Devotion and Pragmatism

Matthew 26:6-13

Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table. And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.” But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial. 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.”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

Here is a dinner party, the last supper before the Last Supper; and here is an unnamed woman whose love for Jesus has overflowed, quite literally, in an act of needless beauty, like a stunning alpine flower growing unobserved half a mile up a rock face. Of course, some people always want to pick such flowers and make them do something useful—to grow them in a garden at home, perhaps, to make a profit. God’s creation isn’t like that, and nor is devotion to Jesus. When people start to be captivated by him, and by his path to the cross, the love this produces is given to extravagance (148).

Aaron Orendorff

Devotion and pragmatism make for uncomfortable companions. It isn’t that devotion to Jesus shuns wisdom, or that it looks down on shrewdness—after all, the central burden of chapters 24 and 25 was to outline the way the true wisdom ought to go. Instead, the point in this brief and often perplexing story is that devotion to Jesus—particularly as it relates to his crucifixion, death and burial—will often appear foolish—needlessly and wastefully extravagant—even to other disciples.

What sort of reckless extravagance is your devotion to Jesus calling you to?

How is the way of the cross shaping that extravagant devotion?