Elementary Sunday Lesson

Have you ever been to a fancy dinner? Maybe there were cloth napkins, fine silverware, and fancy plates. A few days before Holy Week started, Jesus and his disciples were having dinner with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in their house. We don’t know if it was a fancy dinner, but it must have been a big one.

For special dinners guests would recline on their stomachs around a low table and the food would be placed in the center. Everyone around the table would lean on one elbow and grab the food from the center, and their feet would stick out the back. Strange, huh? Or kind of cool. Try it some day! As Martha was serving the guests—placing dishes of wonderful food on the middle table—her sister was listening to Jesus teach. This upset Martha because she wanted help. But Jesus was happy that Mary was listening because it was the better choice (see Luke 10:38–42). He was likely teaching about what was about to happen to him in Jerusalem. He would suffer, die, and rise again. Mary was so moved by Jesus’s teaching that she left, went to her room, and grabbed a tall white jar filled with expensive perfume. She returned to the table and opened it by Jesus’s feet. The whole house was now filled with the smell of the sweet perfume. Then she did something that seemed crazy. She poured the perfume on Jesus’s feet, let down her long hair, and wiped his feet clean.

Judas said, “What a waste! She could have sold that for thousands of dollars and given the money to the poor.” Jesus replied, “She has done a beautiful thing. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. In pouring this on my body, she is preparing me for burial. Wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her” (see Matt. 26:10–13). Do you know what is beautiful? Do you know what will be remembered, at least by God? When we love Jesus with crazy love—with the best that we have! Such love and worship is never a waste.