Break Me

Mark 14:3-9

June 19, 2022 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Nighttime was her time. At least we think so. Variations of this story appear in every Gospel account, and people debate as to whether it’s the same story and the same woman in each Gospel or if something like this happened multiple times. But what we do know is that Jesus, in the week before his death, was at a formal meal at the house of a man named Simon, who might have been a Pharisee who contracted leprosy at some point or a leper who became a Pharisee. Obviously, he had been healed of his leprosy or else he wouldn’t have been able to be around all these people. Maybe it was Jesus who healed him, and so it’s a good possibility that this meal was his “thank you” to Jesus. Meals like this were often held in an outdoor courtyard, which makes sense to me because of the heat in that part of the world. It was also customary for religious people to allow poor people to come into banquets such as this, where they could gather scraps (Keener, IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, pg. 209). So it would have been easy for this woman to move, maybe unnoticed, from the night into the gathering.

So they are reclining at the table (14:3) in Bethany, just over the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem, and there is probably a lot of laughter and conversation going on around the table. I imagine Jesus, who knows he will be on a cross in short order, is soaking it all in, enjoying the company of his friends. I doubt if he is doing any teaching; probably just enjoying the conversation. If Mark is right and this is two days before Passover (14:1), then we could call this the “next-to-last supper.” Tomorrow night, Jesus will be the host. Tonight, he is a guest. Suddenly, before anyone realizes it, they smell a strong fragrance. It’s nard, a very expensive perfume imported from far-off India, a fragrance often used in funeral preparations (Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pg. 165). I have some oil with nard in it here if you’d like to smell it after the service, but what I have is not nearly as pure (or strong) as what this woman would have had. The disciples (John says it was Judas in particular, 12:4-5) point out that it was worth a year’s wages (14:5), half again as much as it would have cost to feed the 5,000 (cf. Kernaghan, Mark [IVP], pg. 276).

Think for a moment about how much you earn in a year, before taxes. Now picture taking that amount to buy something valuable, something beautiful, and then picture yourself taking that beautiful, valuable thing and smashing it to bits. That’s basically what happens here. “It’s not just extravagant, it’s a shocking waste” (Kernaghan 277). But let’s get a better picture of the woman and why she has the perfume in the first place. Today, a woman wearing perfume is no big deal. We don’t bat an eye at it. We even sort of expect it. But some scholars believe that the only women who wore perfume in those days were “women of the streets.” The perfume was, shall we say, advertising. It said, “I’m available…for a price” (Groeschel, Dangerous Prayers, pg. 78). So let’s think about all of that. This woman has perfume that represents a year’s worth of her work. Work she likely despised. Work that reminded her she was just someone to be used. Work that brought shame. At some point she took a year’s worth of her income from this shameful job and bought this sealed alabaster jar of precious, valuable perfume. She likely intended it to be used to increase her income, to improve her desirability out on the streets. But make no mistake: this perfume represented a year’s worth of shame, of humiliation, of sin.

Then she hears Jesus is in town. In fact, he’s nearby. So she grabs this sealed bottle and hurries to Simon’s house. (It’s worth wondering if maybe she got in because she was known at this house, but that is really speculating.) Anyway, she walks behind all the man at the table, kneels behind Jesus, and in the midst of the lively conversation, there is a shattering. I don’t know what alabaster sounds like as it breaks, but I imagine it did not go unnoticed. Then she took this nard, this precious oil, and she poured it over Jesus’ head. John says the fragrance filled the home (12:3). In fact, the house probably smelled of nard for days to come.

Why does she do this? Jesus says it is a “beautiful thing” and that it was meant to prepare him for his burial (14:6-7), but honestly, I don’t know that that’s what this woman had in mind when she came to Simon’s house. I believe she did more than she knew, more than she realized (Card 165). What I see in this woman is someone with an overwhelming need to make a break with her past, so she takes the perfume that represents her life up until now, and she breaks it. “When she broke the bottle, she burned her bridges. No going back. She poured out all the perfume on Jesus, symbolizing that she would give him all of her life” (Groeschel 79). Kneeling on the ground in Simon’s house, she did more than she knew. In her brokenness, surrounded by alabaster shards, this woman is praying and hoping.

Last Sunday, we began a series of sermons focused on three “Dangerous Prayers,” prayers that are very likely to turn our world upside down if we let them. Actually, it’s not the prayers that will turn our world around; it’s the God to whom we pray, but once prayed these prayers are like a spark that can start a fire. So last week, we began by praying a prayer from Psalm 139: “Search me.” “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24). I invited you to pray that prayer all week long, and I don't know about you, but that prayer came to mind at challenging times. It is, indeed, a dangerous prayer. Do we really want God to “search” us? But the next prayer may be even more difficult to pray. The prayer, coming out of this woman’s story, is simply two words: “Break me.”

