John W. Carlton - "Holy Waste" (August 13, 1961)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | Recently in conversation with a friend on this campus, | 0:16 |
he told me that one day, | 0:23 | |
he was reprimanded by his wife | 0:25 | |
because in something of an impulsive moment, | 0:28 | |
he had spent too much money | 0:33 | |
in an effort to enhance her vacation. | 0:36 | |
With a wifely eye on budgets which will not budge | 0:40 | |
and children to be fed and clothed, | 0:45 | |
she objected that he could ill afford the money. | 0:49 | |
With his native's rudeness, | 0:55 | |
he shifted the argument from the head to the heart | 0:58 | |
and reminded her that when they were married, | 1:04 | |
he could ill afford the wedding ring. | 1:07 | |
The money could have been spent for household items | 1:11 | |
and for other necessities. | 1:16 | |
As he went on to press his tithes, | 1:20 | |
I was led to believe | 1:23 | |
that with the reflections upon the wedding ring, | 1:26 | |
all of her protests were properly dissolved | 1:30 | |
in a glorious mist of sentimentality. | 1:34 | |
After all, Pascal told us long ago | 1:38 | |
that the heart has its reasons | 1:43 | |
which the mind knows not of. | 1:46 | |
And even as a bachelor, | 1:50 | |
I would plead unashamedly for wedding rings, | 1:53 | |
which cannot be afforded, | 1:57 | |
and for wives who are sometimes too expensive. | 1:59 | |
This little human episode brings | 2:04 | |
to mind this morning a question. | 2:06 | |
Is there a place in life | 2:10 | |
and certainly in Christian experience | 2:14 | |
for extravagance, | 2:17 | |
for the unblocked impulse, | 2:20 | |
for the spontaneity of love? | 2:24 | |
In the spiritual dimensions of life, | 2:29 | |
Jesus certainly made great place for giving | 2:32 | |
which is not smothered by caution and prudence. | 2:36 | |
Perhaps nowhere is this fact revealed more clearly | 2:43 | |
than it is in the scripture of the morning. | 2:48 | |
We read that Jesus has come to the home of Simon, | 2:52 | |
the leper at Bethany. | 2:55 | |
The issues of destiny are being speedily drawn, | 2:59 | |
and he senses the ominous shadows | 3:04 | |
of the cross growing ever nearer. | 3:06 | |
No doubt, he comes to that moment | 3:10 | |
as one in whom desperate tides | 3:12 | |
of the whole world's anguish forced | 3:15 | |
through the channels of a single heart. | 3:19 | |
Suddenly, the room is a stir | 3:23 | |
as a woman impulsively breaks an alabaster jar | 3:26 | |
and pours the contents on the head of our Lord. | 3:31 | |
This extravagant and impulsive action immediate drew | 3:37 | |
a murmur of protest from her shocked onlookers | 3:42 | |
and also brought a very spirited defense from our Lord. | 3:47 | |
Let us look, first of all, | 3:55 | |
at the objection which was raised. | 3:56 | |
We are told in the scriptures that | 4:00 | |
with this murmur of protest, | 4:01 | |
their finest logic was to ask the question, | 4:03 | |
why all this waste? | 4:06 | |
After all, why shouldn't this have been sold | 4:09 | |
and the proceeds given to the poor? | 4:12 | |
Here it once we have that clash | 4:16 | |
between the market mind | 4:18 | |
and the life of the spirit. | 4:21 | |
Here is the old debate between earthbound reason | 4:24 | |
and the spontaneity of love. | 4:27 | |
After all, these were people who were accustomed | 4:31 | |
to living frugally | 4:33 | |
for perhaps they came from the great middle classes of life, | 4:36 | |
and they were accustomed to living | 4:40 | |
in a solid substantial world of gold, | 4:42 | |
and copper, and silver. | 4:45 | |
And their natural protest was to raise the question, | 4:48 | |
"Why all this waste? | 4:51 | |
