Which of these is true:
- Your life is temporal and ultimately lacks meaning and lasting value
- You are imperfect at best so do what you can with what you have
- You were created for a divine purpose and your Heavenly Father will perfect your calling and transform your life into a beautiful work of grace
- Only the really important people can do the really important stuff
If you’ve been paying attention, you picked ‘C.’ As we saw in the last post, Sunday school teachers, lowly monks, maids, wives, sisters, whoever and whatever, can rise to their calling and find their “beautiful works” (καλὸν ἔργον) remembered forever in the logbooks of Glory.
The Lord of heaven pays attention even to the littlest of mites and smallest of lunches…and leaves space for each in his trophy case. He calls them “beautiful.”
As we discussed prior, a “beautiful” work (also Matt 5:16) is something that is selfless, sacrificial, motivated by love, and blesses the heart of God.
That’s what a beautiful work is, but what does it do? How does it move the needle?
🔸a “beautiful work” brings a bit of heaven to earth
John adds this pleasant detail inside his account of the story: “the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” And so it is when we offer anything of loving sacrifice to our little worlds. The echoes of glory reach into that sacred space; the luster of heaven shines where it happens.
The ancient scene before us takes place in a village called “Bethany.” I’ve always thought that name was so lovely, so feminine. It sounds like someone you would want your son to marry. But then you study the name, what it means. You find out it is a combination of two words translated, “house” and “depression.” House of sorrow, if you will.
Now when you see what Mary did that evening, by filling the entire house with the aroma of sweet sacrifice, you begin to understand how “beautiful works” can bring heaven to earth.
In her book, ‘Suffering and the Heart of God,’ Diane Langberg describes a place outside Cairo called “Garbage City.” The streets and roofs of houses are made of compressed garbage and the stench gets in your hair and sticks to your clothes and skin. Rats skitter about your feet. There is no sewage system to wash away the filth.
Garbage mounts and rises to the sky in hills and small mountains. Pass through the streets and they’ll take you to an area about half the size of a football field where trash that can’t be recycled is burned in incinerators. The smell is sickeningly exacerbated; it hangs low and heavy in the air.
But just past all this is an area pristine and clean, with gleaming white walls and floors. “You see a room where woven handbags, rugs, and placemats are displayed,” Langberg writes. “Hanging on the walls of another room are quilted wall hangings, comforters, and pillow covers. Women are there sorting rags according to color and placing them in different baskets. Others work at two looms to create beauty out of the garbage.
If you continue down the steps you will hear the sound of water in large tubs as bags of shredded paper dissolve into pulp. Women in rubber aprons spread the mush into sieves, pull the sieves out of the vats, and stack them into the press where the new paper is drained. The paper is then dried in the sun and cards are made with gold embossing and marbled designs. More beauty created from garbage.
She continues:
There is a Coptic Church in the garbage community that began as a Sunday school nineteen years ago…you will enter one of two cave churches built on this mountain. The larger cave seats 10,000 and rivals the Red Rock amphitheater in Colorado in its dramatic beauty. Thousands of people gather – people whose lives are full of garbage, people who work with garbage, people who smell of garbage – for praise and preaching service. It is beauty in the midst of garbage.
Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God, 329-ff
🔸a “beautiful work” is borne from the fruit of personal sacrifice
When Mary broke the seal of her perfume, Mark described it by using a graphic term, συντρίβω. It means to to crush or strike together; to smash against, like a ship run aground, battered by the waves. That young woman in our story could not, would not bring her Master something that did not come at great cost.
We read in Matthew, “Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.” Instinctively, Mary knew the death of Jesus was close at hand and what did she bring him? Her broken heart. Consequently, that broken-and-spilled-out-sweet-smelling sacrifice filled a house, surrounded by sorrow and depression, with the aroma of resurrection life.
Beloved, whether you are bedbound, homebound, working a third shift job, raising children, supervising workers, answering phones all day, teaching a Sunday school class, living in a childless marriage, fighting off chronic illness, leading presentations at work, standing in front of church congregations and expounding the truths of God’s word each week, blue collar, white collar, or T-shirt and jeans, tenured or part-time, single or hitched, wherever you fall in the spectrum of life, you can spill the goods knowing whatever you do, even if goes unnoticed or criticized, you do it for the applause of heaven.
🔸a “beautiful work” disarms folks and exposes their heart orientation
Mary received some startlingly negative feedback after she offered her service. First off, how dare she? and second, what in the world?? Imagine looking to buy something on Amazon and seeing every reviewer giving one star because there was no option for zero. That would be the disciples in the room. Then imagine a single raving review of 5 stars! That would be Jesus.
Side note: sometimes ‘the church gonna church’ but Jesus is the only vote that counts.
2 Cor 2:15-16 tells us we (the people of “good works”) are are an odorous folk who either make people sick to death of us or drawn to the Life of Jesus in us.
Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God…
2 Cor 2:15, The Message
Just as Mary discovered, you too will find not everyone will be a fan of your beautiful deeds. Some will assume the worst. You weren’t sincere. You did it to be noticed. You want something in return. I wouldn’t have done it that way…
Do it anyway. Let them question. Let them criticize. So what if you don’t get the result you hoped for. One thing is certain: every “beautiful work” is seen and remembered in heaven.
🔸a “beautiful work” receives the approval of the Master and reaps eternal rewards
Which brings us to my favorite, most mind-blowing part of the story:
…wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.
Mark 14:9
The gospel story has been published and preached in thousands of languages, spanning two millennia. Every continent and country has heard the good news in some form….and everywhere it’s been told, this woman’s “good work” has been remembered.
Imagine! Having yourself offered special mention in the gospel story! Having future generations talk about your story being instrumental to the global spread of the gospel!
Astounding!
Hey you. Doubting lamb. God has written you into his great gospel story, too.
You are his masterpiece, created for good works.
You are an aroma of grace.
There is a shine inside of you that only gets out when you realize you are nothing without Christ, eternally indebted to him, and yearn to be “wasted”on him for no other reason than he is your “Why.”
Perhaps your story won’t be mentioned worldwide, but many years from now, your children and your children’s children and their children will point to a photo of you and say, “That’s my grandad. That’s my dad’s great-aunt. They loved Jesus and that’s why I’m a Christian today.” Others will pick through stories of your life and marvel at how you loved and they will be pressed to pick up the mantel and, in so doing, find their “Why” too.
May your story (and mine) always be a story of prodigal love. Selah, beloved.
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