Based on Mark 14:1-11
In the last post, we explored Mary's beautiful act of worship—pouring out expensive perfume worth a year's wages on Jesus' feet. We discovered that Jesus' love is the most beautiful thing this world has ever seen, and the most beautiful act any human can do is love Jesus with everything we have.
But here's the uncomfortable truth: we don't always love Jesus the way we should.
The story in Mark 14:1-11 reveals three distinct characters representing three different responses to encountering Jesus. While Mary represents the artist—driven by love and wanting more of Jesus' presence—two other responses emerge that we must honestly examine in our own hearts.
Setting the Scene: A Party Before the Cross
Let's remember the context. This story unfolds during Passover week, a celebration of God's people being freed from slavery in Egypt. This was the kickoff to the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread—essentially a week-long family reunion centered on God's goodness. Think eating, praying, singing, and celebrating together. God's people took joy seriously; they dedicated an entire week to it!
Jesus finds Himself at this celebration knowing He's about to accomplish the ultimate Passover—setting His people free not just from earthly chains, but from the slavery of sin that holds us back from God, from others, and from ourselves.
And where is Jesus during this momentous time? At a party with His followers, surrounded by people who had seen Him do amazing things, people who had come to Him recognizing their own need and found themselves made whole.
Three Characters, Three Hearts
In this single story, we encounter four key players:
Mary (the artist) - Driven by love, wanting more of Jesus
Judas (the baddie) - Driven by greed, wanting to remove Jesus
The disciples (the snobs) - Driven by self-righteousness, wanting to bypass Jesus
Jesus (the Savior) - The one worthy of our worship
The artist, the baddie, and the snobs all encountered beauty incarnate—Jesus Himself. But only one truly enjoyed it; the others missed it entirely.
Here's the challenging reality: all three of these characters live within our own hearts. We have an inner artist, an inner baddie, and an inner snob. When we encounter Jesus, the question becomes: which character will respond?
Revisiting Mary: The Artist's Heart
Let's briefly revisit the beautiful act that sets this story in motion. Mary arrives with her jar of expensive perfume—her retirement fund, her security, her future—and pours it all out on Jesus.
Picture the scene: the air thick with overwhelming fragrance, probably so intense that someone in the background is having a coughing fit! But this perfume represents more than just a pleasant smell. It's the aroma of sacrifice, the scent of radical devotion, the fragrance of someone responding to God's love.
Mary could make this sacrifice because she knew she was gaining something infinitely greater: Jesus Himself. When Jesus witnessed her humble, authentic, extreme worship, He named it for what it was: "She has done a beautiful thing." He declared that wherever the gospel is preached, her story would be told. And here we are, thousands of years later, still talking about her beautiful worship!
Mary was characterized by love. She wanted more of Jesus' presence. She understood what many of us at church in Manchester are still learning: that Jesus Himself is worth everything we could possibly give.
Judas: The Baddie's Response
Right after Mary's act of beautiful worship, we see Judas's shocking response:
"Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over." (Mark 14:10-11)
Something about witnessing Mary's worship moved Judas to act in the complete opposite direction. Where Mary wanted more of Jesus' presence, Judas wanted to erase it entirely.
Think about this: Judas had been following Jesus for years. These people should have been his friends. These were people he should have been talking to when he had doubts or questions. Instead, he harbored his grievances privately, and eventually that led him to join forces with people who wanted to kill Jesus.
We call Judas the baddie because his character is consumed by hate. While the artist is characterized by love, the baddie is driven by hatred—killing, death, betrayal, destruction.
I believe what happened here is that Judas saw Mary's generous sacrifice of money and simply wanted something for himself. It's tragically easy to be around Jesus and His family while remaining incredibly self-focused and selfish. Just showing up doesn't mean you're bringing your whole self to the experience.
The Baddie in Our Hearts
Now, you might read this and think, "I'm not like Judas! I don't want to kill Jesus!" But we do—and it wouldn't be recorded in Scripture if this weren't true for all of us.
How do we work against Jesus and try to remove Him from our lives?
Every time we go against how God has called us to live, we're essentially saying in our hearts, "Jesus, I don't want you here." When following Jesus requires something of us—giving generously, forgiving someone who hurt us, speaking truth in love, choosing uncomfortable obedience—and we choose comfort over faithfulness, we're saying, "Jesus, I want to be in control, not you."
This is exactly what Judas did, and we do the same thing in the secret places of our hearts. In those moments, we want to remove Jesus, to erase His influence, to be our own masters.
Adults, can you name a time you did something you knew you shouldn't have done? Kids, what about you? These moments reveal the Judas in our hearts—the part of us that would rather remove Jesus than surrender to Him.
The Disciples: The Snobs' Response
The disciples present a different but equally problematic response. Some of them (not all) witness this act of extreme devotion, love, worship, and beauty, but instead of being overcome and drawn in, they remain on the outside. They judge. They're snobs.
"What good is this?!" they protest. They don't understand. They only care about doing good works without considering the heart behind those works. They focus on rules that should be followed without thinking about the meaning behind those rules.
The disciples in this story are like someone who, when their two-year-old daughter draws a picture of them, instead of hanging it on the refrigerator, would say in a condescending tone: "This doesn't look like me. Try again!"
With that same patronizing attitude, they speak to Mary: "You could have done something useful instead of wasting it!" In their fervor to follow the rules, they're completely clueless. They think they know better, but they're the ones who look foolish when we read these verses.
The Snob in Our Hearts
Why are the disciples included in this story? Because just as there's a part of Judas in our hearts, there's also this kind of snobbery within us. It's called self-righteousness, and it's poison to us and others.