This should have been sold | 4:52 | |
and the proceeds given to the poor." | 4:54 | |
And yet tragically enough, | 4:57 | |
while their prudential souls are shocked, | 5:00 | |
their failure to see this act | 5:04 | |
as anything other than extravagant waste reveals | 5:06 | |
their serfdom to the market mind of the world. | 5:11 | |
Now, the verdict of these shocked onlookers is not new | 5:17 | |
to life. | 5:20 | |
Indeed, it is as old as the human race. | 5:22 | |
Here, we have the purely reasonable | 5:26 | |
versus ecstatic element in religion. | 5:30 | |
In the minds of most people, | 5:36 | |
the devotion displayed by this woman | 5:37 | |
to be sure builds no barns. | 5:39 | |
It yields no compound interest. | 5:42 | |
Indeed, it may well be a foreign entanglement of the soul. | 5:45 | |
For minds which know the cost of everything | 5:52 | |
and the value of nothing, | 5:54 | |
the sacrifice of life for faith is sheer waste. | 5:57 | |
It is needless extravagance. | 6:02 | |
No doubt, much sympathy is expended | 6:06 | |
by well-upholstered saints oftentimes. | 6:09 | |
Upon some fine young man or woman, | 6:13 | |
who in some far flung outpost | 6:16 | |
of human need has forgotten themselves | 6:19 | |
into a glorious happiness. | 6:22 | |
And perhaps in the logic of our world, | 6:26 | |
we would say concerning such an expenditure of life, | 6:28 | |
"Why all this waste? | 6:31 | |
Too bad they could not invest themselves | 6:34 | |
in an occupation where they could 'make good'." | 6:36 | |
Such logic as this would look | 6:42 | |
at a person like Francis of Assisi and say, | 6:43 | |
"Why all this waste? | 6:45 | |
Here was one after all who could have been Lord | 6:48 | |
of a manner rather than an impecunious beggar" | 6:51 | |
Such reasoning as this would look at John Wesley and say, | 6:55 | |
"Why all this waste? | 6:59 | |
This man with marvelous executive and organizing skill, | 7:02 | |
would he not have made a marvelous parliamentary whip | 7:06 | |
or a major general?" | 7:09 | |
This reasoning would look at a person like Father Damian | 7:12 | |
who has he worked among the lepers | 7:17 | |
in the hill Hawaiian islands contracted | 7:18 | |
that dread disease. | 7:20 | |
And they would say, | 7:23 | |
"Why all this waste?" | 7:24 | |
As he then addressed his congregations there and said, | 7:27 | |
"I speak to you not as my brethren, | 7:31 | |
but as we lepers." | 7:34 | |
You see, we observe from the record | 7:39 | |
that Jesus warmly applauded this woman. | 7:41 | |
He was moved to high praise. | 7:45 | |
He said this was a thing of beauty. | 7:49 | |
This will always be spoken of her | 7:52 | |
as a memorial wherever the gospel is preached. | 7:54 | |
Here, I think we come | 8:00 | |
upon a very significant truth for all of life. | 8:01 | |
If our Lord were here on this earth today, | 8:06 | |
would he not be strangely impatient | 8:08 | |
with our natural caution, and prudence, | 8:11 | |
and timidity, and calculated concern? | 8:14 | |
Would he not call us to such an act of devotion | 8:19 | |
as we have in our lesson this morning? | 8:22 | |
Here in this woman, | 8:26 | |
Jesus saw the abundant heart | 8:29 | |
and He joyfully and gladly accepted what He saw. | 8:33 | |
There is no subtle attempt here to analyze her motives | 8:39 | |
and say, "Why did she do this?" | 8:44 | |
Here, He saw the spontaneous overflow of a grateful heart | 8:47 | |
and He was gladdened by what He saw. | 8:51 | |
It seems as we look in the Bible | 8:57 | |
that Jesus honor this kind of faith. | 9:01 | |
He lacked to see a life which would take risks, | 9:06 | |
which would risk the hazards of the untried road, | 9:10 | |
a life which was not always concerned | 9:15 | |
