The surpassing value of knowing

The expression, "A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" is a quote from an Oscar Wilde play. The phrase describes someone who focuses on the monetary cost of things while overlooking their true worth or inherent value; a person who prioritises material possessions over relationships or experiences.

In our Gospel passage today, we see what this looks like in action. Jesus is spending time at the house of his friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha.

The siblings have invited him to their home and are all making the most of this opportunity. Martha is serving Jesus and the other guests, Lazarus is sitting with him at the table enjoying the conversation and benefiting from the wisdom and friendship of Jesus. And in the middle of this seemingly ordinary picture of hospitality, Mary does something very strange. She suddenly breaks open a jar of expensive perfume, pours it on Jesus’ feet and then, kneeling in front of him, begins to dry his feet with her hair.

As the fragrance from the perfume fills the room, Judas is absolutely fuming! As he watches Mary wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair, as he watches the expensive perfume dripping over Jesus’ heels, he can’t contain his anger and must speak up.

“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”

On the face of it, this is a good and reasonable question.

This looks like a gross extravagant waste. Everyone in that household is a disciple and follower of Jesus. Many people – who support Jesus’ teaching and healing ministry – have donated their money to the cause. These donors would expect their money to be used to pay for the necessary expenses of travel, accommodation, food and clothing for Jesus and his disciples so that they could travel the region and spread the Good News and heal people in the towns and villages they passed through.

It would be like coming to church on harvest festival with your donations, only to hear me announce from the pulpit that all of the tinned food, boxes of cereal and bottles of cordial that you had spent your hard earned money on, were coming home with me and not being delivered to the food bank and given to those in great need.

I know the members of this church are loving and generous but, in that situation, could I really blame anyone if suddenly a can of tomatoes was launched at me from the congregation?

This action from Mary – a follower of Jesus – was outrageous and shocking. Not only the apparent wastefulness of using expensive perfume to clean Jesus’ feet when the money could have helped poor people. But also, the fact that Mary then used her hair to wipe his feet. In a culture where women had their hair covered, especially around men who were not related to them, for Mary to remove her scarf, to reveal her hair – her glory – and then carry out this incredibly intimate action was a costly one. It was potentially damaging for her reputation. Imagine what rumours would have circulated when word got out of what she had done? This was scandalous behaviour.

So why was Mary prepared to act in this way?

Because of what she understood about Jesus, his ministry and his mission. Her actions tell us that she knew Jesus.

She truly knew him. She knew him on a level that was beyond that of Judas and any naysayers.

Because there are levels of KNOWING.

On one level, to know someone is to be aware of them through observation or information we receive about them. The way we can “know” about a celebrity through their TV appearances, body of work, and articles we’ve read in the newspaper.

But this isn’t deep knowledge. A deeper level of knowing someone comes when we have developed a personal relationship with them through meeting and spending time with them.

To truly know is to absorb and experience. To know someone, you must move from just having information about them to experiencing them.  

Older bible translations use the word ‘know’ to describe the mutual indwelling experience of physical intimacy, e.g. Adam KNEW Eve.

What Mary, Martha and Lazarus had in common was that they knew Jesus in this way. They hadn’t just heard about him, observed him from afar. They had experienced him. Martha was very hospitable and Jesus had stayed at their home many times. They had absorbed his teachings, they had experienced his presence, and they had become much loved friends. They knew him.

They knew who He was. When Lazarus died and Martha spoke to Jesus, she told him “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

They knew the true value of the man they had come to know. They knew that He was the saviour of the world. They knew that He was the resurrection and the life. This wasn’t just head knowledge, Lazarus experienced being brought back from the dead. He truly knew that Jesus was the resurrection and the giver of life.

Knowing the true value of Jesus was the reason why Martha happily served him with humility. She spent her energy undertaking the unglamorous but necessary tasks of cleaning and cooking. Martha wasn’t focused on what she could get out of her association with Jesus but instead on what she could give.

Knowing the true value of Jesus is why Lazarus sat listening to the wisdom Jesus shared. Lazarus, who had literally been given a new lease of life because of Jesus, was willing to give his time and attention so he could know Jesus even more deeply than he had before.

