The
Glory
in
a Perfume Bottle
A
Study in the Gospel of John
Sermon prepared for the week
of
Dr.
Larry Thorson
First
Presbyterian Church,
Small Group Format
This sermon was prepared to be part of a six week
Lenten small group series course at the First Presbyterian Church of
Select One Person to be a Group Facilitator to keep the group focused on the questions and
activities.
Opening Prayer – sample provided or use your own
“Almighty God, thank you for your Word
and Your presence. May we grow together
in this time and come to a greater understanding of your Word and each
other. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Scripture in this study will be from Today’s New International Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society
Scripture: John 12:1-19
1 Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to
4 But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him,
objected, 5 "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?
It was worth a year's wages." 6 He did not say this because he cared about
the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to
help himself to what was put into it.
7 "Leave her alone," Jesus replied. "[It was intended] that she
should save this perfume for the day of my burial. 8 You will always have the
poor among you, but you will not always have me."
9 Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not
only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.
10 So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, 11 for on account
of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in
him.
12 The next day the great crowd that had come for the Festival
heard that Jesus was on his way to
"Hosanna!"
"Blessed is he who comes in the name
of the Lord!"
"Blessed is the king of
14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written:
15 "Do not be afraid, Daughter
see, your king is coming,
seated on a donkey's colt."
16 At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was
glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and
that these things had been done to him.
17 Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and
raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. 18 Many people, because
they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him. 19 So the
Pharisees said to one another, "See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how
the whole world has gone after him!"
Read John 12:1-2: Six days
before the Passover, Jesus came to
Comment: It is now the last week,
the week when Jesus would be betrayed, tried and hung on a cross to die. This is holy week when the skies go dark and
the glory of God seems to disappear.
But that’s not how the week
started. After having their brother
Lazarus raised from the dead, Mary, Martha and Lazarus decided to have a supper
for Jesus in his honor as a way of saying thanks for the miracle of a second
chance.
Each one had their own way of showing
their love for Jesus. Martha prepared
the meal. If you know anything about
Martha, that’s what she does. She is someone that expresses her love for
Jesus by doing for him. She works with her hands, she creates something
for him and serves him. She is someone that has to “do.”
Lazarus simply sits with Jesus. No
where in Scripture do we see Lazarus saying a word. He is the sort of
strong silent type. Yet he is sitting with Jesus. Lazarus is a
testimony for what the Lord has done. He is an example of God calling us
by name and raising us from our stench of death into the beautiful aroma of
life in him.
Mary is someone who would rather be at
the feet of Jesus because each time we read of Mary that’s where she ends up. When
we are first introduced to her, Martha is working and serving and Mary is
sitting at Jesus feet. When Jesus comes
to the town that Lazarus had been buried after he died again Mary was sitting
at his feet. She is very expressive in her love for Jesus.
Each of these three portraits have their
place. Each of them are necessary in the
Discussion
Question
1.
What style do you relate to best and why? Martha, Mary or Lazarus?
Read
John 12:3:
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.
Comment: Now it’s not just sitting at the feet of Jesus but
Mary does something radical. She breaks
open the seal of an extremely expensive perfume that was made in
We are told in the other Gospels (Mark
and Matthew) that she begins to pour it onto Jesus head and feet and then wiped
his feet off with her hair. In this
culture, a little girl would be allowed to run around with her hair down, but
as she became about twelve or so, she would then pin her hair up so that she
would be presentable for courting.
It was customary that you would keep
your hair up in public and when you were married your husband would let your
hair down on your wedding night and see you in all of your beauty for the first
time as no other man had seen her. Her hair was considered her glory as
Paul says in 1st Corinthians 11. A woman’s hair was to be cared for and
brushed and kept as a gift to her husband.
Yet we see Mary without a care for what
is acceptable in the eyes of others, let down her beautiful hair and washed off
Jesus feet. She took the most expensive possession that she owned, probably
a family heirloom and gives to Jesus the only physical glory she could, she
washes his feet with her glory.
How expensive was that gift? Let’s take an aside and look at what
expensive perfume is. Let's suppose it
is your wife's birthday and you were going all out, price being no object. What
is the most expensive perfume in the world?
Clive Christian No. 1 perfume is the
world's most expensive over the counter perfume available at $2,150 an ounce.
However Mr. Christian decided to create the ultimate luxury gift for the woman
you love. He calls it "Imperial Majesty", and it costs $215,000 a
bottle, and is the most expensive bottle of perfume in the world.
The reason Imperial Majesty costs so much is that Christian, a British
designer-turned-perfumer, poured
Last June, the Guerlain boutique on
Champs Elysee in
It says Mary’s gift was expensive. Its aroma would have filled the entire house.
She was the only one of Jesus’ followers who heard him talk about his impending
death and believed him by preparing his body for burial with this perfume. The others just weren’t listening. Mary had seen the glory of God and about the
only response you can make is to reflect that glory. This expensive bottle of perfume was how Mary
reflected that glory. Judas, one of
Jesus’ disciples reflected something else.
Discussion Questions:
1. What was the most
expensive gift you ever purchased?
2. What do you think Mary was
trying to do with this gift?
Read
John 12:4-5 “But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot,
who was later to betray him, objected, 5 "Why wasn't this perfume sold and
the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages."
Comment: But was Judas really
concerned with the poor?
Read John 12:6: “He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a
thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into
it.”
Discussion Questions:
1.
