Put yourself in the path of beauty. Make it a habit. This world is filled with plenty of sorrow, and one of the most healing ways we can respond to the sufferings of those we care about comes by way of noticing and holding forth what is beautiful. It is one of the ways the Lord has equipped us to push back against the darkness.
On the Wednesday of Holy Week, Jesus and his disciples went to the home of Simon the Leper to share a meal. The next day he would gather with his disciples in the Upper Room, and the day after that he would be crucified.
Matthew’s gospel tells us that as they sat in Simon’s house, a woman with an alabaster flask approached Jesus and began to pour her perfume on his head and feet, which Mark tells us she did by breaking open its container. (Mark 14:3) Breaking open that alabaster flask was like popping the cork on a $20,000 bottle of champagne. She was not acting on a whim. She was offering Jesus everything she had.
The disciples reacted as many men often do. They considered the monetary value of her perfume and regarded her actions as though she might as well have been throwing a year’s wages into a bread oven. But they dressed their indignation up in the noble auspices of concern for the less fortunate: Think of the poor people who could have benefited from the sale of this perfume. (cf. Mt 26:8-9)
But look at how Jesus responds. He comes to her aid, telling them that what she has done is beautiful. Of all the words our Lord could have used, he chose the word beautiful. And the next thing he says is profoundly sorrowful: “You always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial.” (Matthew 26:11-12) Jesus connects her extravagance with his burial and says what she has done is beautiful.
Though her perfume could have been sold for a year’s wages, what is perfume for? Is it merely a commodity she should have held on to in the event that she needed to cash it in later? Is this how God would expect her to steward this valuable resource? Apparently not. Perfume is meant to be poured out and released into the air so that it might fill a room with its beautiful and startling aroma.
Everything in creation testifies to a Creator who delights in beauty for beauty’s sake. So many things that are beautiful didn’t need to be—the mist that rises from the base of a waterfall, the pastel sky at sunset, the sensation of holding a loved one’s hand for the first time. God chose to infuse these things with beauty.
Why? One reason must be because beauty pleases him. And another must be in order to arrest people by their senses while they’re otherwise just plodding along, heads down, learning to live within the economy of pragmatism. But another reason God infused this world with beauty is because it is a healing balm to the brokenhearted—flowers beside a hospital bed, poems for unrequited love, hymns sung acapella beside an open grave.
What this woman did for Jesus was beautiful and he wanted his disciples to know it, and the world to remember it. J.C. Ryle wrote, “The speeches of parliamentary orators, the exploits of warriors, the works of poets and painters, will not be mentioned on that day [of God’s coming Kingdom]; but the least work that the weakest Christian has done for Christ, or his members, will be found written in a book of everlasting remembrance.” Jesus saw a great kindness and honor in her gesture, so he returned the honor by saying history would never forget her act of beauty. And we haven’t, have we?
Think about the relationship between that perfume and the burial of Christ. What happens when that woman pours a pound of thick, richly aromatic oil-based perfume on the head of a man who doesn’t shower every morning? He takes that scent with him when he leaves. It coats his hair. It eventually trickles down his neck and onto his back and chest. It gets in his pores. He is a walking diffuser.
So what if…
What if the scent that filled the room at Simon the Leper’s house also filled the Upper Room the next night? Can you think of a reason it wouldn’t have? I can’t. What if, as Jesus wound through the narrow city streets of Jerusalem, the scent of that perfume lingered mysteriously in the air like a spirit after he had disappeared from sight?
And what if, after his arrest, as he was stripped down for the cat of nine tails, the scent of this Himalayan flower was released into the air with every blow, filling the courtyard with an aroma that made everyone ask themselves, “What is that fragrance?”
And what if the scent followed the cross to Golgotha along the Via Dolorosa? What if as Jesus hung on the cross dying, every time he pushed himself up for a breath, that nard came to life again? That would have to be one very expensive application of one very intensely aromatic perfume. Even a year’s wage worth.
Imagine that as the Man of Sorrows died on that hill outside Jerusalem, surrounded by Roman soldiers, confused disciples, grieving friends, and self-righteous men whose entire lives were one big exercise in missing the point, imagine that the scent of extravagant opulence hung in the air, almost like they had been visited by a king.
It would be just like God to do this. Why? Because the cross is the most extravagant example of opulence ever offered, and because the scent of the opulence of his gift of life still hangs in the air today. Where? In his people. Paul puts it this way: “Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” (2 Corinthians 2:14-16)
If we surrender our lives to pragmatism, suffering will be little more than a problem we’re trying to solve. But if we put ourselves in the path of beauty and train our eyes, and even more our hearts, to notice it, we can learn to see our present sufferings as hills in the foreground of a future glory Christ promises us is ours when our faith is in him. We must never pretend our suffering isn’t real, but when we train ourselves to look for beauty, we learn to see our pain in the context of the lovingkindness that will one day heal every broken part of us.