EXTRAVAGANT WORSHIP

St. Mark 14:1 - 11 (NKJV)...
1 After two days it was the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take Him by trickery and put Him to death.
2 But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar of the people.”
3 And being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as He sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. Then she broke the flask and poured it on His head.
4 But there were some who were indignant among themselves, and said, “Why was this fragrant oil wasted?
5 For it might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they criticized her sharply.
6 But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for Me.
7 For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always.
8 She has done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint My body for burial.
9 Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”
10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Him to them.
11 And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. So he sought how he might conveniently betray Him.

This woman came bearing an alabaster box (vial). The box (vial) itself was extraordinary and exquisite. It was not some little plastic throwaway container, but something that was in itself expensive. Alabaster is a fine-grained, massive gypsum...an expensive translucent marble, either white, brown or yellow in color.

The remarkable thing is that there is no way to extract the spikenard (precious ointment) unless the container (the alabaster box) is broken. There was no screw-off cap as we know today that could be neatly screwed back on for the next time. It was either break it in order to extract the contents or the contents remained yet enclosed.

As expensive and beautiful as the alabaster box is, it’s not the container that interests the Lord, but it’s the contents (the spikenard / fine ointment) that He desires. So, to get to the expensive contents, the exquisite container must be broken.

The extravagance of our worship is in our brokenness. It is one thing to have the fragrance of Christ formed in us through identification with Him and quite another thing to have the religion of convenience, which is also the religion of betrayal. If our Christianity costs nothing and is convenient, then we are already one with Judas.

The faith is extraordinarily demanding, and that is why Jesus commended what the woman had done, and it was to be a memorial to her wherever this gospel is preached. This gospel is the gospel of extravagant abandonment and pouring out from our brokenness, or it is not a gospel of power. Wholeness is found only at the fulfillment of our brokenness.