'She hath wrought a good work on Me.' Now that is pretty nearly a
definition of what a good work is, and you see it is very unlike our
conventional notions of what constitutes a 'good work.' Christ implies
that anything, no matter what are its other characteristics, that is
'on' Him, that is to say, directed towards Him under the impulse of
simple love to Him, is a 'good work'; and the converse follows, that
nothing which has not that saving salt of reference to Him in it
deserves the title. Did you ever think of what an extraordinary
position that is for a man to take up? 'Think about Me in what you do,
and you will do good. Do anything, no matter what, because you love
Me, and it will be lifted up into high regions, and become
transfigured; a good work.' He took the best that any one could give
Him, whether it was of outward possessions or of inward reverence,
abject submission, and love and trust. He never said to any man, 'You
are going over the score. You are exaggerating about Me. Stand up, for
I also am a Man.' He did say once, 'Why callest thou Me good?' not
because it was an incorrect attribution, but because it was a mere
piece of conventional politeness. And in all other cases, not only
does He accept as His rightful possession the utmost of reverence that
any man can do Him, and bring Him, but He here implies, if He does
not, as He almost does, specifically declare, that to be done for His
sake lifts a deed into the region of 'good' works.
Have you reflected what such an attitude implies as to the
self-consciousness of the Man who took it, and whether it is
intelligible, not to say admirable, or rather whether it is not worthy
of reprobation, except upon one hypothesis--'Thou art the everlasting
Son of the Father,' and all men honour God when they honour the
Incarnate Word? But that is aside from my present purpose.
Is not this conception, that the motive of reverence and love to Him
ennobles and sanctifies every deed, the very fundamental principle of
Christian morality? All things are sanctified when they are done for
His sake. You plunge a poor pebble into a brook, and as the sunlit
ripples pass over its surface, the hidden veins of delicate colour
come out and glow, and the poor stone looks a jewel, and is magnified
as well as glorified by being immersed in the stream. Plunge your work
into Christ, and do it for Him, and the giver and the gift will be
greatened and sanctified.
But, brethren, if we take this point of view, and look to the motive,
and not to the manner or the issues, or the immediate objects, of our
actions, as determining whether they are good or no, it will
revolutionise a great many of our thoughts, and bring new ideas into
much of our conventional language. 'A good work' is not a piece of
beneficence or benevolence, still less is it to be confined to those
actions which conventional Christianity has chosen to dignify by the
name. It is a designation that should not be clotted into certain
specified corners of a life, but be extended over them all. The things
which more specifically go under such a name, the kind of things that
Judas wanted to have substituted for the utterly useless, lavish
expenditure by this heart that was burdened with the weight of its own
blessedness, come, or do not come, under the designation, according as
there is present in them, not only natural charity to the poor whom
'ye have always with you,' but the higher reference of them to Christ
Himself. All these lower forms of beneficence are imperfect without
that. And instead of, as we have been taught by authoritative voices
of late years, the service of man being the true service of God, the
relation of the two terms is precisely the opposite, and it is the
service of God that will effloresce into all service of man. Judas did
not do much for the poor, and a great many other people who are
sarcastic upon the 'folly,' the 'uncalculating impulses' of Christian
love, with its 'wasteful expenditure,' and criticise us because we are
spending time and energy and love upon objects which they think are
moonshine and mist, do little more than he did, and what beneficence
they do exercise has to be hallowed by this reference to Jesus before
it can aspire to be beneficence indeed.
I sometimes wish that this generation of Christian people, amid its
multifarious schemes of beneficence, with none of which would one
interfere for a moment, would sometimes let itself go into
manifestations of its love to Jesus Christ, which had no use at all
except to relieve its own burdened heart. I am afraid that the lower
motives, which are all right and legitimate when they are lower, are
largely hustling the higher ones into the background, and that the
river has got so many ponds to fill, and so many canals to trickle
through, and so many plantations to irrigate and make verdant, that
there is a danger of its falling low at its fountain, and running
shallow in its course. One sometimes would like to see more things
done for Him that the world would call 'utter folly,' and 'prodigal
waste,' and 'absolutely useless.' Jesus Christ has a great many
strange things in His treasure-house--widows' mites, cups of water,
Mary's broken vase--has He anything of yours? 'She hath wrought a good
work on Me.'
II. Now, there is another lesson that I would gather from our Lord's
apologising for Mary, and that is the measure and the manner of
Christian service.
'She hath done what she could'; that is generally read as if it were
an excuse. So it is, or at least it is a vindication of the manner and
the direction of Mary's expression of love and devotion. But whilst it
is an apologia for the form, it is a high demand in regard to the
measure.
'She hath done what she could.' Christ would not have said that if she
had taken a niggardly spoonful out of the box of ointment, and
dribbled that, in slow and half-grudging drops, on His head and feet.
It was because it _all_ went that it was to Him thus admirable. I
think it is John Foster who says, 'Power to its last particle is
duty.' The question is not how much have I done, or given, but could I
have done or given more? We Protestants have indulgences of our own;
the guinea or the hundred guineas that we give in a certain direction,
we some of us seem to think, buy for us the right to do as we will
with all the rest. But 'she hath done what she could.' It all went.
