Worthy of It All

We're continuing our journey through the book of John, and we've officially hit chapter 12. We're about 60% through. And honestly, this passage wrecked me this week.

Before we get into it, a quick reminder on why we're in John in the first place. When I was asked what I want Beloved New York to be known for, the answer was simple. I want us to be known as people who love Jesus. Not for our worship, not for our sermons, not for our stance on social justice or politics. I want people to look at this community and just see people who genuinely love Jesus Christ.

The book of John shows us Jesus more intimately than any other book. And here's the thing about love: you can't gaslight yourself into loving God more. You can't willpower your way there. You can't force it. You have to see him as beautiful. It's only when you see his beauty that your love for him organically increases.

The Setup: A Dinner, a Perfume, and a Room Full of People Who Don't Get It

John 12 opens with Jesus arriving in Bethany six days before Passover. Lazarus is there, the guy Jesus literally raised from the dead. Martha is serving. And then Mary does something nobody expected.

She takes about a pint of pure nard, an incredibly expensive perfume worth a year's wages, and pours it on Jesus' feet. Then she wipes his feet with her hair. And the whole house fills with the fragrance.

Judas immediately pipes up: "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?" And John, being the narrator he is, makes sure we know Judas didn't actually care about the poor. He was skimming off the money bag.

Jesus responds: "Leave her alone. It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me."

Four Movements, One Chapter

Chapter 12 has four big moments. Mary anoints Jesus. Then Jesus enters Jerusalem and everybody's waving palm branches yelling "Hosanna!" Then the voice of God thunders from heaven saying, "This is my son." And finally, we see belief and unbelief splitting the crowd right down the middle.

People literally heard the voice of God in that moment, and some of them still wouldn't follow Jesus openly because they were afraid of getting kicked out of the synagogue. They cared more about human approval than the approval of God.

So we've got all these groups in the room. Disciples, religious leaders, skeptics, believers. And the question that kept nagging at me all week was this: Why does Mary worship when no one else does? Why does she see what nobody else sees?

She Saw a Funeral When Everyone Else Saw a Revolution

Jesus had been telling his disciples over and over: I'm about to die. I'm going somewhere you can't follow. And every single time, they'd respond with something like, "So when are we overthrowing Rome?" He'd say, "I'm going to die," and they'd ask, "But when do we get to sit at your right hand?" They just did not get it.

But Mary got it. She was the one person in the room who actually heard what Jesus was saying. And she responded with worship.

What she did was essentially a funeral ritual. In Jewish culture, if you had the means, you would anoint a body with perfume before burial. Jesus himself said it: "She's doing this for my burial." And everyone around her was still planning a political takeover.

Mary saw a funeral when the disciples saw a revolution. She saw worship when Judas saw waste. She saw the beauty of Jesus when the religious leaders saw a threat.

Same Jesus, Different Lenses

There's a school of psychology called Gestalt psychology. You've probably seen those viral images where it's either a young woman or an old woman, or two faces or a vase. It came out of this fascination with how people can look at the same thing and perceive it completely differently.

That's what's happening in John 12. Everyone is looking at the same Jesus, but walking away with wildly different conclusions.

And that hits close to home for me. I have brothers and sisters I grew up with in the faith. We were saved together in high school. They were on fire. Some of them honestly loved God more than I did back then. And years later, a lot of them have walked away. They've been disillusioned. They've been hurt by the church. And I keep having these conversations where I'm thinking, we saw the same Jesus. How did we land in such different places?

I think Mary gives us the answer.

The Difference Was Her Lens

Here's what I believe separated Mary from everyone else: she had no agenda.

The disciples had a political agenda. Judas had a financial agenda. The Pharisees had a power agenda. Every single one of them was looking at Jesus through a lens of what can he do for me?

But Mary's lens was different. Her question wasn't "What can I get from Jesus?" It was "What can I give him?" She wasn't wearing transactional glasses. And because of that, she could see him clearly.

Her Worship Came From Her History

And here's the other thing that set Mary apart. She had history with Jesus.

In Luke's gospel, we read about Mary sitting at Jesus' feet while Martha was serving. Martha gets frustrated and asks Jesus to tell Mary to help out. But this wasn't really about laziness. It was culturally controversial for a woman to sit at a rabbi's feet because women weren't allowed to be disciples. Jesus was making a radical statement by letting her stay. He was saying, she can be my disciple. And when people tried to tarnish her for it, Jesus defended her.

Then in John 11, when Mary's brother Lazarus dies, Jesus comes to her. And even though he already knows he's about to raise Lazarus from the dead, even though he knows the happy ending is coming, he gets down on his knees and weeps with her. He doesn't skip past the pain just because he knows the resolution. He steps into her suffering and sits in it with her. The Psalms say God knows that we are dust. And Jesus lived that out with Mary in her worst moment.

And then he raises her brother from the dead.

You have to understand what Lazarus meant to Mary and Martha. They never married. Their parents are absent from the story as far as we can tell. Lazarus was their provider, their security, their future. When he died, they lost everything. And Jesus gave it all back.

After all of that, Mary looks at Jesus and essentially says, What could I possibly ask for that you haven't already given me?

