balancing your life

Meanwhile, Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon, a man who had previously had leprosy. While he was eating, a woman came in with a beautiful alabaster jar of expensive perfume and poured it over his head. The disciples were indignant when they saw this. “What a waste!” they said. “It could have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor.” But Jesus, aware of this, replied, “Why criticize this woman for doing such a good thing to me? You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me. She has poured this perfume on me to prepare my body for burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the Good News is preached throughout the world, this woman’s deed will be remembered and discussed.” (Matthew 26:6-13)

People rarely care about what they talking about when this kind of thing comes up. And almost always, they throw up a seemingly good thing to hide the real objective.

The woman, when it came down to it, wasted the perfume on Jesus. She could have done a lot with it, including selling it and giving the money to the poor.

The disciples, who I would imagine were led by Judas (no evidence to support this, but that was the way he operated), were mad that she had thrown this away on this simple man. They knew – or at least they thought they knew – that Jesus would not care whether or not someone gave him a really big and expensive sacrifice. They could have used a dollar bottle of Suave body lotion for all he cared. And that was true. He didn’t need fancy stuff.

But when someone gave it to him, he took it. The Bible mentions a coat of no seams, a fairly expensive garment, that someone had painstakingly made for Jesus to wear. When they gave it to him, he took it and he wore it, clear up to the end of his life. It probably felt good and he liked it.

It also mentions in several places that some prominent people supported him and his men in their ministry. At one point, they had almost a year’s wages for a working man just sitting there in their treasury. They were not starving.

But Jesus didn’t care. When he said that foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place even to lay his head (Luke 9:58), he didn’t mean he was dirt-poor. He meant that he had no attachments to things. He owned no property,  he had no material investments or anything like that. He was removed from the world in that sense.

He was the kind of guy that would accept a custom tailored suit from someone as a gift and a WalMart tie from another. It didn’t matter to him.

However, it did to others. They were trying their best to look holy for the Master and for those who were sitting around. And I would imagine that the conversation was started by a comment from someone, someone else joined in and before long, the woman’s grateful sacrifice looked like a wasteful exploitation of the poor.

Jesus was very quick to step in and tell his disciples, “Shut up.” He said they would always have the poor but they would not always have him. Was it really such a big deal that she gave this to him? In fact, he said, her sacrifice will always be remembered. And what do you know? There it is in Matthew 26 in the Bible for all the world to read and think about.

Jesus says that there comes a point where the poor are not always the focus of every conversation. You are always going to have poor people. If you hamstring your life by trying to keep them from being poor, or impoverish yourself or your soul by doing without things that make you simply happy, then you have hurt yourself.

The poor can be demanding. They are always there, always looking for a handout or help or whatever. Jesus said that sooner or later, you have to go on with your life.

Yes, you want to help the poor. No, you do not want to ignore them. But, on the other hand, you cannot make them the central part of your life or you will go nowhere.

There is a scene in Jesus Christ: Superstar that always stuck with me. Jesus is healing lepers and after a few minutes becomes inundated with lepers. They are everywhere and he has to run from them.

That happens to all of us sooner or later. We begin to realize that in the eternal scheme of things, we will do no good in curing poverty. All we can is what we ourselves can do. We can stand before God and he will know we did what we can.

But immersing ourselves in the poor at the risk of our own lives will be fruitless.

Sometimes you have to buy new clothes, another car, some furniture. When you do you want good stuff so it will not wear out. But when you buy these things (and we are not talking about foolish amounts of money) you are not stealing from the poor. You are just doing something good.

The key is to balance your life and do what you can when you do it.