When someone is driven by self-righteousness, they see authentic worship as a reason to rebuke others. The disciples actually tell Mary—the one person who truly gets it—that she's off track, when they're the ones wandering down the wrong path entirely.
True, authentic devotion makes people uncomfortable. It makes us uncomfortable. When we see someone living with Mary's kind of radical love, it puts a spotlight on our own hearts, and we feel anxious about how we're measuring up. But instead of directing those thoughts inward and bringing them to God (which is exactly why this story exists!), we direct them outward toward others.
This is why people outside the church sometimes think Christians are self-righteous. When that criticism is fair, it's exactly because of this tendency. We become desperate to prove how good we are, how righteous we are, through outward displays, and we exchange a life of relationship with God for empty religion. It's vain, useless, and harmful—it's anti-Jesus.
This kind of heart attitude is something we address regularly in our prayer course, learning to bring our self-righteousness before God rather than directing it at others.
Jesus: The Savior's Response
According to Jesus, only one person in that room understood what was happening: Mary, the artist. When Jesus witnessed her humble, authentic, extreme worship, He named it for what it was: "She has done a beautiful thing!"
Jesus told the room that this woman understood He was about to be killed. She was savoring His presence while He was still there. She wanted Jesus for Himself, not for what she could get from Him. And because of this heart posture, her act would always be remembered and told.
Jesus was actually upsetting significant gender norms by defending Mary's worship. According to cultural expectations, He shouldn't interact with this woman. He should have been scandalized by her worship. But Jesus doesn't let cultural environment dictate His thoughts and actions—He's driven by His own character and calling, and we should be too.
The Radical Heart of God
Mary could act in this amazingly beautiful way because she understood God's love first. She knew about God's radical love, and that enabled her to respond with radical love in return. If you want a life of radical love, it must start with understanding God's love for you!
Here's how radical God truly is: He came to earth in the form of His own creation. He suffered and died so that His own children—the baddies and the snobs—would be transformed into artists. God, the original Artist who created this world that never ceases to fill us with awe and wonder, presents Himself as the one worthy of our worship.
We worship all sorts of things constantly—mostly ourselves. But for us to have a life worth living, one full of life and love and beauty, we must first be overcome by Him: His love, His presence, His way of life over and above our own way of life.
The Path to Transformation
This story requires honesty from us. When Jesus tells us how to live and what it means to be in His presence, what parts of us want to remove Him? What parts of us want to show others how good we are without really engaging with Jesus Himself?
The baddie and the snobs are living within us. Unless you have surrendered to Jesus—His death and resurrection—the baddie and the snobs will maintain control. You will never get to live like the artist unless you surrender to THE Artist. This is why the cross matters for anyone who isn't yet a Christian.
Even when we do surrender to God the Artist, sin doesn't disappear from our lives, but there's a crucial difference: sin's power has been broken. It's no longer in control—God is, through His Holy Spirit. This is why the cross matters for those who are already Christians.
At our church in Manchester, we're constantly amazed by this reality: Jesus invites baddies and snobs to become artists as we follow Him! This transformation is what our One Another course explores—learning to live in God's beautiful harmony with each other as transformed people.
Living As Transformed Artists
So how do we cultivate the artist's heart while recognizing and fighting against the baddie and snob within us?
1. Acknowledge All Three Characters
We must honestly recognize that we have the capacity for all three responses. We're not just Mary—we're also capable of Judas's betrayal and the disciples' self-righteousness. This humility is the beginning of transformation.
2. Pursue Jesus for Himself
Like Mary, we must learn to want Jesus for who He is, not just for what He can do for us. This means developing a heart that finds satisfaction in His presence, not just His presents.
3. Examine Our Motivations
When we feel critical of others' worship or devotion, we need to ask ourselves: Am I responding like the disciples, more concerned with appearances than with heart? When we're tempted to take shortcuts or compromise, we need to ask: Am I responding like Judas, wanting to control rather than surrender?
4. Choose Radical Love
The artist's path requires choosing love over comfort, surrender over control, and Jesus over ourselves. This might look "wasteful" to the world, but Jesus calls it beautiful.
The Most Beautiful and Most Horrible Thing
When we contemplate the cross that Jesus was heading toward during this Passover week, we see both horror and beauty intertwined. The cross represents the most horrible thing this world has ever seen—the innocent Son of God suffering and dying for our sin.
Yet in that same horror, we witness the most beautiful thing this world has ever seen: God's love refusing to let anything—even death itself—stop Him from drawing His children to Himself.
It's simultaneously the most horrible and most beautiful thing in human history.
This is the heart of our faith at Redeemer Church: celebrating the God who, through His sacrifice and beauty, enables us to live lives of sacrificial beauty. We're learning what it means to be transformed from baddies and snobs into artists who worship with radical, beautiful love.
The Choice Before Us
The question this story poses to each of us is simple but profound: When you encounter Jesus, which character responds? The artist who pours out everything in worship? The baddie who wants to maintain control? Or the snob who judges authentic devotion while missing the point entirely?
Jesus came so that baddies and snobs would be transformed into artists. He offers this transformation freely, but it requires surrender—the kind of radical, "wasteful" surrender that Mary demonstrated.
In a world that often sees such devotion as excessive or foolish, Jesus sees it as beautiful. And He invites each of us to live with that same beautiful, radical love—not just for one moment, but as a way of life.
The choice is ours: Will we pour out our lives like expensive perfume, or will we hold back, critique, and miss the beauty entirely?
Jesus is still calling artists. He's still transforming baddies and snobs. And He's still worth everything we could possibly give.
If you're exploring questions about faith, meaning, and what it looks like to follow Jesus, consider joining us on a Sunday—Redeemer is a place to explore the big questions of life in a welcoming, no-pressure environment.