How much would you pay to smell nice?  $6?  That’s how much you’ll pay for a really small bottle of Giorgio Yellow at Wal-Mart.  (Apparently, it’s a ‘formal feminine fragrance that blends the scents of bergamot, orange, ylang-ylang and musk’.)   How about $14.27?  You’ll pay that for some Gloria Vanderbilt body lotion (‘for the woman who demands attention when she enters the room’).  But, perhaps your nose deserves something finer than that.  If so, you can have a bottle of Angel for 60 bucks (‘Its fragrant nature explores essences of honey, chocolate, and caramel and is blended with notes of vanilla, patchouli, and sandalwood’.)   And just to show that this is an equal opportunities sermon let me say that men can smell good too for as little as $6, which is what you’ll pay for a little bottle of Drakkar by Guy Laroche (‘a typically masculine scent with a classic fougere accord. Now updated with a contemporary fruity note, this fragrance is sharp and spicy with lavender and amber undertones.’  I don’t even know what a classic fougere accord is - it sounds like a French car.  In fact, I don’t even know if I’m pronouncing it correctly.)

But what if you’re so aromatically-challenged that you need something a little classier than that.  Well, according to Forbes magazine the most expensive bottle of perfume you can buy is called Imperial Majesty.  It is a limited edition of a Clive Christian signature scent, and it is so exclusive that it simply goes by the name ‘No. 1’.  It’s only on sale at Harrod’s in London and Bergdorf Goodman in New York.  And it is very reasonably priced at $215,000 for a 16.9-ounce bottle.  Actually, what you’re really paying most of that for is the packaging.  It comes in a Baccarat crystal bottle, with a five-carat diamond set in an 18-carat gold collar.  Only ten bottles were made.  But I met this guy in the pub who can get you one for 25 bucks.

When it comes to lavish expenditure on perfume, we don’t have to go as far as Harrod’s or Bergdorf Goodman.  We need only go as far as today’s Gospel reading.  Jesus is at the house of Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  The twelve disciples were also there.  They’re eating dinner.  Martha is serving (no surprises there) and Lazarus is, presumably, entertaining Jesus; he had been raised from death by him after all.  Showing him hospitality was the least they could do.  But the third member of the family goes way beyond anything that could be expected.  The culture of the day demanded certain things of a host who had people for dinner, but Mary goes to embarrassingly extreme lengths to give hospitality to Jesus.  She takes a pound of pure nard, an expensive perfume, and pours it on Jesus’ feet, and then wipes it with her hair.  How expensive was it?  Well, John records Judas as saying it was worth a year’s wages.  The average household income in Fremont last year was about $42,000. So this was decent perfume.

Not surprisingly, then, Mary’s actions caused shock and scandal to those present.  Judas sees this extravagance as a huge waste of money and he protests, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?”  Mmm.  Good question.  Really good question.  Face it; most of us would probably have thought the same thing.  What a waste.  A year’s wages … to pour someone’s feet?  Think about the good that could have been done with that money – the suffering that could have been relieved, the poor who could have been helped.  Maybe we find ourselves having those very same thoughts when we come across lavishly designed and extravagantly decorated church buildings.  Multi-million dollar worship venues with the most expensive sound systems and video technology.  Maybe even with a modest river running down the centre aisle.  Maybe you think it when you see cathedrals with their stained-glass and their ornaments and pipe organs and jewel-encrusted gold chalices.  This is a problem, isn’t it?  I bet when you came to church this morning you didn’t think you end up agreeing with Judas!   But, he had a point.  And Jesus’ response seems pretty shocking too.  He says to Judas, “Leave her alone.  It was intended that she should save this perfume for my burial.  You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.”  Can that be right?  Jesus seems to be taking the side of the rich, ornate cathedral, and saying that is a better use of the church’s money than social justice.  Surely Jesus is not defending this shocking waste of money?  Well, actually, yes, he is.  Because it’s not a waste of money.  

I think that when John wrote his Gospel and thought about how he was going to record this event he was aware of the danger that we would misunderstand what Jesus is saying and think that he is showing a lack of care for the needy.  So John gives us this little nudge and says, “Reader, don’t go there”.  He slips in a little detail that warns us away from feeling too much sympathy for Judas.  He tells us that Judas wasn’t really motivated by concern for the poor.  He didn’t object to Mary using the nard on the feet of Jesus because he cared about people living in poverty.  No, the reason he objects is that he wanted the money Mary would get from the sale of the perfume for himself.  John tells us that Judas kept the common purse of the group and he would routinely help himself from it. 

