Someone who threw caution to the wind and loved God so much that the temporal things of life didn’t matter. The woman? She was probably a lot like me. Women usually do have the same things in common. It was probably Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. It was probably an expensive jar, it was expensive perfume, but more importantly it was something she had to honor the one person whom honor was demanded. What do I have to give in response to Good Friday? I have a piano, an expensive recording machine, duplicator, cd recorders, guitars, ukeleles, banjo, fiddles; it would be like if I took my guitar and smashed it over Jesus head. Or if I took the bow to my fiddle, actually my great grandfathers fiddle, and let Jesus walk on it. Or I took my beautiful Baldwin upright grand and pushed it down the road for Jesus to sit on rather than a donkey. Value, I have very few things of value but what I have, am I willing to dump them at Jesus feet in response to what he has done for me? What things have a hold of my heart so much that Jesus is second place? Is there anything I wouldn’t dump on the head of the one who was willing to die for me? Looking at the big picture, I have nothing of value that tells Jesus I love him comparably to a years salary like Mary did. I have nothing of value and yet, my value is priceless. My life is to be poured out. I shouldn’t matter. I should take whatever is in my life to give Christ total control whether it be perfume or pianos. So on Good Friday I think about what I can sacrifice… what can I pour out to be thankful, grateful, obliged, pleased or beholden. My actions need to be all hands on deck and all hands open with no clenched fists. I need to hold to nothing tighter than falling through my fingers except to love God so deeply that when I look in the mirror I see Jesus. I see people’s eyes rather than my own, I see people’s tears rather than my frustration and I see eternity rather than today. I need to see the Jesus that is worth the entire bottle of perfume that gets everyone up in arms. I need to dump it all, pour it out and let the smell permeate others. So Good Friday is my challenge to live so that nothing else matters. To dump over the head of Jesus the honor due him, and to be said that what I did was a beautiful thing.