God's Hand; A Woman's Oil: Mark 14:3

God’s hand at work is marvelous to behold.  Seldom is God’s plan fully visible until we view it in hindsight, but once we see His handiwork it is a beautiful thing.  God can bring threads together we cannot know connect.  In doing so, He bring about incredible results in our life and the lives of those around us.  His handiwork is amazing.

Jesus heads over to Simon the leper’s house.  In sitting down with Simon, Jesus sends a clear message about our past.  Our past doesn’t need to prevent us from knowing Jesus.

Lepers were typically ostracized, sometimes even after being healed.  If a person caught leprosy, there was no reason to think they wouldn’t catch it again.  Perhaps they weren’t fully healed.  Maybe the leprosy was an infliction God sent upon them because of their sinfulness.  Whatever the reason, there were plenty of reasons people could use to shun a leper – even a healed one.

Jesus doesn’t care about the man’s past.  Leper or not, Jesus has no reason to fear.  Jesus’ righteousness comes from within, not from those He meets.  This is great news for us.  Our past need not impact our future with God.  Jesus can overcome and forgive our past.

We can take the same relational status with others.  Our righteousness comes from Christ, who lives in us.  It cannot be tainted by those around us.  If we sit with sinners, we can still be righteous!  We need to ensure we don’t bring sinful patterns into our life, but being in the presence of people with mistakes in their past doesn’t need to make us pause.

While Jesus is with Simon, a woman comes and anoints Jesus’ head.  In doing so, she breaks open the ointment jar and covers Him in the oil.  Traditionally, the breaking of the jar is used to teach how intentional she is about using the oil on Jesus.  After all, once the jar is broken the oil couldn’t be contained any longer.  The oil couldn’t be kept together and sold for its worth.  Once the jar is broken, the act of generosity must go forward.

There is more to it.  Traditionally, during the burial process a container of oil was brought to the deceased body and the oil was used to prepare the body.  Since the contents and the jar contacted a dead body, the container would be broken so there was no temptation to be used again.

The woman couldn’t know Jesus would be crucified a few days later, yet the breaking of the jar and the anointing of His body signals Jesus’ walk to the cross.  This is another display of God’s hand.  The woman couldn’t know the full extent of what she was doing.  She wanted to bless Jesus with a luxurious scent.  She couldn’t know she would be the first to anoint the body of the man who would die for her sin.  Only God could arrange that.

God’s hand at work is marvelous to behold.