Countering Culture With A Heart of Worship

Every birthday and Christmas and Mother's Day, I get some pretty amazing cards, and their common characteristic is that they are always homemade. Sometimes, they are crafted out of construction paper with decorations of glue and glitter and markers. Other times, they are artfully folded and cut into interesting designs. Once, I even got a wooden block from our shed that had been colored and smoothed and etched into a mini-masterpiece. 

My favorite part of every card is always the message. The glitter is... well, it's glitter. The colors are vivid and the decorations give them flair. But the message never fails to shoot straight to my heart and lodge there: "I love you, Mommy!"

In John 12:1-11, Jesus has a dinner to attend, and it's at the home of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, the same trio of people we've discussed throughout the last chapter. These siblings are very good friends of Jesus -- they've cropped up in several places throughout the four gospels. Chronologically, this dinner happens at some point after Jesus has called Lazarus from the tomb and after Martha has made her incredible faith statement ("I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, Who was to come into the world!" - John 11:27).

Mary... well... we haven't paid much attention to Mary yet, except that she's Martha's sister. Most of us know the story in Luke 10 where Martha and Mary prepare a dinner for Jesus and his disciples... that is, Martha prepares the dinner, while Mary sits at Jesus' feet... and listens to the Teacher, a privilege not usually granted to women in that time period. Rabbis taught men, not women.

It is possible that this account in John is the same account as that of Luke 10, where Mary is neglecting her sister in the kitchen while she is reveling in worship of her Lord. She's sitting at His feet, contemplating His words, processing them, applying them. (I don't know that this is the same dinner for certain, but I'm taking an educated guess). :)

In John 12:2, it says: "Here [at Lazarus' home] a dinner was given in Jesus' honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with Him."

I mean... I sometimes identify with Martha's frustration. Why does Mary get to sit at Jesus' feet? Martha has already delivered her faith statement: She knows, believes, and has declared Who Jesus is. Shouldn't she be allowed to rest in His presence? 

Martha seems to be in her element, though; she is the immaculate hostess -- serving her guests, fixing their food, preparing and seeing to their comfort. In Luke 10, she'd like a little help. In John 11, she is the first one to hear of Jesus' approach, because she is the oldest and the hostess. Personally, I think she has a gift for hospitality, and that's where she's the happiest.

God uses gifts of all kinds to minister. Martha's gift is hospitality, while Mary's gift is worship.

As Mary sits at Jesus' feet and listens to Him teach, she is overcome with her response to His words. She wants to show Him, in some small way, how important He is to her. And in a society that, however rightly or wrongly, largely keeps women from having a voice when men are present, she makes the boldest statement of all.

"Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped His feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume" (John 12:3).

Here, she is coming back to the heart of worship. She's left behind the "normal," the accepted, the ritualistic, the dime-a-dozen manufactured cards on the shelf...

She's made her own certificate of devotion. She throws herself into her expression, taking a precious possession (expensive perfume, worth a years' wages), and she pours it over Jesus' feet.

Then, and perhaps most significantly, she uncovers her hair and wipes Jesus' feet with it.

In that time, women kept their heads covered. Uncovering the hair is an act of intimacy, and while Mary is not being indecent, she is making a strong statement: She holds nothing back from her heart of worship. She keeps no veil between herself and her Lord. She actively rids herself of anything that stands between them.

She uses the most expensive thing she has to anoint the feet of Jesus (not even His head), an act normally reserved for the servants who, when their master enters the house and has picked up dust and dirt from the road, must remove their master's sandals and wash their feet.

She makes His feet beautiful and fragrant. "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" (Romans 10:15) Jesus is the Good News, and so Mary makes the feet of the Good News Bringer... beautiful. She performs an act typically reserved for the burial of a body where the body is anointed with oil, herbs, and spices; she presages Christ's death with her anointing.

And she does all this in the presence of witnesses. She puts aside her inhibitions (what will they think of me?) as she pulls the cloth from her head. She produces the expensive bottle as Judas Iscariot's greedy eyes flick to the price-tag. She hears the whispering and the nudging as she kneels down. And she does it all in worship of the Man Whose feet will, not long from now, have holes driven into them for her.

This truly makes me ashamed of myself, because how often have I stood up in church to sing out my worship to the Lord and kept my hands studiously fastened to the chair in front of me, lest people see me raise my hands to heaven with a heart of praise? How often have I quietly told myself to stay still when the Spirit inside me is so joyous, I want to dance? 

It would be an unusual sight for anyone to go against careful social norms, step outside of their comfort zones, push aside the outer obstacles, and truly and openly and plainly -- in the presence of witnesses -- anoint Jesus' feet with unbound hair and perfume worth a fortune.

But that's exactly what Mary does. She doesn't sail the same sea, chart the same course, use the same wind as every other person. She turns against the tide, tacks against the wind, removes every last iota that could possible keep her from her Savior and Lord... and she worships unreservedly.

Matt Redman's Heart of Worship is an old song, and I think for many of us, turns into white noise (we have to sing this song again?). But the message still holds tremendous weight:

I'm coming back to the heart of worship,
And it's all about You; it's all about You, Jesus.
I'm sorry, Lord, for the thing I've made it,
When it's all about you. It's all about You, Jesus.

Past the glitter, glitz, and glamor of what worship has become, can we get back to the ostensible reason for worship in the first place? Can we get rid of the accoutrements that have come with it? The bands, the PowerPoints, the soundboards, the styles? As a member of one of the worship teams in my church, I'm as much for seamless and professional-sounding music as the next music-lover.

But I want to highlight the purpose of it all. Can we get back to the Reason we worship? Those feet that bring the Good News? 

Let me tell you about my favorite part of this entire passage: After Mary has done her beautiful thing, after she has stepped into the limelight of that room, after she has faced her insecurities and put herself wholly into her act of worship...

After she finds herself the object of censure from watching eyes (Judas Iscariot, I'm looking at you)...

Jesus says: "Leave her alone."

Jesus comes to her defense, He shields her heart that she lays, in complete vulnerability, on the altar of worship. Get back. Leave her alone. Her worship is beautiful. It's true. It's right. 

Leave her alone.

She places herself in the most vulnerable position, and Jesus does not forsake her, even when everything she's doing goes against what is expected... 

Against cultural norms (using expensive perfume would be wasted on feet), against social norms (uncovering her head and using her hair was an intimate act), against religious norms (women did not sit in the presence of rabbis to listen to their teaching).

Leave. her. alone.

Let's counter culture, society, religion today... with a heart stripped of everything but worship of the One Who died for us.

Like those cards my children make for me each holiday, let's strip down from the pizzazz of the card counter at the store and get back to the message that makes the gift truly special.

Those four simple words: "I love you, Mommy!"