Brown's Daily Word 4-20-11

Praise the Lord for this Wednesday of the Holy Week. According to Mark 14, Jesus is back in Bethany on Wednesday of the Holy Week. The event takes place in the house of Simon the Leper. This incident took place while Jesus was on his last journey to Jerusalem. While he was in Bethany, he was invited to the house of Simon the leper for a dinner in his honor. We don't know exactly who Simon the leper was. He obviously was a healed leper, or he wouldn't have been able to host a dinner party. Most likely, he is one of the many people Jesus touched and healed of that awful disease. I think it’s interesting that he was now “Simon the Cured,” but people were still calling him “Simon the Leper” because that’s how he had been known for so long.
Mary is the one on whom our story focuses. John tells us that she was the one who broke the precious alabaster jar and poured the perfume over Jesus.
Love always seems wasteful to those who don't love. Judas had witnessed an action of love and he called it extravagant waste. So much depends upon one’s point of view. One’s outlook is determined by what is inside of him.
Mary wanted to show some expression of her devotion for Jesus. For Mary, speech didn't seem to come easily. Hers was a silent nature, very much unlike her sister Martha. She probably felt that she would never be able to tell Jesus face to face about the depth of her feelings. So she took her most valued and expensive possession, the perfume that she had probably been saving for her own burial and the anointing of her body later on, and broke it and poured it over Jesus.
When Mary anointed Jesus, she wasn't looking for a place in the spotlight. She wasn't trying to win the applause of the crowd. What she did was done because of her overwhelming love for the Lord. But her act made her name immortal. In fact, had she performed this deed in order to be remembered, she doubtless would have been forgotten, because the Bible is not given to preserving the names of those who seek the spotlight.
But Mary was assured by Jesus of a permanent place in history because she performed a deed of such selfless love. He told her that she would never be forgotten. He said, "Wherever this gospel is preached throughout the whole world, what this woman did will also be spoken of as a memorial to her." (Mark 14:9). When Mary is forgotten by the world, it will be a late day in the history of mankind. When the world has forgotten her, then it will also have forgotten the story of him who was bruised for our iniquities and wounded for our transgressions.
Jesus commanded those of us who would come afterward to be sure to include this story in our proclamation. From the life and witness of Mary the Lord is provoking me to be less logical and more generous; Less analytic and more compassionate; Less self-centered and more Christ-centered; Less concerned about what somebody might think or say and more anxious to honor the one who first loved me. Unbelievers have always had a hard time figuring out the lifestyle of Christ’s disciples. When you think about it, you can understand their difficulty. They are guided by a life philosophy that promotes selfishness (the attitude that says, “You’ve gotta look out for ‘Number One’”), a philosophy that models greed (“Take what you can get!”), and a philosophy that assigns importance in dollar figures (how often have you heard someone ask, “What do you think he’s worth?”). Guided by such a philosophy, most folks see people trying to be selfless and generous as saps. Christ-centered people in a self-centered world are difficult to understand, and some people will never be convinced it could be anything other than an act to gain others’ confidence in order to manipulate, exploit, and victimize them.
Let us try to think about it from their perspective: Why would anybody choose to deny him or herself of any pleasure — no matter how tasteless or vulgar — when life is so short?
Why would people whose lives are at least as busy as theirs carve out time every week for worship, for Bible study, for service projects that do nothing to advance their careers? Why would Christians get involved in the lives of those who are poor and sick, and hurting?
Why would people who are carrying their load already as tax-paying citizens give ten percent or more of their income to the church?
People who don't know Jesus have a hard time figuring out why people would behave as Christians do! Our answer would be, of course, that we do these things because we love Him. He loved us first. He’s done so much for us and continues to do so much for us. And the more we understand that, the greater our love for him becomes.
And because we love him, there is nothing we wouldn't do for Him. He truly is our everything! May the Lord propel us to be extravagant and extra generous in our loving, in our giving, and in our serving.
In Christ,
Brown
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Saturday evening worship service.
Location: First United Methodist Church
53 McKinley Avenue
Endicott
Sponsored by the Union Center United Methodist Church, 128, Maple Drive, Endicott

Saturday, April 23, 2011
6 PM Coffee Fellowship

6:30 PM Worship Service
Worship Music: Winnie Miller, Dave Berry, Al Smith
Speaker: Rev Brown Naik


Easter services of celebration and worship will be held at the Union Center United Methodist Church, 128 Maple drive, Endicott, on Easter Sunday, April 24, at 8:30 and at 11:00 AM. There will be an Easter Celebration at the Wesley United Methodist Church, 1000 Day Hollow Road , Endicott, at 9:30 AM. Pastor Brown Naik will be preaching on: "Easter Faith in a Good Friday World".