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Mark- The Most Useless Passage
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Mark- The Most Useless Passage Read Mark 14:1-11
Joel called this the “most useless passage” because it isn’t really a passage you can “use.” It isn’t a story about right and wrong. It’s a story that steps out of the logic of function, use, right, and wrong... it’s categorically different. It’s Beautiful. Logically it’s wasteful. The woman’s actions are even called that. Often scriptural stories are taught to make a truth or a statement and the only response is to accept or reject. This is story is about beauty which is an invitation to relationship, to an exchange, to a dance. This woman is action when everyone else is talk. She is the instigator and everyone else merely the commentator. All we can be as we observe this story is an interpreter and commentator but maybe we can accept the invitation to beauty in this space.
The woman in the story never says a word. She is all action. She is resolved in what she is doing and does what she feels is right. Why do you think she does this? What is motivating her? Why take THIS action of all the things she could have done?
This didn’t happen quickly. It would have taken some time with all these people watching. Everyone smelling the smell. It would have stopped whatever was going on. Where do you see yourself in this story? As the woman? As Jesus? As someone watching? How do you respond internally to this story?
Read the beginning and end of this story again. Verse 1,2,10,11. Look at how Mark frames the beginning and end of the story. This woman’s actions push Judas over the edge to betray Jesus. Why is that? Why did Mark frame this story in this way?
This story reminds me of the Theodore Roosevelt quote, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Maybe this is why we are still talking about her today. Does her action invite you to more boldness? If so, in what way?
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