Episode 1182
What If Extravagant Love Is the Most Radical Thing You Can Offer?
The primary focus of today's discourse centers on the profound act of generosity exemplified by Mary in the Gospel of John, wherein she anoints Jesus with an extravagant quantity of costly oil. This episode delves into the complex dynamics surrounding generosity, as exemplified by Judas's objection to her actions, which raises pertinent questions regarding the nature of love and its expression. We explore the notion that true generosity often transcends the confines of practicality and efficiency, advocating for a love that is unmeasured and unrestrained. The narrative further juxtaposes the lives of Lazarus and Mary, emphasizing how their mere existence and acts of love serve as powerful testimonies to faith and transformation. As we reflect on these themes, I invite you to consider ways in which you might manifest such extravagant love in your own life, thus allowing the essence of generosity to permeate beyond individual interactions and into the broader community.
Takeaways:
- The podcast emphasizes the importance of extravagant love, as demonstrated by Mary's actions.
- We are encouraged to engage in acts of love that defy calculation and efficiency.
- Lazarus's existence serves as a powerful testament to the transformative nature of faith.
- The episode highlights the tension between societal expectations and authentic expressions of love.
- It urges listeners to reflect on their own generosity and to act without hesitation or measurement.
- The discussion points to the significance of presence and being alive as a form of testimony.
Links referenced in this episode:
The "Daily Bible Refresh" is presented each day by Rev. Dr. Brad Miller who has a goal of speaking a bit of the bible into two million ears (one million people) in three years (2025-2028).
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Brad served as a local church pastor for forty years and has a background in radio and podcasting. Moreover, he is a life-long student of The Bible.
He believes in the words of Jesus that “scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21)
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Transcript
Hello my friend Dr. Brad Miller here with the Daily Bible Refresh.
Speaker A:This is your daily reading of the Bible from a progressive point of view.
Speaker A:In a bit I will read the New Testament lessons selected from the Revised Common Lectionary for this very day.
Speaker A:The reading is understandable.
Speaker A:I use the message version relatable.
Speaker A:Please listen to the points to ponder and applicable with action steps you can take.
Speaker A:We pray and are done in less than 10 minutes.
Speaker A:It's all brought to you by voiceofgoddaily.com which is the home of your free personal Bible Study Guide, the ABC1, 23 Bible Study Method.
Speaker A: lionaires a million people by: Speaker A:You can help by saving and subscribing to the podcast and tagging your friends.
Speaker A:Here's today's reading.
Speaker B:Reading from the gospel of John 12:1 11 from the message anointing his feet six days before Passover, Jesus entered Bethany, where Lazarus, so recently raised from the dead, was living.
Speaker B:Lazarus and his sisters invited Jesus to dinner at their home.
Speaker B:Martha served Lazarus was one of those sitting at the table with him.
Speaker B:Mary came in with a jar of very expensive aromatic oils and anointed and massaged Jesus feet and then wiped them with her hair.
Speaker B:And the fragrance of the oils filled the room, filled the house.
Speaker B:And Judas Iscariot is one of his disciples, even then getting ready to betray him, said, why?
Speaker B:Why wasn't this oil sold and the money given to the poor?
Speaker B:He would have easily bought 300 silver pieces.
Speaker B:And he said this is not because he cared 2 cents about the poor, because he was a thief.
Speaker B:He was in charge of the common funds, but also embezzled them.
Speaker B:Jesus said, let her alone.
Speaker B:She's anticipating and honoring, honoring the day of my burial.
Speaker B:You always have the poor with you.
Speaker B:You don't always have me.
Speaker B:And word got out among the Jews that he was back in town.
Speaker B:And the people came to take a look not only at Jesus, but also at Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead.
Speaker B:So the high priest plotted to kill Lazarus because so many of the Jews were going over and believing in Jesus on account of him.
Speaker B:Well, my friends, that ends the reading.
Speaker B:I just welcome you back to our study of the various scriptures of the Bible, especially here in this holy week.
Speaker B:So today's passage, one of the most sensory rich stories in all the Gospels.
Speaker B:You can practically smell it.
Speaker B:You get what I'm saying?
Speaker B:There's a dinner party going on.
Speaker B:There's expensive perfume and there's an act of stunning generosity.
Speaker B:And there's also a sharp disagreement about whether any of it was worth it.
Speaker B:So this one hits differently depending on where you're standing.
Speaker B:So let's lean into a couple points to ponder.
Speaker B:First, Mary's act was extravagant, and that's the whole point.
Speaker B:300 Pieces of silver, worth of oil.
Speaker B:That's roughly a year's wages for a working person in that era.
Speaker B:And she doesn't just dab a little behind Jesus ear.
Speaker B:She pours a whole jar, massages his feet, and wipes them with her own hair.
Speaker B:That's lavish, that's intimate.
Speaker B:It's excessive by any reasonable standard in that day and even in ours.
Speaker B:And Judas immediately tries to make it a budget conversation.
Speaker B:Now, here's what I think a progressive faith grabs hold of in this moment.
Speaker B:Sometimes love isn't efficient and it's not supposed to be.
Speaker B:We live in a culture that often wants to optimize everything, monetize everything, calculate the return on every investment.
Speaker B:And Judas sounds so reasonable on the surface.
Speaker B:Shouldn't this money go to the poor?
Speaker B:It's the kind of question that makes you kind of nod along until John kind of pulls back the curtain and shows us the real motive.
Speaker B:Sometimes the people policing other people's generosity aren't exactly interested in injustice.
Speaker B:We see that, don't we?
