Does the idea of extravagance make you squirm? Do you associate it with a bit too much? Like maybe someone has gone too far and should not waste resources?
An extravagant wedding.
An extravagant gift.
An extravagant vacation
… judgement rises.
Extravagance definitely makes me uncomfortable, always has. I don’t know why, but I have it in my head that if I’m extravagant in one area, I’m going to regret it in another. Too much cost will leave me wanting. Right?
As you know, we’ve had a summer wedding here recently. The week of the wedding, I was reading from the exquisite book by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Found in Him, which explores the depths of Christ’s oneness with humanity and His story from birth to death and resurrection. I had reached the chapter on Jesus’ last week, commonly referred to as passion week. It spoke of Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ head and feet with perfume. Talk about extravagant! Her alabaster box of pure nard, an expensive aromatic oil, was worth a year’s wages, her bridal dowry most likely. She broke it open and poured it on his head and then his feet, wiping it with her hair.
It made everyone in the room uncomfortable. “Too much, Mary!” whispered a disciple. “That was a little over the top,” commented another. Judas, the most judgmental and greedy for gain because donations often helped line his pocket, came right out and declared, “Why this waste? Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?”
It made everyone in the room uncomfortable. Everyone except Jesus. Fitzpatrick poignantly asserts, “Jesus wasn’t outraged by what Judas called waste.”
Ouch.
How often have I called someone’s extravagance a waste? How often have I been quick to judge extravagant gifts as just too much?
Fitzpatrick continues, “He saw what Mary had done and knew that her deed was glorious and that he was worth it.”
Lord, what has been worth extravagance that I have held back in fear of waste?
Merriam-Webster defines extravagance as “an instance of excess.” I find it fascinating that Jesus doesn’t call Mary’s gift extravagant. What he says is,
“She has done a beautiful thing to me… She has done what she could; she has anointed my body before hand for burial.” (Mark 14:6-8)
I don’t think Mary felt she was being extravagant either. She was just doing what she could for the man who had already done everything for her and was about to give his very life. If anyone was being extravagant it was Jesus.
As I considered this just days before the wedding, I thought about how my son and his bride were about to give up all their independence and future to one another. Many people judging it as too much. But they were choosing to follow the way of love. They had counted the ‘extravagant’ cost, and after much prayer and wise counsel, decided loving one another in the bond of marriage would be worth it. Why? Because.
Love always demands what others judge as extravagant.
Perhaps it is not so much that we should always embrace extravagance. Maybe, we should merely pause when we find ourselves judging a gift, a vacation, or a young couple’s choice as ‘extravagant,’ and see if it can be reframed as simply love. Love, just “doing what it could.”
Many waters cannot quench love;
Rivers cannot sweep it away.
If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love,
It would be utterly scorned.
Song of Songs 8:7
I’m so thankful Jesus didn’t think it an extravagance, an instance of excess, to live and die and bring us back to Himself as his Bride.
But it does leave me asking, What could I do?