Because she knew Jesus, Mary willingly sacrificed an expensive jar of perfume and risked social disapproval and judgement to worship at his feet.

These siblings knew Jesus in an experiential and intimate way and they were willing to make sacrifices because they recognised his value.

Judas did not.

Like the cynic in Oscar Wilde’s play, Judas knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Judas, the man who managed the money for Jesus and the disciples, knew to the nearest penny how much the perfume was worth. And yet he didn’t know the value of the person he claimed to be following.

He had spent time with Jesus, listened to his teachings, gone out with the other disciples to spread his message, but he didn’t know Jesus. There was no mutual indwelling. Judas hadn’t moved from the surface level of knowing about Jesus through observation. He hadn’t moved to a deeper experiential knowledge of Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

I wonder why? Was it because he was a cynic at heart? Cynics believe that people are motivated solely by self-interest. They believe that good intentions are rare, so they often are distrustful.

Maybe Judas had let his tendency to cynicism stop him from experiencing the truth of who Jesus was. Because he didn’t know Jesus and recognise who He truly was – he thought the value of being a disciple was in what he could take from the common purse. He thought the value of being acquainted with Jesus was his ability to use his knowledge of Jesus’s whereabouts to betray him for 30 pieces of silver.

His cynicism, his lack of faith in Jesus, made him know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Judas didn’t know the value in Jesus that Paul speaks of in his letter to the Philippian church.

Paul recognised that the things he used to value in life – his religious credentials and piety, his impressive education, his strong moral code – all those things he used to rely on as being evidence of his righteousness and worthiness before God, were worthless.

Paul now regarded ‘everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus [his] Lord’. He saw his own failed efforts to be righteous and follow the law as ‘rubbish in comparison to the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ.’

Paul – through his encounter with Jesus – was coming to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and sharing of his suffering. He recognised that the goal of life – the prize of most value – was the heavenly call of God found in knowing Christ Jesus. The prize of great value was the fulfilment of God’s purpose for us, a life lived in intimate fellowship and communion with Christ and culminating in eternal life with him.

So, what can we take from our readings today?

Today, on the 5th Sunday of Lent, perhaps we can reflect on where we are in that spectrum of knowing Jesus.

Maybe we’ve found ourselves drifting towards cynicism, like Judas: following Jesus but, under the surface, have we lost intimacy with him? Maybe we aren’t feeling as connected to him as we once were. Maybe the circumstances and problems in our lives have made us slightly cynical or caused doubts to creep in: will God really intervene in this mess I’m in? Will he ‘restore our fortunes’? Will we truly reap songs of joy again when right now we are weeping and suffering through the pain from the loss of our loved ones?

If that feels like where you are today, there’s good news in our reading from Isaiah. God is reminding us of who He is. He is the one who makes a way in the sea, a path in mighty waters. He is the one who does the impossible, Who meets His people, the people He created for Himself, where they are. He comes to us when we are in our wilderness, He refreshes us when we are feeling dry and far away from Him.

He reminds us that Jesus has made us His own. That however we feel right now, whatever we are struggling with, we can press on towards Him.

We are known by Jesus and He invites us again to know Him more deeply: to spend time listening to Him and His words, like Lazarus. Martha’s example encourages us to reignite our joy in serving Him and those in our lives – even if that service isn’t always appreciated by everyone.

Jesus invites us to see His value as we come to worship Him together and in our homes. He wants us to be like Mary, whose worship was costly and flamboyant. Because Mary recognised His true value. She recognised the costly sacrifice that Jesus would make for us – for everyone in this world. That the expensive perfume she poured out for Him could never match the worth and value of the blood that Jesus would freely shed for her.

This morning, as we look ahead towards our commemoration of the Passover, as we prepare to follow the way of the cross and remember Jesus' sacrifice for us. Let’s pray that God will help us on our life-long journey to know Christ in a deeper and more transformational way. May He remove our cynicism and self-reliance and help us to know the true value of His Son.