Speaker B:They're interested in control and they're interested in that money.
Speaker B:Mary understood something Jesus never would, that there are moments in life that demand everything you've got poured out without calculation.
Speaker B:So, for instance, when my granddaughters run toward me with their eyes wide open, just greet me, and they're not measuring the appropriate amount of enthusiasm, they don't give me, okay, that'll be one giggle and two squeezes.
Speaker B:No, there's a merry energy to what they do.
Speaker B:And Jesus says, let her alone.
Speaker B:Don't manage this.
Speaker B:Don't budget this.
Speaker B:Let love be unreasonable.
Speaker B:That's a point to ponder, isn't it?
Speaker B:Love to be unreasonable.
Speaker B:Second point to ponder.
Speaker B:Look at what happens to Lazarus at the end of this passage.
Speaker B:The high priests plot to kill him, not because he did anything wrong, but because of his very existence.
Speaker B:He was the guy raised from the dead.
Speaker B:Sitting at the table, living his living and breathing existence was causing people to believe in Jesus.
Speaker B:His life was the sermon.
Speaker B:He didn't preach.
Speaker B:He didn't argue theology.
Speaker B:He just showed up alive.
Speaker B:And that was threatening enough that the powerful people wanted him dead.
Speaker B:Progressive Christianity pays attention to this pattern because it still happens right now.
Speaker B:And you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker B:When Someone's transformed life challenges the systems that benefit from keeping people hopeless or silent or dead inside.
Speaker B:Those systems push back hard.
Speaker B:The powers that be don't just go after the message.
Speaker B:They go after the messenger, or the living proof, as it were.
Speaker B:On my cancer podcast, I talk with survivors all the time, whose very presence in the room changes the atmosphere they walk in.
Speaker B:People think, hey, if they made it through that, maybe I can too.
Speaker B:And a resurrection story is the most dangerous thing in the world to any system that profits from despair and from others.
Speaker B:Lazarus didn't have to say a word.
Speaker B:He just had to keep showing up alive and notice the dinner scene itself.
Speaker B:Martha serves, Lazarus sits at the table.
Speaker B:Mary anoints three different people, three different expressions of love, and Jesus receives all of them.
Speaker B:There's no competition here.
Speaker B:There's no ranking.
Speaker B:Martha's service is no less than Mary's, isn't any lesser than Mary's anointing.
Speaker B:And Lazarus just being there alive is his own gift.
Speaker B:So when my wife and I travel and hike through wooded parks, we've learned that we can enjoy the trail differently.
Speaker B:She notices things like flowers and so on.
Speaker B:I notice kind of the overlooks there's different things we notice.
Speaker B:Either way is wrong.
Speaker B:We just bring different gifts to the same table.
Speaker B:This dinner table and Bethany hold space for all of it and for all of us.
Speaker B:And that fragrance, I want you to imagine the fragrance which filled the whole house.
Speaker B:I love that detail, and I like for you to put in your mind's eye.
Speaker B:Think of a time when you've had a good fragrance fill a house, maybe baking bread or flowers.
Speaker B:When love is poured out extravagantly, it doesn't stay contained.
Speaker B:Everybody in the room is touched by it.
Speaker B:You can't pour out something that generous and keep it private.
Speaker B:It spills out.
Speaker B:The aroma goes everywhere.
Speaker B:So here's your action step for the day.
Speaker B:Do something extravagant for somebody.
Speaker B:Don't calculate whether it's efficient or proportional.
Speaker B:Write a letter that's longer than it needs to be.
Speaker B:Give a tip at a restaurant that may be double what you normally do.
Speaker B:If you give some money to a homeless person on the street, spend an hour with someone when 15 minutes would been good enough, pour it out and don't apologize for the excess, because the fragrance of that kind of love doesn't stay in one room.
Speaker B:It fills the whole house.
Speaker B:Let's pray.
Speaker B:Before we do, I want to remind you that we do have our gift for you, which is the ABC 1, 2, 3 Bible study method, free to you as our gift@voiceofgod daily.com let's pray God we confess that we're often more Judas than Mary at the table.
Speaker B:We calculate, we budget our love.
Speaker B:We question whether someone else's generosity is practical enough, appropriate love, reasonable enough, and forgive us for that.
Speaker B:Teach us to pour and not measure.
Speaker B:Teach us to show up with everything we have and let the fragrance go where it goes.
Speaker B:And God, for those who feel a little bit like Lazarus today, raised from something hard, just trying to sit at the table and be alive again, remind us that our presence matters, that just showing up, breathing, existing after what we've been through is its own kind of a sermon.
Speaker B:Protect us from systems that would silence our story, silence our aliveness and fill our houses today, God fill them with a kind of reckless, beautiful, over the top, extravagant, fragrant love that Mary brought to that dinner.
Speaker B:The kind that makes no financial sense in all the spiritual sense in the world.
Speaker B:We want to be that generous.
Speaker B:Help us.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker A:My friend, I am delighted you chose to join me for today's reading.
Speaker A:The Daily Bible Refresh is completely listener supported.
Speaker A: on years, a million people by: Speaker A:I would be so grateful if you would go to voiceofgodddaily.com and share your gift of any amount.
Speaker A:Thanks much.
Speaker A:My name is Dr. Brad Miller and I'll be right here tomorrow with your Daily Bible Refresh.
Speaker A:Please subscribe and tag your friends until tomorrow.
Speaker A:Remember, God's loyal love doesn't run out.
Speaker A:His merciful love hasn't dried up, it's created new every morning.
