The Christian life is about relationships. As we have looked through the gospel of Mark we have seen that the distinct difference between Jesus and the religious people of his day, was that their religion was based on rules and regulations, whereas Jesus’ life and teaching was about relationships, the way that we relate to others.

The important thing is having a right attitude of heart, of being willing to forgive and accept imperfect people and also to have an ideal to aim for through repentance and faith. It was all summed up for us last week in the two greatest commandments, to love God and to love your neighbour. Love is the great principle of the universe; God is love. The Ten Commandments themselves just spell out the practicalities of loving God and loving your neighbour.

In his ministry Jesus had himself demonstrated what it meant to love your neighbour. He had reached out and embraced all sorts of people whom the religious people of his day regarded as being outside of God’s interest; the demon-possessed, the outcasts, the unclean. By his teaching and example he had shown his disciples what it meant to love your neighbour.

But the first command, the most important one is to love God. We sometimes forget that. The first command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. How do you do that? I believe that here in chapter 14 we have a wonderful example of a woman who shows us something of what it means to love God.

In his gospel John tells us that woman was Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Mary is the one who loved to sit and listen to Jesus. She is the one who in her grief when her brother died saw and heard Jesus pray to his Father God; then command her brother to come to life again. So Mary brings a precious jar of perfume as Jesus is sharing a meal and anoints Jesus. In Mary ’s act of devotion to Jesus, she was expressing as good an example of love for God as we have in the scriptures. Jesus commends her. ‘She has done a beautiful thing for me’, he says; ‘she did what she could’. Jesus says that what she has done, her act of love and devotion will be told throughout the world, and it has been.

Her act is unrepeatable in some ways. She was privileged to encounter God come to earth in human form for a limited period. We cannot encounter God in that same way, but we can still learn from her devotion. Love for God, springs from a profound understanding of God and appreciation of him. Perhaps Mary had grasped what no one else seemed to grasp; that Jesus really was going to lay down his life for his friends. Jesus certainly credits her with that; he says that she has prepared his body for burial.

Maybe Mary was the only one who realized that Jesus would not be with them for much longer. Jesus had told his followers that enough times. As early as chapter 2 he had been saying that a time would come when he would be taken away from them. Time and again he has told his disciples that he will be killed. But they still don’t understand. But perhaps Mary does understand. Love seeks to understand and respond appropriately.
Mary gave something that was of great value. Mark tells us how much the perfume was worth: a whole years wages. That’s a very expensive gift. In today’s terms I suppose that would be somewhere around £10,000, the price of a new motorcar. Some commentators say that the perfume would have been what Mary had purchased in preparation for her own death.

Or maybe she went out and spent her life’s savings and purchased the perfume especially to anoint Jesus. Whichever was the case it was a very generous extravagant gift. If we look honestly at scripture you find that time and again Jesus commends generous sacrificial giving. Last week, we thought of how Jesus commends the sacrificial generosity of the widow who put all she had into the temple treasury. No doubt for her it was an expression of her love for God, and even although the amount was small, like Mary she had done what she could. If we love God we will express that love in the way we use our resources; whether it is our money; our possessions or our time.

Demonstrating love for God can also be costly in other ways though. Those who saw what she did did not appreciate Mary’s act of devotion. Mark tells us that they rebuked her harshly. Matthew tells us that it was the disciples who disapproved. They thought the money should have been put into general funds and used to help the poor.

No doubt that would have been a laudable use of what Mary gave. The command to love our neighbour, and Jesus taught that also involves generosity, is very important. Yet the most important command is love for God. Jesus affirms and praises Mary’s action. It is only as we love God, as we are rooted in relationship with him that we have the resources, the faith, the hope and the sense of purpose to love our neighbour.

As I said, we do not have that same opportunity that Mary had to express our devotion; Jesus is no longer present with us in bodily form. But we can express our love in prayer. We can express our love in praise and worship. We can express our love in generous giving of our time for studying and reflecting on God’s truth revealed in Jesus.

People can express their love and devotion to God in many different ways. But it’s important that we do not despise or demean anyone regarding the way they express or demonstrate their love for God. We live in a cynical world where it’s normal to criticise and deride others.

So did Mary. The account of her anointing Jesus begins with the chief priests and teachers of the law plotting to kill Jesus. It ends with Judas negotiating a deal to betray Jesus. Even in the middle you have the good folk pouring scorn on Mary’s love and devotion. But Jesus says ‘leave her alone, she has done a beautiful thing for me.’

And for each of us today, the most important question is do we love God? It’s the first commandment. We can know and love God, because he has revealed himself in Jesus. Our faith is about relationship. We may sometimes fail badly in the way we behave. Simon Peter did; he denied knowing Jesus. But Jesus does not discard him. He restores him to relationship with himself; and it’s on this basis; ‘do you love me Peter? Do you love me more than these? Jesus calls us all to love him, and respect the way others love him too.
We have thought about our love for God. Yet there is something far more important, that’s God’s love for us. We are coming now to the heart of the Gospel. Amid the tension and uncertainty of powerful players conspiring to put an end to Jesus, he gives instructions to the disciples to make preparations for the Passover. From childhood, Jesus had travelled to Jerusalem for Passover.

On the occasion when all God’s chosen people celebrate it, Jesus will eat the Passover meal with his 12 disciples. Two disciples are sent on what really seems to be an undercover operation so that his enemies will not know Jesus’ movements. So Jesus comes with his disciples at the appropriate time to share the Passover.

This was the event that defined the identity of God’s chosen people. Each year they re-enacted the final meal, which had been eaten by their ancestors as slaves in Egypt before God delivered them from their slavery to enable them to begin the journey to the Promised Land.

But this meal, shared by Jesus and his twelve is of such historic significance. In fact the deliverance from slavery in Egypt and over a thousand years of Passover meals have really only been preparation for what is about to take place. Even here at this final meal with friends there is stress and tension and pain. Jesus knows that one of the twelve is about to betray him. He must prepare the other disciples for coping with that aspect of the drama too.

They come to a certain point in the meal. Jesus takes the unleavened bread. He gives thanks to God for it. Then he breaks the bread. Jesus gives the bread to each of his disciples and says ‘Take it; this is my body.’

The Passover lamb was regarded as the primary symbol of God’s deliverance of the people from Egypt. The lamb was the sacrifice, its blood had to be taken and put on the doorposts of each Hebrew home on that fateful night in ancient Egypt. When God saw the blood he would pass over the homes of his people and not visit his judgement on them.

But in reality that was only preparation for the ultimate sacrifice. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In some way that is beyond our full comprehension, Jesus had come to lay down his life for men and women. In spite of human frailty; or maybe it would be more accurate to say because of human frailty; Jesus gave his life. He died to defeat the power of sin. He died to enable us to be forgiven and restored to a right relationship with God our Father.

There in that upper room with his disciples he made the request that all his followers take and eat bread to remember his life given for them. He also said that we should drink wine to enable us to remember and understand that his blood had been shed for us.

This is why communion is so central to the life of the church. When we eat the bread and drink the wine we are reminded above all else of God’s love for us in Christ. The wonderful truth conveyed in communion is that God loves us. God loved us so much that he came into the world to us in Christ. But the full extent of his love is seen in his sacrifice on the cross where he died that we might be forgiven and reconciled to God.
May each one of us humbly and thankfully accept God’s gift to us in Christ and his gracious unconditional love for his children.
 

Amen.

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