Break me. If you’re like me, you think of something broken as either something that is useless and should be thrown out, or something that needs fixing. When we break a limb, we go to the doctor and he or she puts it in a cast. When I drop a plate on the kitchen floor and it shatters, I sweep it up and throw it away. The first communion chalice I was given got broken somewhere along the way in the last thirty years and I got out the super glue and put the pieces back together. It’s never been the same; it can never be used as a chalice again because it leaks, but at least I still have it. In every case I can think of in this world, in our lives, brokenness is not a positive attribute. Brokenness is something to be avoided. If something is broken, most often it’s useless and we get rid of it. So why in the world would we pray, “Break me”?

Why, indeed? I’ll tell you why, or at least I’ll tell you what the Bible says the reason is. It’s because only when we are broken are we of any use to God. Think about Paul in the New Testament, the man who was once named Saul. He was rather proud of his pedigree. He bragged that he was “circumcised on the eighth day [just as the law commanded], of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee [which means he kept it very strictly]; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless” (Philippians 3:5-6). Paul was important and righteous and holy and he knew it (and didn’t mind telling other people about it). Then he met Jesus. Jesus came to him in a blinding flash of light (cf. Acts 9:3). Literally blinding; he couldn’t see for three days after that (cf. Acts 9:9). And, after that, Paul struggled with some sort of physical challenge; many scholars believe it was an eyesight problem that might have been caused by the blinding light from heaven. Paul described it as a “thorn in the flesh” and a “messenger of Satan.” He describes the experience of “torment,” and he says, “Three times I pleaded [the word there means “to call out, to implore”] with the Lord to take it away from me” (2 Corinthians 12:7-8). And the way that story would go today is something like this: “And praise God, I was healed.” Then Paul would go on to record a podcast and write a book. Maybe have a movie made about his experience. Start a new ministry. But that’s not how the story goes. “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is make perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:8-9). Paul recognized that his brokenness was given to him as a gift; he says it was to help him from becoming conceited (2 Corinthians 12:7). It’s only when we are broken, when we no longer can rely on our own strength, that we are most useful to God, which is why long before Paul, an Old Testament prophet shared these words from God: “‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty” (Zechariah 4:6).

It’s easy to rely on our own strength. It’s our default position. We become confident in our own abilities, just like the culture tells us to. “Be the best that you can be.” “Do what you can’t.” “Have it your way.” These slogans and more tell us we are the center of our universe. But we are not, not really, and the most powerful picture I think I’ve ever seen of that truth happened in a place called Emmaus-Nicopolis. In Israel, there are three sites that all claim to be the original village of Emmaus, the place some Jesus followers were walking toward when they encountered the risen Christ in Luke 24. One year, we convinced our guide to take us to one of them even though it wasn’t on the official itinerary. So he took us to the most popular candidate for the village. There, we saw the ruins of a fifth-century church and then went up a small hill to the monastery (cf. Knight, The Holy Land, pg. 166). We entered to see the small, slightly dark chapel there, and I was in full tourist mode, taking pictures and making notes. As we turned to go, though, I noticed a woman off to the side, deep in prayer. I don’t think she even knew we were anywhere around. She was not quite prostrate, kneeling beside a chair. And the main thing I remember about her is how intent she was on the presence of Jesus. While we were playing religious visitors, this woman in this holy place was allowing her spirit and life to be shaped by the one this place honored. She was being broken, made more useful to her master. I’ve never forgotten her because that day, something in my spirit sort of whispered, “Be more like that.”

When something is broken, of course, it’s never put back together quite the same. My dad has a fan he uses on his patio, and every time we are there it seems to have another layer of repair on it. My brother and I (and the rest of the family) give him no end of grief about his fan, reminding him he could probably buy a new one at Walmart pretty cheaply. But he keeps repairing this broken fan. And why, you ask? Because the new ones don’t work as well as this one does. Broken, but it’s still useful. I mentioned a little bit ago that my broken chalice has small holes in it where juice would leak out. That’s true of any pottery or vessel you glue back together. It is never quite the same. But, as one song writer puts it, “the cracks are where the light gets in” (Mike Donehey, “All Together,” 2021). The same thing is true of us. When we are broken, God finds us still useful. When we are broken, God actually has a route into our lives. The cracks are where the light gets in.

