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Offering God the First Taste
Mark 14:3-9
Dear members of Conference and guests,
it is my honor and privilege to share the word of God.
I offer my thanksgiving to God and all God’s people of the universal church!
The Gospel of Mark (14:3-9) shows us a powerful moment in Jesus’ life journey.
While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another: “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages, and the money given to the poor.” And they scolded her harshly.
But Jesus said: “Let her alone; why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume for my burial. I tell you the truth wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
While Jesus was with Simon leper, this extra-ordinary event happened. “Unclean, unclean, look but don’t touch him. Don’t let him touch you. Look and see the telltale signs around his ankles, his wrists, his neck.” Jesus brought healing to Simon the leper, yet it was out of place in the dominant view.
It was there that a woman brought a jar of expensive perfume and poured the perfume on his head like anointing a king or emperor in the fancy courtyard. In this isolated, smelly and humble place, she initiated installation ceremony for Jesus as now “the anointed one” and honored Jesus with perfume. She is now risking everything for the Gospel. She has sold everything she owns, given up everything she ever had and is staking it on Jesus.
By breaking the jar of the perfume, this woman became an authentic disciple of Jesus.
The Fourth Gospel, 12:1-3, tells a similar story. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. Mary also became a prophet-teacher through her initiation of anointment and purifying ritual.
By divine possession, absorbed by the Holy Spirit, these two women became ignorant of everything, the place, the time and even their being. They offered themselves to God’s salvation history. They can no longer afford to mimic the priests and high class of teachers. They’ve been there and done that and it did not work. No longer are they watching and taking back seats. By breaking costly perfume and also her flesh, she became an authentic woman disciple. Nothing could stop their performance of offerings – not even Judas Iscariot’s cynical comment. “Why waste?” They are now taking the risk of trusting God. They have become authentic leaders of early Christian community.
Coming from a mountainous region near the Yellow Sea in Korea, Confucius is remembered as saying: “The benevolent person loves the mountains; the wise person loves the oceans.” Mountains represent constancy and stability. They make a good shoulder for us to lean on, even to cry on. Oceans represent movement and dynamism, serving as a reflection for the process of thinking, and the rapidity of the ebb and flow of our thoughts.
My relationship with mountains and oceans nurtured both love and honor for the Creator God. Memories of my youth are scattered in the family, the mountains and oceans.
My family carries lots of rituals: ancestor worships, seasonal prayers, and thanksgiving to harvest in full moon-tide in August. A special corner of the house was set aside as sacred places for the family tradition.
I have happy memories, especially of the Korean New Year, which falls between late January and late February, according to the lunar calendar. For several days we would wear the best quilted-silks, usually in red and blue, the lucky colors. But my favorites were western-style fancy clothes, which had to be bought from the market.
On New Year’s Eve there was good food and much feasting. We children were allowed to stay up late night waiting for the New Year. Mother warned us, if we fell asleep earlier, then our hair and eyebrows might turn from black to white. Most of all, as a youngster, the fun thing was trying on brand new clothes.
There were, however, certain rituals required by grandmother and we couldn’t try on or wear new clothes until the morning or New Years Day. It was very difficult to wait such long hours. The reason we couldn’t try on or wear new clothes was that grandmother insisted that we have to let God try our clothes on and enjoy them first, then we could wear them the next morning. Grandmother taught us quite literally, that God always comes to our courtyard and walks in our neighborhood. She believed God even tried on my clothes before me and ate foods like us. That was also the way of protecting us from the evil spirits, which might be possessed by foreign materials. It was unbelievable, but we believed.
My earliest memories are of poverty and continuous war between North and South Korea. I remember hiding during an air raid in grade school under a table. Our teacher guided us to follow, and we had to be silent for many hours until the bell would finally ring. We were always looking for food and some goodies. Sometimes we loved digging around the forest and pulling out roots for nourishments.
They were poor, yet happy years. I remember many times fighting for big pieces of rice cake at the family table when a neighbor brought one for a special occasion. Again, my grandmother would stop the seven of us; “Hush, shish, we must do this first," said the grandmother. And then she took a piece of rice cake, opened the window and threw the piece to the yard. “O God, earth diety, please come and eat first.” It was not a small piece compared to my hungry stomach. As a young boy, I couldn’t resist to ask grandmother, “Why do you waste the big piece of rice cake? Why waste?”
Even though poverty prevailed in the village, neighbors used to share food on many special occasions. After a birthday celebration or ancestor worship, they delivered a dishful of rice cake to their neighbor. Sharing food was always a neighbor’s joy.
Now I understand: The woman in Bethany and my grandmother have a common passion about God and servant-ministry: offering God the first taste.
