Is He Worthy?
November 5, 2023
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
John 12:1-8
12 Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. 3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” 6 He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it. 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. 8 For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”
Many of the stories in the gospels are told in more than one gospel. For example, Jesus’s death and resurrection are told in each of the four gospels. The feeding of the five thousand is also told in all four gospels. And a similar version of the story we just read, the story of this expensive act of devotion, is told in both Matthew and Mark. In those two accounts, the story ends with a line from Jesus. He says, “Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her” (Matt. 26:13; cf. Mark 14:9). In other words, Jesus says that wherever the good news story of my life, death, resurrection, and promise of his second coming is told, people will also tell this story. I take that to mean that this story was precious to Jesus and that he wants it to be precious to us. Let’s pray as we begin to study it together.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
Because the times and customs of the Bible can often feel foreign to us, it can sometimes be helpful to recast Bible stories into situations with which we are more familiar. So, imagine with me for a moment. Imagine a father who loves his only daughter. The wedding day of his only daughter is just around the corner, and he wants the special day to be so very special.
The father is not necessarily wealthy, but he is a florist and owns his own shop, and weddings have flowers. The father talks it over with his wife, and they agree. “You’ll always have customers,” she says. “We won’t always have our daughter.” So they agree. He will empty his florist shop of every flower. Roses, sunflowers, hydrangeas, daisies, orchids, tulips, lilies, daffodils, irises, azaleas, carnations. All the flowers they personally grew that year, and all the flowers he can stock in his store, will go to the church on the big day.
When the day arrives, guests can smell the flowers from the moment they get out of their cars. They smile at each other as they enter; they smile at the father. They’ve never seen such extravagance. They can hardly believe their eyes—and their noses.
But during the most serious and sober moments of the ceremony, such as the vows and exchange of rings, a wedding guest in the back crinkles food wrappers and opens a can of beer. He’s rude, to say the least. Then he mumbles not so quietly about how all these flowers are such a waste and how they could have been sold and bought a gift that would actually have lasted. Of course, you find out later at the wedding reception that the rude man doesn’t really care about the flowers or the gift.
Now, that’s not exactly what happens in John 12, but the splendor and sacredness of a wedding ceremony, juxtaposed with the rudeness of a guest, does help me, at least, feel the odd mashups in our story in John 12. Extravagance and devotion and love and generosity, on the one hand. Rudeness and self-serving greed on the other. Could the responses to Jesus be more different?
These contrasting responses to Jesus invite us to consider what we think of Jesus. What is the worth of Jesus?
The question of worth is something we’re asking all the time. If we buy a car, we want to know whether it’s worth the price, even more so with a home. A few of my children have recently come alive to sports cards, especially football cards. This got me to go into the basement and find the cards I had as a kid. I have found myself asking if my Joe Montanna cards are worth something.
Many of you love shows about appraising worth, whether home renovation shows or shows like Antiques Roadshow, where people ask experts if their family heirloom kept in the basement is actually worth something.
For the disciples who first read the gospel of John, and for disciples like you and I, this question of the worth of Jesus can be more personal than baseball cards. As we’ve said often in this series, John has structured his good news account of the life of Jesus in such a way that we would believe in Jesus, and in so believing, that we would have life in his name (John 20:31). Okay, great. But what happens after we start believing? Well, our sins are forgiven. Praise God! And we’re adopted into the family of God, meaning we have brothers and sisters who are also loved by God. So praise God for that too!
But what happens when belief in Jesus leads us into harder, more costly situations? What happens when it becomes expensive to believe in Jesus?
Back in chapter 9 of John’s gospel, we read that anyone who confessed Jesus would be thrown out of the synagogue, that they would be shunned by the popular religious society. And that very thing did happen to the man Jesus healed. And history tells us that all the disciples who were at this dinner party in John 12 went on to suffer greatly for their belief; many were martyred. It can get expensive to believe in Jesus.
Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen several younger people baptized; we all cheered. Praise God for that! But what happens to their belief in Jesus when they don’t have a church cheering for them, but instead a crowd at school or work mocking them for certain aspects of their belief? When it gets hard, we start wondering if it’s worth it.
When your neighbors can’t understand why you would be, in their words, so intolerant and hateful, we wonder, don’t you? I’ll tell you a quick story. A man who used to attend our church became a Christian while he was here. Praise God for that. But after several years of believing in Jesus and being changed—I think for the better—his wife essentially asked him to choose between Jesus and his marriage because his wife wouldn’t stay married to a Christian.
In these situations, we ask the question, Is Jesus worth it? [FCF] And it’s not only these dramatic situations that we ask. Also in the more mundane and less intense ways, maybe not out loud, but we still ask whether it’s worth it to get up for church and go through all the hassle. Is Jesus worth the hassle of planting a new church, the hassle of serving in the nursery, the hassle of driving vans through the city? You’re not wrong or sinful for asking whether Jesus is worth it. I suspect John’s first audience was asking that question even more than us.
We should ask the question. But how then do you answer the question of the worth of Jesus? Now, that’s what matters. In this passage, John puts before his audience, an audience perhaps asking this very question, a story to remind us of his worth.
1. Is Jesus Worthy?
When we look at the passage, two differing views of the worth of Jesus emerge. I’ll read the intro to the story again. Look at vv. 1–2.
12 Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table.
If you weren’t here the last few weeks, this family of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus was precious to Jesus. He loved them. And when Lazarus died, Jesus raised him from the dead. Now they throw a thank-you party in honor of Jesus.
Into this sober moment, this serious celebration, we read of Mary and Martha’s plan to honor Jesus. Look at v. 3.