And that is the law for us Christian people, because the Christian
life is to be ruled by the great law of self-sacrifice, as the only
adequate expression of our recognition of, and our being affected by,
the great Sacrifice that gave Himself for us.
'Give all thou canst! High Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely calculated less or more.'
But whilst thus there is here a definite demand for the entire
surrender of ourselves and our activities to Jesus Christ, there is
also the wonderful vindication of the idiosyncrasy of the worker, and
the special manner of her gift. It was not Mary's _métier_ to serve at
the table, nor to do any practical thing. She did not know what there
was for her to do; but something she _must_ do. So she caught up her
alabaster box, and without questioning herself about the act, let her
heart have its way, and poured it out on Christ. It was the only thing
she could do, and she did it. It was a very useless thing. It was an
entirely unnecessary expenditure of the perfume. There might have been
a great many practical purposes found for it, but it was her way.
Christ says to each of us, Be yourselves, take circumstances,
capacities, opportunities, individual character, as laying down the
lines along which yon have to travel. Do not imitate other people. Do
not envy other people; be yourselves, and let your love take its
natural expression, whatever folk round you may snarl and sneer and
carp and criticise. 'She hath done what she could,' and so He accepts
the gift.
Engineers tell us that the steam-engine is a very wasteful machine,
because so little of the energy is brought into actual operation. I am
afraid that there are a great many of us Christian people like that,
getting so much capacity, and turning out so little work. And there
are a great many more of us who simply pick up the kind of work that
is popular round us, and never consult our own bent, nor follow this
humbly and bravely, wherever it will take us. 'She hath done what she
could.'
III. And now the last thought that I would gather from these words is
as to the significance and the perpetuity of the work which Christ
accepts.
'She hath come beforehand to anoint My body to the burying.' I do not
suppose that such a thought was in Mary's mind when she snatched up
her box of ointment, and poured it out on Christ's head. But it was a
meaning that He, in His tender pity and wise love and foresight, put
into it, pathetically indicating, too, how the near Cross was filling
His thought, even whilst He sat at the humble rustic feast in Bethany
village.
He puts meaning into the service of love which He accepts. Yes, He
always does. For all the little bits of service that we can bring get
worked up into the great whole, the issues of which lie far beyond
anything that we conceive, 'Thou sowest not that body that shall be,
but bare grain ... and God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him.'
We cast the seed into the furrows. Who can tell what the harvest is
going to be? We know nothing about the great issues that may suddenly,
or gradually, burst from, or be evolved out of, the small deeds that
we do. So, then, let us take care of the end, so to speak, which is
under our control, and that is the motive. And Jesus Christ will take
care of the other end that is beyond our control, and that is the
issue. He will bring forth what seemeth to Him good, and we shall be
as much astonished 'when we get yonder' at what has come out of what
we did here, as poor Mary, standing there behind Him, was when He
translated her act into so much higher a meaning than she had seen in
it.
'Lord! when saw we Thee hungry and fed Thee?' We do not know what we
are doing. We are like the Hindoo weavers that are said to weave their
finest webs in dark rooms; and when the shutters come down, and not
till then, shall we find out the meanings of our service of love.
Christ makes the work perpetual as well as significant by declaring
that 'in the whole world this shall be preached for a memorial of
her.' Have not 'the poor' got far more good out of Mary's box of
ointment than the three hundred pence that a few of them lost by it?
Has it not been an inspiration to the Church ever since? 'The house
was filled with the odour of the ointment.' The fragrance was soon
dissipated in the scentless air, but the deed smells sweet and
blossoms for ever. It is perpetual in its record, perpetual in God's
remembrance, perpetual in its results to the doer, and in its results
in the world, though these may be indistinguishable, just as the brook
is lost in the river and the river in the sea.
But did you ever notice that the Evangelist who records the promise of
perpetual remembrance of the act does not tell us who did it, and that
the Evangelists who tell us who did it do not record the promise of
perpetual remembrance? Never mind whether your deed is labelled with
your address or not, God knows to whom it belongs, and that is enough.
As Paul says in one of his letters, 'other my fellow-labourers also,
whose names are in the Book of Life.' Apparently he had forgotten the
names, or perhaps did not think it needful to occupy space in his
letter with detailing them, and so makes that graceful,
half-apologetic suggestion that they are inscribed on a more august
page. The work and the worker are associated in that Book, and that is
enough.
Brethren, the question of Judas is far more fitting when asked of
other people than of Christians. 'To what purpose is this waste?' may
well be said to those of you who are taking mind, and heart, and will,
capacity, and energy, and all life, and using it for lower purposes
than the service of God, and the manifestation of loving obedience to
Jesus Christ. 'Why do ye spend money for that which is not bread?' Is
it not waste to buy disappointments at the price of a soul and of a
life? Why do ye spend that money thus? 'Whose image and superscription
hath it?' Whose name is stamped upon our spirits? To whom should they
be rendered? Better for us to ask ourselves the question to-day about
all the godless parts of our lives, 'To what purpose is this waste?'
than to have to ask it yonder! Everything but giving our whole selves
to Jesus Christ is waste. It is not waste to lay ourselves and our
possessions at His feet. 'He that loveth his life shall lose it, and
he that loseth his life for My sake, the same shall find it.'