As you know, the Bethany woman observed a kairos moment. She was clear as to what would be happening in Jesus’ life. During the Passover the chief priest and the teachers of law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. She was in a state of surrender, a state of wonder. She set aside her “puny, un-free will” to the “grand-will” of surrender to God’s redemption future, good news of salvation, and the fullness of possibilities in Jesus Christ.
“Why this waste of perfume?”
Look at her: Because of the saving grace of God, she turned a fundamental shift in the way she thought about herself and the world.
Look at her: She saw herself to be a new creation. She was no longer timid and distant. She broke the jar and she broke her old self. Her dying to the old self and participating in the new life through Jesus Christ had happened. Without hesitation, she claimed herself anew and became Jesus’ disciple.
Look at her: She became a model of gospel living. Whenever revival meetings were held, people talked about her. She broke the jar. She broke herself to surrender to the holy history of God.
(1) A God of Abundance
I see our Conference future in her initiation ceremony: I see her world and her persona built upon God’s abundance of creation.
Sisters and brothers, God’s blessings and mercy are enough and plenty for the whole world. As the waters cover the sea, our world is covered by the blessings of God. As stars cover the sky, our church is filled with God’s love. The Bethany woman entered Jesus’ movement. Jesus’ movement was open, dynamic, interconnected, and full of living qualities.
She saw a new world coming with Jesus. God is enough. God is an abundant God, not scarcity, not a domain grumbling “Not-enough” mind. She is here with us and saying again clearly to us: “Bring yourself and break it, surrender it, Yes, live with miracles rather than your own calculations. Trust in God who gives a sense of possibility.”
I celebrate with you that we as the Northern Illinois Conference of United Methodists believe in God’s abundance in our daily living and ministry. My prayer is that our Conference will center on the spirituality of abundance of God and turn to God for our needs and directions in mission and ministry. With rigorous self-examination we shall abandon false gods and dance with the joy of embracing the real God.
I desire God first in my meditations, my decision-makings, and all of my shepherding work as a bishop. I know that when I am preoccupied, I easily ignore God’s presence.
My prayer is that whenever we gather for business or committee meetings, we seek together a deeper and more powerful relationship to God, that our works in local church and annual conference are worship-full and joy-full. This may be my naïve dream, but we need more worship gatherings, more small groups, more Bible study and covenant groups, more homeless shelters and more youth gatherings. And we need fewer committee meetings and business gatherings.
I seek for our Cabinet meetings to center on prayer and worship, with all personnel issues and conflict managements following
I seek for our clergy leaders to devote their time to more prayer, more Bible teaching, more visitations and outreach, and fewer committee meetings and fewer Conference meetings.
I seek more street preaching, more prison visits, more outreach-social activism.
There is a perception too often that we do not possess resources sufficient for the task. We believe that high financial resources are necessary and that these are not available to us. We need to celebrate the bountiful faith capitals to add new ministries and redirect the church to locate the resources. Ministry is not about doing what we want but rather about doing what God wants. Thus we need to tell the story of miracle, healing, forgiving, reconciling, new-birthing, and born again social transformation in every corner of the conference and beyond.
We rebuild the church not by our pocket money but by the miracles of God.
We design our Conference by faith and miracles, not the rules and regulations.
In the words of Christ, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” (John 15:11)
Pour your justice over us.
Flood us with your power to forgive.
Soak us in your loving presence, O God.
(2) The Call to Mission
It is interesting to see dominant view in the Scripture: “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.”
Scripture tells us Jesus upheld the woman of Bethany as a disciple: “Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.” I believe Jesus invites us to do a beautiful thing in today’s world.
I invite us to come together and become disciples-making disciples, doing spiritual house cleaning, and expecting miracles of God.
We know about spiritual hunger in America. Tens of millions of un-churched Americans are searching for spiritual foods today. We know they are crying out to have freedom from the burdens of materialism and shackles of worldliness. We see those many folks struggle with deep hunger of unsatisfied longing for God.
I believe that the primary emphasis needs to change in our church. Recruitment must be primary, retention secondary. Starting new ministries or congregations needs no longer to be pitted against the needs of existing congregations, but be seen as central to the very mission of our existing ministries and congregations.
I have often heard the remark “Why was the perfume wasted in this way?” on Conference floors and in local congregations about how we do ministry. The tendency has been to put more emphasis on retaining present members than on recruiting new members. However, United Methodists have consistently excelled at retention. This is not surprising since most congregations work harder to please present members than to attract new ones.
