Poured out

Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, ‘Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.’ (Matthew 26:6-9)

She has no name, at least as Matthew tells the story. Perhaps that is the best way to tell this story, for then she becomes a stand-in, a representative of the many millions whose names disappear in the deep silence of history, as I am sure my name will.

But that doesn’t matter, as long as one has loved much and well. For the love poured into small moments lives long into the future, where we cannot go.

So it is with this unnamed woman at Jesus feet. Twenty centuries gone, her soul elevated into the halls of eternity, her story is told, just as we tell stories of our sweet saints, the mothers and fathers and friends and grandparents and neighbors and coaches and teachers and Lord-knows-who-else.

A simple gaze into one’s past produces a gallery of faces whose smiles we craved because their kind indulgence provided a circle of safety in a wounding world, an oasis of care where we could be our needy selves without apology.  

She is them, this unnamed woman at Jesus feet, and they are her, for one reason alone. Like them, she gave freely. She poured out the beauty that was in her.

Entering the house where Jesus was eating, she knelt beside him and anointed his head with expensive oil. She says nothing. We never hear her voice, nor does Matthew suggest her motivation.

But anyone with a minimally working heart understands that this is about love. An immense, uncontainable love bursts the seams of her exquisitely beautiful heart. It floods her being, refusing to be denied or controlled, pouring from the depth of her truly liberated soul, propriety and reason be damned. They don’t matter, only love.

Without further explanation, we can only wonder what she saw or felt or heard from Jesus that awakened such love. Something. And love creates its own necessity. Just so, she did what love required of her, silently anointing Jesus, preparing him for his ugly death soon to come.

Wherever the gospel is proclaimed what she has done will be told, Jesus tells those who criticized her extravagance.

Her name is unknown, but her love reaches across centuries of time, awakening my heart not only to love her, but to give thanks for so many souls like her whom I have met in my journeys, people who did the hard things others feared, many who poured out their hearts in obscure places where few, if any, paid them much attention … or understood why they cared so much and so deeply. They felt love’s holy necessity.

A parade of faces, a great cloud of witnesses passes before my eyes some days. Few of them are known beyond the time and place of their habitation, and even there they are quickly forgotten in the wash of time. Few, if any, would be considered great or important as our society measures such things. But they are.

I owe my faith, my joy, my hope and the meaning of my life to such as these, many of whom now rest in the eternal arms of the Love who captured and filled them.

In wildly divergent ways, they bore the beauty of Christ, who poured himself out in love for the world, awakening their hearts. I can only pray that maybe, somewhere along the line, I have or still could bless the world so well as they blessed me.

But I suppose one need not worry about such things. It is far better to give oneself to each moment, no matter how small or insignificant, pouring such love as I have into this finite cup of time … knowing … I am held in the Love that courses through the centuries to every place and time.