Mark 14:1-5: in context

Two days before the Passover, as the authorities plot to kill Jesus, a very different scene unfolds at Bethany. As Jesus reclines at table, a woman comes with an alabaster jar of pure nard, an ointment of great cost. She breaks the jar and pours it over his head, an act of lavish, uncalculating devotion. But some of those present are indignant, grumbling among themselves: why has this ointment been wasted? It could have been sold for a great sum and given to the poor. What the woman offered in love, they called waste.

The clash in this scene is between extravagant devotion and calculating practicality. The woman gave Jesus something very costly, poured out all at once in an act of pure love, holding nothing back. And the practical-minded were scandalized: what a waste; think what that could have done if sold. By their calculation, the lavish gift was inefficient, wasteful, better spent otherwise. But the woman was not calculating; she was loving, and love pours out its best without weighing the cost. What the calculating called waste, the woman offered as worship. This exposes a difference between two ways of relating to Christ. There is a calculating way that weighs the cost, that asks what is efficient and reasonable, that would never pour out something precious in an act of pure devotion. And there is the way of love, which gives extravagantly, lavishly, without counting the cost, because the one loved is worth it. The woman's act was, by practical measure, wasteful; but it was beautiful, an outpouring of devotion that the merely practical could never understand. And Jesus, in the verses that follow, defends her: leave her alone; she has done a beautiful thing to me. What the calculating called waste, he called beautiful. This searches how we relate to Christ. Are we always calculating, weighing what is reasonable and efficient, never pouring out anything precious in extravagant devotion? Or is there in us the love that gives lavishly, that pours out its best without counting the cost, because Christ is worth it? The merely practical will always call such devotion waste, as they called the woman's ointment waste. But love does not calculate; it pours itself out. There is a place for practical giving to the poor, which Jesus never dismissed. But there is also a place for the extravagant, uncalculating outpouring of devotion to Christ himself, which the practical will call waste and which Jesus calls beautiful. The woman poured out her costly ointment in love, and was criticized as wasteful, and honored by Jesus as beautiful; and her act invites us to a devotion that gives its best to Christ lavishly, without the calculation that would call such love a waste.

Am I always calculating in my relationship to Christ, weighing what is reasonable and efficient, never pouring out anything precious in extravagant devotion, or is there in me the love that gives lavishly and uncalculatingly because Christ is worth it, and can the woman who poured out her costly ointment, criticized as wasteful but honored by Jesus as beautiful, invite me to a devotion that gives its best to Christ without counting the cost?