It is recruitment and evangelism where we fall short. Quite literally, the heart of the church's negative membership statistics does not lie in our failure to retain, but in our failure to add, to reach out and add new people. Too often we have we have forgotten the calling of a spiritual rescue from imprisoned souls.
The climate of opinion in our church is a massive barrier to our mission and ministry. Some of the attitudes that are a part of this climate include: “We can’t.” “We don’t need to.” A new climate of opinion needs to be formed that says God is calling us to form many new ministries, new faith community, new church plantings, and that God will provide the resources to do so. God is able. God is able.
The great good news of life in our Conference is that it is our very diversity — a diversity that seems so troubling and unsettling at times — but that keeps us open to being disciplined and called back to the center of God's movement. This diversity and our seeking to value it in our structures is at the heart of the Northern Illinois Conference’s being a remarkable place. We seek to celebrate difference in our life together. Our celebration is a growing awareness of how limited we are, of how much our perceptual and conceptual categories have been shaped by our particular cultures and our histories. We discover how little we know but how much God wants us to know.
In John 10:10, Jesus proclaims it boldly: “I have come that they might have life, life more abundant than they ever dared to imagine.”
We need to continue to celebrate that God created this diversity and offers it to us as a gift, a life-saving and soul-saving gift. God is breaking in with a new vision and a new reality, widening our imaginations so that we can see visions and dream dreams that we previously thought were impossible. God has broken down the dividing walls because we are meant to live in community, meant to join hands around the table in the household of God.
A beautiful thing to Jesus today is our claiming authentic relationship between gospel and justice. The story is repeated again and again in different contexts in American religious history, with the result that gospel and justice are often pitted against each other. The modern phrase for this tension is “evangelism versus social justice,” but at its roots it is the same issue that has plagued us for generations.
Can we emphasize how important it is to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior while at the same time emphasizing how important it is to work for justice in seeking to join God in building the beloved community? The separation of these two has enabled people too believe that they are leading godly lives while exterminating native peoples, using slaves to work the land, and worshiping the money and capital produced for such a process. This separation has made a mockery of the biblical faith and has often been revealed for what it is: an attempt to reap the material rewards of injustice while congratulating ourselves for living lives worthy of our callings.
God is active in the life of United Methodism in Northern Illinois. We come from different places, from different economic levels, from different countries of the world. We are a church in the city and we are a church in the rural community. And our people once were afraid, afraid of different races, and afraid of different cultures. In Jesus Christ the dividing walls of hostility have been broken down. Though we are born into diverse earthly families, our life together in the United Methodist Church has led us to affirm that we are called to be one family through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Our diversity is woven into the one tapestry in the love of Jesus Christ. We are young woven with old, black with white, Asians and Hispanics, Native and African, male and female, gay and lesbian with straight. We are employed woven with unemployed, poor with the comfortable, strong with the broken, Ko-nglish with Span-glish. Our life together is a proclamation that people are more than just race, gender, economic class, and sexual orientation. We all find dignity in Christ’s church no matter the category in which society places us.
(3) Giving Is Our Joy
Finally, this story tells us that giving is our Christian life style and fundamental value. Breaking the jar is a powerful image of Christian living. When my grandmother took the piece of rice cake, oh, she said, she offered God first taste. She told us we must do it first. Actually I know my yellow dog is eating outside, which could have been my piece of rice cake. My grandmother’s heart was big and always served guests and neighbors. She believed in giving.
I believe our action of giving is the most exciting practice and celebration. I believe our offering time in Sunday worship should be the most powerful, exciting and high time. I give my treasure to God for the kingdom business. I offer my life to God’s transforming agenda. Music and dance, laugh and cry, because of the saving grace of God. We need to come together with gratitude and thanksgiving. Yes, the most lively time in the worship should be giving time and the offertory music should be the most fun song in our daily lives.
The culture of giving is the story of the Bethany woman. Surely, God is the source of life.
God’s grace destroys artificial scarcity. The graciousness of God brings manna in the wilderness; there is enough. There is enough.
I hear grandmother’s voice; “Son, there is enough rice cakes in heaven. So don’t panic. Don’t fight with it.”
Mother Theresa once invited: “Giving is our joy and discipline. We ought to give until we feel and experience pain in poverty. Giving is a beautiful thing to Jesus.”
“But Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, whenever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”
God, count us there. Include us there! Grace of God set us on fire and fill us with new wine. This is our story. Amen.
Compassionate Lord, all of us need a vision of your beauty and grace. Use us to plant your dreams. Set us free from the calculated cynics by your Holy Spirit to have the boldness of your mercy so that in your world we can live and build the vital ministries for serving your people. We dedicate our lives to your honor and glory. Amen.
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