While [Jesus] was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. But some were there who said to one another in anger, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.” And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”
Mark 14:3-9
Ask: what has been freed in your life?
During the third week of Lent, the lectionary scriptures celebrated joy with the Israelites who received the Ten Commandments. God gave the law as a gift to be scaffolding, supporting a new way of living that replaced the systems of enslavement and oppression the Israelites had endured. But it is easy to forget about the liberating joy behind the law and internalize it as a set of thou-shalt-nots, just as the angry disciples did to the woman who “wasted” expensive ointment on Jesus rather than selling it and giving the money to the poor. Jesus intervenes on her behalf, reframing her action as the act of love that it was. This story is a reminder that the conditions in which we encounter joy are not always what we think they ought to be. Joy and grief mix together. Law and love get all tangled up. God keeps surprising us, pressing beyond our expectations to show us that more is possible.
Review the journal writing you did at the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, when you wrote about the places in your life where you long for joy’s return. Has anything shifted for you? Is there more joy, or less, as you contemplate those places?