So how does brokenness happen? That in itself is a scary question, because most of us don’t want to be broken. We’d rather be the guys sitting at the table than the woman pouring out her most precious possession on Jesus. This prayer flies in the face of everything we think we know about how to live. But if you dare to pray this prayer, be aware that it is not a “one and done” prayer. Paul said, “I face death every day” (1 Corinthians 15:31) and Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23-24). Take up a cross daily. No one in the first century understood that as a metaphorical image for having a tough day. Taking up a cross meant just what Paul said: facing death. Both Jesus and Paul are calling believers to lay down our control, our importance, our life, our own strength—each and every day. Maybe we look in the mirror in the morning and say something like, “You are not in control today. Jesus is in control. You’re invited to lay down your self-sufficiency and allow Jesus to live through you.” Because being broken means I die to myself. It’s what Paul was talking about in his letter to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Once we make that choice to die to our own preferences, needs, wants and desires, we begin to learn how to trust God in each and every situation. For a lot of people, the default position when things get difficult is that they run from God. When I was growing up, we had a woman at our church who did just that. Her husband was killed in a tragic accident, and she blamed God, got very angry at God and ran away from him and anyone who reminded her of the God she used to worship. I honestly don’t know if she ever came back. More and more people today do exactly that when they don’t understand what has happened to them or to the world for that matter. It’s popular to “deconstruct” your faith today. But what if difficult times, challenging times, are actually a call to return to God, to draw closer to God, to depend on him like you never have before? What if challenging times are an invitation to brokenness, to pray this dangerous prayer? What if life is not about our preferences, our likes, our wants? What if it’s about God shaping us into who he wants us to be?

This is not complicated; this is actually basic Christianity. Trust God. Like the woman with the alabaster jar, give up what is precious to you and trust Jesus. Trust Jesus with your financial struggles. We had a time in our lives where, as I often say, there really was too much month at the end of the money. There were several large bills looming, due all at once, and we had nothing. (And no, I’m not talking about the aftermath of this weekend’s wedding!) I was terrified, to be honest. And I can remember exactly where I was when, after trying to figure it out on my own, I finally said, “God, I can’t do this. I need help.” I was broken; there’s no other way to describe it. And in the next few moments, a plan popped into my mind—not something I could have come up with—that gave us some breathing room and allowed us to pay everything off in a timely fashion. God didn’t cause our distress, but he used it to shape me, to call me to depend more deeply on him. When you struggle financially, as a lot of people are right now, trust God for provision. Ask him. He probably won’t rain showers of cash on you, but he will walk with you, guide you, and help you find a way out of the struggle.

Don’t fight the breaking. You don’t have to appear strong. When there’s a bad report from the doctor, or when fear sets in because someone you love is facing bad health, turn it over to Jesus. Friends, he can still perform miracles and he can still heal the sick. He may, or he may not. But part of our brokenness is trusting him whatever the outcome. He is the only one who can see the whole picture. Pastor Craig Groeschel puts it this way: “If your life is falling to pieces, break along with it. Trust that God will be what you need. Adjust your heart. Guide your steps” (102).

So, the curious part of me wonders how long the woman with the alabaster jar stood outside in the dark, listening to the conversation inside. How long did she question herself and what she intended to do? How many times did she start to turn around and go back to her old life and use the perfume for the purpose for which she originally purchased it? I wonder what it was that caused her to go through with this act of extravagance. Was it something she overheard Jesus say? What is a strong prompting of God’s Spirit? What is really fascinating is that once she anoints Jesus, he says something about her that he says about no one else: “Wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her” (14:9). There’s something in her brokenness that captures Jesus’ heart, most likely because it mirrors his own.

Earlier in the week, when Jesus was entering the city, we’re told in the Gospel of Luke (19:41) that he stopped at some point and wept over the city. Today there is a small tear-shaped chapel halfway down the Mount of Olives where we remember this moment, and it’s one of my favorite places in the Holy Land. Jesus weeps, even while others are singing his praise, because he knows that Jerusalem will, within a generation, be destroyed because they refused to be broken now. If they will not bow before God, they will be broken by Rome. And still, Jesus rode down the Mount of Olives, into the city, and allowed himself to be broken for them. He made a choice for brokenness, as an example to you and to me. “His body was broken for you and his blood poured out for your sins” (Groeschel 103), a moment we remember every time we celebrate holy communion together. Brokenness isn’t an add-on to Christian faith; it is basic.

So our first dangerous prayer: “Search me.” Our second, and maybe even more dangerous, prayer: “Break me.” It’s a hard prayer to pray; much of the time, I don’t want to pray it, and so if you’re reluctant, I get it. But this prayer is a path to closeness with God, because only when we’re broken can he truly use us. It’s not a safe prayer, but it’s a good prayer. It’s an important prayer. It’s a dangerous prayer. Lord, break me. Let’s pray.