And yet we can still be uncomfortable with this apparent waste of money and with the strange-sounding words of Jesus, that we will always have the poor with us.  So, what was Jesus getting at?  Why was he so accepting of Mary’s extravagant gift of anointing his feet?   He says ‘you won’t always have me around.’  Jesus sees this anointing with perfume as part of his preparation for his death.  John says this event happened six days before the Passover.  In other words, just one week before Christ’s crucifixion.  That event was on the mind of Jesus.  It was why he was about to enter Jerusalem.  You see, it was the custom to anoint dead bodies for burial.  Remember on the day of the Resurrection Mary Magdalene went to Jesus’ tomb to do this very thing – to anoint the corpse with perfumes.  She had not been able to do it on the Friday afternoon because the Sabbath was about to start and you couldn’t touch a dead body on the Sabbath.  So she hurries to the tomb at first light on Sunday morning to do it.  Of course, she found it empty because Jesus had risen.  So the dead body of Jesus never got that anointing with perfumes.  Instead, it happens, symbolically, here, a week before his death.  The death of Jesus is all over this scene.  It’s likely that Mary, Martha and Lazarus were aware of the trouble that lay before Jesus as he made his way into Jerusalem.  They were locals and they would have heard the chatter about the danger he was in.  And here Mary prepares Jesus for his burial, a week before his death.  The air was thick with nard, but it was the impending death of Jesus that permeated that house.

And in the light of that, then of course, her act of extravagant worship was a good and proper thing to do.  These friends loved Jesus.  He had done so much for them.  And now they wanted to show their love for him, especially at this dangerous time when his life was in such danger.  It’s as if Jesus is saying, “Friends, we’re going to Jerusalem.  Tomorrow we’re entering the city.  Crowds will go crazy, they’ll wave palms and put their coats on the ground, but within a week they will kill me.  This is the last time I’ll be in this house with you, my friends.  The poor?  Sadly they’ll still be here next week, and the week after, and for ever.  But we need to mark this last time together before I die for the world.  Next week, when I’m risen and am re-united with you, then we will think about the poor, then we will change the world because the world will have been changed.”  

It wasn’t just the waste of money that had Mary’s guests shocked and angry.  There were other reasons why her anointing of Jesus’ feet was so outrageous. 

1          She did it herself.  It was the custom that a visitor to a house would have their feet washed.  Yet, it was never done by the lady or gentleman of the house, the person throwing the party.  Instead, it was the duty of a household servant.  The fact that Mary herself washes Jesus’ feet is a sign of embarrassing humility.

2          Another social convention Mary broke was to touch Jesus.  Normally, a woman never touched a man except her husband and children - and then only in private.

3          And Mary wipes Jesus’ feet with her hair.  Now, in order to do that, of course, she has to have her head uncovered, and in that time and place a respectable Jewish woman would never appear in public with her head uncovered.  The only people permitted to see her hair would have been her immediate family.

So let’s count the sacred cows being slaughtered here: (1) Mary, and not a servant, washes Jesus’ feet (2) with a year’s worth of wages of perfume instead of water.  (3) In doing so she inevitably touches him, and (4) she then uncovers her head to dry his feet. 

Mary serves as an extraordinary example to us.  How much are we prepared to give in our worship of the Risen Christ?  And I don’t mean financial giving, although that is surely part of it.  I mean the act of worship that is our entire lives.  What are prepared to give for Christ?  Do we give him costly offerings or do we give him what we have left over?  Again, not just money, but time and energy.  Before we start our day we can set aside time for God, before we decide how to use the next sixteen hours.  Before we spend the paycheck we can set aside money for God’s mission before we’ve spent any of it.  Before we plan our week we can set aside time and energy for church or for the act of kindness or for work of service, before all those other things rush in and demand all our available time.  The Old Testament calls that offering the first fruits to God, not the leftovers.  We can give God our best or we can give what we have left when we’ve seen to our own needs. 

Mary takes the best she has to offer, breaks the jar, and pours it over the feet on Jesus.  Even in the face of criticism and disapproval she holds nothing back.  Dare we risk the embarrassment and the scandal of doing the same.  Do we love enough to take the things we hold most dear and offer them to Christ?  Or will we be content to offer him the leftovers?

Let me finish with an inspiring and true story of a young girl who, in the likeness of Mary, gave all she had.  At the end of the 19^th Century Hattie May Wiatt lived near Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia and regularly attended the Sunday School there, although it was a very small room.  The Rev Russell Conwell, the pastor of the church, explained one day that the Sunday School could take no more new children because it was so crowded.  A short while later Hattie May Wiatt became sick and died.  Her mother invited The Rev. Conwell to take the funeral.  She also gave him 57 cents that Hattie May had been saving in a little purse.  She explained that Hattie May had been hoping to save enough to buy a new Sunday School room.  Rev. Conwell was very moved by Hattie May’s offering and a few days later told the congregation her story.  He also sold those 57 pennies to members of the congregation for a total of $250.  54 of the original 57 pennies were returned to Rev. Conwell and he later put them up on display as an inspiration to his congregation.  So it was that some members of the church formed what they called the Wiatt Mite Society which was dedicated to making Hattie May's 57 cents grow as much as possible and to buy a new property for the Sunday school.  A house nearby was purchased with the $250 that Hattie May's 57 cents had produced and the rest is history.  In time that house became the location for the first classes of Temple College.  As the college grew the church sold the house.  By then it had become Temple University.  Adjacent to it, arising directly from the original 57 cents in the Wiatt Mite Society the Good Samaritan Hospital (Now the Temple University Hospital) was founded.

Let’s see what can happen in our own lives as we offer to God all we have.