3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
Mary’s gesture is expensive and over the top and intimate. Strange as it is to us, she used her clean hair to wash his dirty feet.
And the smell was so over the top; it filled the house. Back in the day when I worked in construction, I remember doing work at a Proctor & Gamble factory in St. Louis. At the factory, among other things, they made lemon dish soap. I was told not to get one drop of the liquid on me because it was so concentrated that I’d never get rid of the smell. They had giant vats of the stuff. It seemed like the workers all had a story about getting a drop on their shoes and having the smell of lemon with them for months. In Jesus’s day, because people didn’t shower as often as we do, I would guess the smell from this lingered with Jesus until his death.
Mary and Martha see Jesus as worthy of our highest praise and how this view leads to generous, extravagant actions. With this high view of Jesus, there is a kind of freedom, the freedom of self-forgetfulness. When you are so astounded at Jesus, you’re not also asking the questions, How am I coming across, Are people looking at me weird, What should I do to make others happy with me? These questions have a place, but it’s also so freeing for them to fade away in worship.
Perhaps that idea challenges and intrigues you. When you come to church, you’d love to blame it on the church or other people, but really you’re the one constantly aware of what others think and how you’re coming across and what you might need to do make everyone happy. That’s exhausting. And Jesus wants something better for you: to experience the freedom that comes from worshiping Jesus.
2. Jesus Is “Useful”?
Speaking of something better, there is Mary, but there is also Judas. In Judas we see that when we view Jesus as merely useful to us, it leads to a calculating, self-serving kind of loyalty to self (not loyalty to Jesus). Rather than generosity, a low view of Jesus leads to greed. Look at vv. 4–6.
4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” 6 He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.
The obvious contrast to Mary’s high view of Jesus is to say Judas had a low view. That’s true. But I think for our conversation we can say more. It wasn’t simply that he had a low view of Jesus, it was that he saw Jesus as merely useful until he didn’t. Judas was treating Jesus as useful to him until he wasn’t. The perception is that only wealthy people are greedy, but you can be very concerned about money and status, even when you have little of it, as Judas seems to be here.
That’s where this calculating greed comes into play. When he sees all the flowers at the wedding, his head starts calculating how if they had been sold, and he could have had access to the proceeds, then just think how much he would be able to skim off the top without people noticing. And if he can’t get money this way from Jesus, he’ll get money another way, by selling Jesus to the religious leaders. Yes, his view is too, low, but it would also seem that he merely saw Jesus as useful.
This part of the story invites us to consider uncomfortable questions about how we view Jesus. I can go first. Perhaps I’d ask myself something like, Am I a pastor merely because that’s what I went to school to do and because this church pays me? Is that why I pastor because Jesus has become useful to me? How would you ask the question to yourself? Are you a Christian because that’s what your parents are, and it’s easier to keep up appearance? Are you a Christian because of _____ . . . well, you can fill in the blank.
There are a thousand good reasons to be a Christian. But when it becomes expensive to believe in Jesus, when it’s no longer useful in merely earthly ways, when belief in Jesus no longer seems therapeutic to you, when it actually seems dangerous to believe, John wants to know that Jesus is still worth it because he’s worth it.
3. How does Jesus see Jesus?
Well, how shall we end? We talked about the views of the worth of Jesus. Here’s the question John wants us to consider as we close. What is Jesus’s own view of his worth? I mean, if Mary got it wrong—if she had overspent, so to speak—wouldn’t Jesus, who is the way and the truth, tell her the truth? If she had overspent, I think Jesus would have told her. “Mary, Mary, Mary, that’s a nice gesture, but don’t do that for me. I’m not worthy,” he could have said.
But he didn’t say that because Jesus knows she didn’t overestimate his worth. You might overestimate the worth of a car or a house. You might overestimate the worth of a football card. But you can’t overestimate the worth of Jesus.
Look how the passage ends in vv. 7–8.
7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. 8 For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”
Note that Jesus received this worship. He did not rebuke her. In fact, Jesus rebukes Judas, not her.
And think how wonderful Jesus is for this. Here are these two women in a room with Jesus and a bunch of other men. And the two sisters, I think, work together to plan this event, one will serve and the other will anoint. And when it happens, she’s shamed and essentially told to sit in a corner and do better. Yet Jesus speaks up and says, “No, you leave her alone.” I love that. I love that Jesus loves everyone and is afraid of no one. You can’t guilt Jesus into anything. You can’t scare him down.
And, of course, wonderfully, we also see Jesus is the God who dies for his people. He says, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.” Less than a week after this dinner party, on the next Saturday night, he’ll be in a tomb. That is, until early on Sunday morning when the tomb will be empty. That’s why we meet on Sundays, to remember that no one takes his life, but he lays it down and has the ability to take it back up again. We gather to remember that if believe, even though you die, you will never die.
As I finish, I go back to where I began. For the disciples who first read the gospel of John, and for disciples like you and I, this question of the worth of Jesus can be personal. You’re not wrong or sinful for asking whether Jesus is worth it. I suspect John’s first audience was asking that question even more than us.
But how do you answer the question of the worth of Jesus? Now, that’s what matters.
Let’s pray, and then we’ll have David and Jeff come forward to share missionary updates.
“Dear Heavenly Father. . .”
Discussion Questions
Have you ever overpaid for something? What and why? When did you discover that you had overpaid?
In what ways right now is it hard to follow Jesus?
Take a few minutes to list ways in which Jesus is worthy of our highest praise. List some of his attributes. List some of his actions. List some of the benefits Christians receive when they believe in him.