with careful prudence and nervous calculation. | 9:18 | |
On one occasion, he said, | 9:24 | |
"Whoever puts his hand to the plow | 9:25 | |
and looks back is not worthy of the kingdom." | 9:28 | |
He was all for burning the bridges behind one cell | 9:33 | |
so there could be no retreat and no turning back. | 9:36 | |
He had his most delightful experiences with people | 9:41 | |
in the gospels who made great adventures for their faith, | 9:45 | |
who displayed almost a reckless disregard | 9:50 | |
for human judgments and for conventional standards. | 9:53 | |
That must have been a very great moment | 9:58 | |
in the life of our Lord. | 10:00 | |
When one day, | 10:03 | |
the friends of the paralytic unable to gain access | 10:04 | |
to Jesus because of the press of the throne | 10:09 | |
actually demolished the roof | 10:13 | |
and put the paralytic down at the feet of the Master. | 10:16 | |
I think he must have said to himself, | 10:21 | |
"Today, this gospel is doing serious business. | 10:22 | |
These people mean something by their faith." | 10:27 | |
Obviously, He was greatly impressed by the poor widow | 10:33 | |
who came by the urn in the temple | 10:37 | |
and dropped in her meager contribution | 10:40 | |
for the support of the institution. | 10:43 | |
Now, many people made an elaborate ceremony of this. | 10:47 | |
But one day, there came the widow who put in two mites. | 10:52 | |
This was all she had. | 10:59 | |
And when you give everything, | 11:02 | |
it doesn't have to be much to be all. | 11:05 | |
She put into that temple treasury all that she had | 11:10 | |
and Jesus again was moved to great praise. | 11:13 | |
He said, | 11:16 | |
"These others out of their abundance have given something, | 11:17 | |
but she out of her poverty has given all." | 11:21 | |
This again moved Him to great praise. | 11:27 | |
But today, | 11:29 | |
in our modern Hollywood version | 11:31 | |
if we were writing this story | 11:33 | |
and did not know our Master, | 11:34 | |
no doubt we would write a nice little sequel to this story. | 11:37 | |
We would have Jesus seeing the poverty | 11:41 | |
of the woman call her back, | 11:44 | |
restore the coins marvelously transformed into gold and say, | 11:47 | |
"Go, my dear and live forever on this." | 11:51 | |
But so far, as the record goes, | 11:56 | |
He did nothing at that moment to relieve her poverty. | 11:57 | |
He let her give all, | 12:01 | |
and He praised her for doing it | 12:04 | |
because He knew that she already had her reward. | 12:06 | |
You see, our Lord never wanted to get between people | 12:13 | |
and their sacrifices. | 12:17 | |
He liked to see people take risks. | 12:20 | |
He loved those who would take up crosses and follow Him. | 12:24 | |
One day, after our Lord had discourse | 12:32 | |
on the perils of riches, | 12:34 | |
Sam and Peter became awfully disturbed. | 12:38 | |
And he said to Jesus, | 12:42 | |
"Master, we have left all and followed you. | 12:45 | |
What do we get?" | 12:50 | |
And the reply of Jesus was to the point, | 12:53 | |
"You will become sons of the Most High." | 12:57 | |
In other words, | 13:04 | |
the great reward of serving Him. | 13:05 | |
The great reward of discipleship is not in getting. | 13:09 | |
It is in being. | 13:14 | |
It is not in having. | 13:16 | |
It is in becoming. | 13:19 | |
This is the reward for following Him. | 13:22 | |
Thus, do we see in the first part | 13:29 | |
of our scripture therefore, | 13:30 | |
this old clash between the market mind | 13:33 | |
and the life of the spirit. | 13:36 | |
But Jesus saw this for what it was. | 13:40 | |
And in sharp retort to her critics, | 13:44 | |
He said, "Why do you trouble this woman? | 13:49 | |
