Prayer
O Lord our God, may we have grace to discover the blessings that lie on Thy roundabout roads. May we never make the mistake of thinking that the path to true happiness is the one that runs straight towards it. Keep us true to Christ, and we shall not then be false to any man. And give us to know that we are likest Him, not when we hoard and cherish life and virtue, but when we spend them without stint or measure in any worthy cause of God or man, for His sake. Amen.
XXV
The Extravagance of Love
“Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?”
John 12:5
“Wherever this Gospel is preached, this that she had done shall be told as a memorial of her.” What a gracious memorial, and how worthy of it was Mary’s beautiful outburst of generosity! But what a pity that the speech of Judas should be recorded also, as a memorial of him! And yet, on mature consideration, we would not have the Judas criticism forgotten. Because it called forth what we might not otherwise have had, the vindication of Jesus Himself. And because, as a matter of fact, we are constantly hearing the protest of Judas repeated in our own day, and are often ill-held to know how to meet it.
“This he said,” records our evangelist bluntly, “not because he loved the poor, but because he was a thief and kept the bag.” Yet he might have been an honest man and said the same thing. For very many honest and earnest men and women are repeating this criticism still. It is repeated whenever it is taken for granted that practical utility is the only standard by which to judge actions and offerings, that God and man can be served in no other way than by “iron bars and perspiration.”
How often do we meet the type of mind that admits the service of a ploughman and denies that of poet or artist, for whom a waterfall, as somebody has said, exists merely as so much power for driving turbines, and whose sole test of usefulness is that of making two blades grow—and corn blades at that!—where but one grew before. We are commonly browbeaten by this type of person, and yet we feel that somehow, if we could only say it, he is wrong—that the poet’s is as divine a vocation as the farmer’s, that God meant a silver band of falling water in a green glade to suggest other things besides dynamos, and that he who even paints some blades of grass, and paints them pleasingly, has his place somewhere in the great guild of servants of God and man.
One has heard the same attitude taken up in other directions too. Why spend so much money on a Church, you will be asked, when there are so many poor people in the land? What need for stone pillars and a fine organ, when a plain building and a harmonium would do as well? Why try to secure what is called a beautiful Church service, dignified, stately, musical, when the very baldest worship is acceptable in God’s sight, if only it be sincere? We have heard all that, and other remarks like that, often, and we have seldom been able to give reasons against them. A mere instinctive sentiment seems a feeble thing to oppose to such cold and hard facts. Yet somehow we feel that it is all wrong if only we knew how to convict it.
Did it ever occur to you that Jesus Himself has answered that objection and others like it when He vindicated Mary’s action that night? There is no doubt that her ointment cost a deal of money, money that could have fed many hungry people. It was an extravagant offering, without any practical outcome, save that Jesus was refreshed. There is no doubt also about our Lord’s sympathy with the poor and needy. And yet He upheld Mary’s action, and would not have it called wasteful! All that could be said in its favour was that it was beautiful, that it touched Jesus keenly, and influenced all who saw it done. And that, as I read the story, was one reason at least why Jesus defended it. He allows the Beautiful. He would have the beautiful honoured for its own sake even in a world so full of sorrow and trouble as this.
For my part, I am very grateful that this word of Christ’s has been recorded. For it affords sufficient warrant for declaring the poet, the artist, the architect, and all those who are trying to make the world more beautiful, God’s servants too, offering Him a gift He does not disdain to recognise, as truly as the physician, the philanthropist, and the preacher whose object is to make it better.
Beauty of form and structure has been lavished profusely by the Creator on creatures too small to be seen. There are more things grow out of God’s earth than corn for food or timber for building houses. There’s the heather and the wild flowers, the daisies and the violets. Hardheaded common sense asks—What’s the use of them? What good do they do? The answer is that they are beautiful, and that seems in God’s sight to be justification enough for having made them.
So when we see Love breaking her alabaster box, and pouring forth her offering without stint, as she is doing every day—a mother lavishing care upon an ungrateful son, a husband surrounding a peevish wife with a tireless devotion, or a sister keeping her own love-dream at arm’s length that she may guard and guide some graceless brother—let us lay our hands upon our lips when we are tempted to criticise. These actions may be foolish, extravagant, quixotic, and may outrage every canon of common