If
Mary reflected the glory of God in the bottle of perfume, what did Judas
reflect?
2.
Despite
his motivations in v.6, what else was wrong with Judas’ argument?
Read
John 12:7-8:
"Leave her alone," Jesus replied.
"[It was intended] that she should save this perfume for the day of my
burial. 8 You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have
me."
Comment: Jesus knew the contrast
between the heart of Mary and the heart of Judas. This contrast is found even in our church
today. There are and will be those with the love and heart for Jesus that
Mary had, and there are and will be those who reflect something else.
Discussion Question:
If
you’re honest, what are you reflecting in your life? Your family tradition? Your national tradition, i.e. military? Your friends or family? What you have seen on television lately? Your circumstances? If you haven’t experienced the glory in awhile
it’s going to be hard to reflect it.
Read John 12:9-11: “Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out
that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus,
whom he had raised from the dead. 10 So the chief priests made plans to kill
Lazarus as well, 11 for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to
Jesus and putting their faith in him.”
Comment: And so holy week began with plans being laid to
kill Jesus. At this dinner party imagine
being Jesus and having a full bottle of this obscenely expensive perfume poured
over your head, and running down your neck and arms, all the way down to your
feet in this fragrance. It sat on your skin and was absorbed into your pours.
You happen to live in a time when you didn’t bathe frequently, maybe once a
week. After a few days of not bathing, what do you smell on your
skin? You would obviously smell the fragrance of that perfume because it
will linger on your body for some time, even after bathing.
We know that Jesus knew he was going to
be crucified. We also know that eventually Jesus is taken, he is caught in
the cover of darkness, he is taken and given a mock trial with false charges,
and they have him turned over to be beaten to be whipped until the bones on his
back are exposed, he has large chunks of beard ripped from his face, he is
forced to carry a thick wooden cross on his open wounds so they can lay him on
that cross and drive iron spikes through his hands and feet, and then lift him
up so that all of his body weight is resting on the holes in is hands and feet.
We are not told that Mary was at Jesus
feet as he was hoisted up on the cross, but Mark says that there was a large
crowd of women around Him. My assumption is that this group of women are
sitting at the foot of the cross as Jesus hangs above them, and Mary finds
herself for the last time looking up at her King.
In a Roman crucifixion, the way in which
you would die, would be by suffocation. Your body weight would pull so
heavily on your arms that eventually your shoulders would become dislocated and
you would not be able to pull up your weight so that you could breathe. You would feel tremendous pressure on your
chest as your lungs were compressed with the weight of your body. So that
this death was not quick, but long and torturous, they would also nail your
feet to the cross so that you could push off of your feet to lift your body up
to catch a breath. They wanted you to be able to grab only small amounts
of breath to prolong the torture.
So each time you are about to black out
from the pain and lack of oxygen, you would gather your strength and brace
yourself for the pain of pushing off of the spike driven through your feet to
try to get as much air in your lungs as you could.
If
this went for too long, they would grow weary of your not dying, and they would
come by with a long iron pole and break your legs so that you would die by
suffocation.
We
know that it is prophesied that none of Jesus bones would be broken, so by the
time the Romans came to break His legs He willingly yielded His Spirit and
died.
As Mary looks at Jesus, she must have
realized that she was a sinner, that this act was the one he spoke of on
numerous occasions. That she ultimately is the reason he is hanging on the
cross on her behalf.
My question to you is this; as Jesus
pushes off of the spikes to grab whatever air he could in his lungs, as he
looks down upon Mary who loved Him, what fragrance do you think filled His
lungs for the last time he inhaled before he died?
Jesus smelled the gift of Mary. He
smelled the gift of love that Mary had given to him only a few days earlier as he
spoke of her act being done in preparation for his death. I would imagine that
as He breathed his last, that fragrance gave Him comfort as he was continually
reminded of the reason for why He was about to die. It was for Mary, the
one that loved Jesus and the one that was loved back by Jesus.
Everything we have is a gift given to us
by the one that created us. The very senses we possess are to be used to
sense the presence of God in his creation and to give glory to Him.
The
sunrise, the taste of the sweetest fruit, the touch of your wife or husband,
the laughter of your children, and the aroma of your beautiful wife or your
husband that loves you.
When I am away and return, the one thing
that I enjoy when I return is embracing my wife and smelling her scent. As
soon as I would hold her, I could smell the first time her and I held one
another. There is something about the scent of your wife that make you
long for her when you are away. And as your mind takes in that smell, in
brings with it thoughts and emotions and feelings that are triggered all by the
aroma of her love.
This is why husband or wives when losing
their spouse refuse to get rid of the clothes of their loved one. Each
time they hold a piece of clothing in their hand they are reminded of their
loved ones. These very senses God gives
us to remind us that everything we sense, we should remember him. Everything
that our sense bring to us, should be for the purpose of glorifying the one
that gave us the ability to sense anything.
The glory in a bottle of perfume, the sweet fragrance of our Lord. What will you anoint our
Lord with this holy week?
Joys and Concerns: share with one
another as you are comfortable starting with something like “Does
anyone have a joy they’re grateful for today or a concern that we can pray
about?”
Closing Prayer
– Pray for each other if you are comfortable doing so. You might want to close with the Lord’s Prayer below:
Our Father, who art
in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy
Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our
debtors. And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever.
Amen
NEXT WEEK
The Glory in an Empty Tomb
Read John 20:1-18