The Perfume Was Everything She Had

Here's the detail that absolutely got me this week. That perfume wasn't just expensive. It was likely Lazarus' inheritance for his sisters.

Back then, people didn't have stocks or trusts or crypto. They stored wealth in things like perfume, specifically sealed nard, which functioned kind of like how the ultra-wealthy use art today. It was an appreciating asset. A unit of value.

So when Mary breaks open that perfume and pours it at Jesus' feet, she's not just making a dramatic gesture. She's pouring out her financial security. Her safety net. Her future.

And that challenged me deeply. Because I like to think I worship God passionately. I raise my hands, I sing loud. But when I saw what Mary actually gave up, I realized "worthy of it all" wasn't a figure of speech for her. It was the literal reality of her life.

Love Calculates Differently

I'll be honest, when I first read this, part of me saw what Judas saw. That's like 200K worth of perfume. I thought about how I'd feel if someone in our church came up and said they felt convicted to give a love offering, and then proceeded to light a mountain of cash on fire. Part of me would be like, we could have used that for the ministry.

But love calculates differently than the world does. Love sees things the world can't quantify.

My wife is a passionate person. When she gets into something, she really gets into it. And she loves claw machines. I'm talking about the kind of love where I say goodbye to any sense of financial responsibility when we walk into an arcade. I actually sat her down one time and told her, with full sincerity, that claw machines are a waste of money and she should just order the stuffed animal off the internet for a fraction of the cost.

And she looked at me and said, "It's not about the prize." She told me that when she was a kid, her dad never let her do stuff like that. And now, as an adult, even though she knows it's silly and financially irresponsible, when she plays those machines, she feels free. She feels like she's healing something from her childhood.

And in that moment, I stopped seeing money being wasted. I started seeing her inner child being healed.

That's what was happening with Mary. Judas saw waste. Jesus saw worship.

Worship Changes the Atmosphere

John includes one small detail that theologians love to talk about. When Mary broke the perfume, he writes that the fragrance filled the entire house.

John is a sparse writer. He doesn't include unnecessary details. So when he mentions the fragrance filling the room, he's making a point. Your worship shifts the atmosphere around you.

Paul picks this up later when he calls us the "aroma of Christ." The idea is that when people are around you, they should catch something. There should be a fragrance to your life that makes people say, "There's something different about you. I want whatever you have."

I remember going on a mission trip when I was young and fired up. I wanted to hit the streets and evangelize everyone. My missions leader told us we were going to wake up at 5 AM and worship for four hours instead. I was so frustrated. I thought it was a waste of time.

But by the end, everyone around me was so filled with the Holy Spirit, so saturated with the presence of God, that I got wrecked. My leader pulled me aside and said, "Why are you in such a hurry to go do the work of ministry? If you yourself aren't full, how are you going to fill anyone else's cup?"

John Piper once said that evangelism exists because worship doesn't. If every follower of Christ genuinely lived a life of worship, full of joy and power, every non-believing friend in their life would come to them and say, "What do you have? What are you on? Which therapist are you seeing?" And we'd just say, "I follow Jesus."

In Acts 16, Paul and Silas were arrested, and all they did was worship. And when they worshiped, chains broke, jail cells opened, and the guard came forward asking how he could know Christ. Worship literally changes the environment around you.

Why We Struggle to Worship

So why do we struggle with it? Why do I wake up some mornings and think, God, I just don't feel like pressing in today?

I think it's because we haven't seen him clearly. Maybe we saw him clearly once. Maybe we worshiped him passionately in the past. But worship isn't a one-time event. It requires sitting yourself at the feet of Jesus daily and seeing him fresh.

When you see him clearly, worship is a natural byproduct. It's not something you force. It's not something you white-knuckle your way through. Worship is the response to seeing Jesus' beauty, his goodness, his glory.

And how do we see him clearly? The same way Mary did. Through history. Through remembrance.

That's literally the last thing Jesus told his disciples at his final meal with them. He didn't give them a church growth strategy. He didn't say preach better or pray harder. He said, "Eat this bread. Drink this wine. Remember me."

So I've been doing that. Just remembering.

I remember when my family was falling apart, when my dad was gone, my mom was gone, my sister was gone. I remember hearing a song called "There Is None Like You" and weeping as the presence of God flooded my room while I cried myself to sleep in 10th grade.

I remember being in college, serving as a youth pastor, completely alone with no friends, and it was Jesus who sat with me in the loneliness.

I remember the worst seasons of shame in my life, when secrets were being exposed and people looked at me with judgment. It was Jesus who still believed in me and refused to judge me.

And as I walk down that memory lane, I go, Oh yeah. That's why I fell in love with you in the first place. That's why I stayed.

Before You Can Lay It Down, You Have to Remember

Before we can get to the place Mary was, where she laid down her perfume, her security, her future, we have to go back to the beginning. We have to walk down memory lane with Jesus and remember all the goodness he's extended to us.

That's the secret. Not more effort. Not more guilt. Not trying harder. Just remembering.

And when you remember, worship stops being something you have to muster up. It becomes the only reasonable response.