Let her alone." | 13:53 | |
And then in two very brief propositions, | 13:56 | |
He gives a marvelous defense of what she did. | 14:01 | |
You will observe that Jesus said, first of all, | 14:08 | |
"She has done a beautiful thing." | 14:10 | |
Now imagine doing a deed, | 14:15 | |
which would be called beautiful | 14:17 | |
by the Master of men. | 14:19 | |
And the word which he uses here is kalos, | 14:22 | |
a word which occurs something like a hundred times | 14:26 | |
in the New Testament. | 14:29 | |
The word suggests that, | 14:32 | |
which is attractive, | 14:33 | |
that which delights the heart, | 14:36 | |
language is both beautiful and honorable | 14:40 | |
in the spiritual sense. | 14:44 | |
This word is sometimes used in classical Greek, | 14:48 | |
in Sophocles' Antigone. | 14:53 | |
When she is about to bury her brother | 14:56 | |
who has been disgraced in the eyes of the state | 15:01 | |
and is forbidden honorable burial, | 15:03 | |
she is warned that she must suffer the consequences | 15:07 | |
of what she does. | 15:10 | |
Where upon she bravely replies, | 15:12 | |
"He's beautiful for me to die in such employ." | 15:16 | |
Now, in the Christian sense, | 15:23 | |
the word comes eventually | 15:24 | |
to be used as a description of the good deeds, | 15:27 | |
which presumably marks the life of a Christian. | 15:32 | |
The suggestion, therefore, | 15:37 | |
is that the Christian's character, | 15:39 | |
his goodness is to be winsome and attractive. | 15:42 | |
There was once an old Scottish minister | 15:51 | |
by the name of J. P. Struthers | 15:52 | |
who remarked that what the world needs | 15:54 | |
more than anything else is somebody | 15:57 | |
who will do a bonny thing for God. | 15:59 | |
And perhaps the lovely word bonny suggests something | 16:04 | |
of what Jesus has in mind here. | 16:08 | |
For you see, after all, | 16:13 | |
so much of our own personal goodness is often grim. | 16:14 | |
It is austere. | 16:19 | |
It is loveless. | 16:21 | |
It is protesting. | 16:24 | |
I suppose, today, we are so often weary of extravagance. | 16:27 | |
We are strangely suspicious of any lavish expenditure | 16:33 | |
of life and self in the name of religion. | 16:38 | |
Our perennial theme song is nothing over much. | 16:42 | |
Our desire to believe is oftentimes carefully balanced | 16:47 | |
by the proper proportion of respectable doubt. | 16:52 | |
The desire for wonder is all too often strangled | 16:58 | |
by a nervous calculation | 17:03 | |
and by prudential considerations. | 17:05 | |
Many of us are like T.S. Eliot in his description | 17:10 | |
when he says that we measure out our lives by coffee spoons. | 17:15 | |
And when we come to die, | 17:20 | |
it is by just the last little spoonful dripping away. | 17:21 | |
Now this morning, | 17:28 | |
I believe personally that there are many people | 17:28 | |
in our world who have known somewhere | 17:32 | |
along life's way the abundance of the heart, | 17:35 | |
but this so often has been stifled by human laws, | 17:39 | |
by convention, | 17:45 | |
by rigid austere self-control. | 17:47 | |
This morning, | 17:53 | |
I well know that there are many people | 17:53 | |
in this world who suffer immeasurably | 17:57 | |
because love has been denied them. | 17:59 | |
Perhaps born under adverse conditions, | 18:04 | |
are living life in the midst of inhospitable circumstances. | 18:08 | |
They have known what it is to be deprived of love. | 18:12 | |
But believe me, | 18:17 | |
I suspect there is a far larger number today | 18:18 | |
who suffer because they have never learned how to give love, | 18:22 | |
how to invest themselves deeply, | 18:29 | |
how to spend themselves lavishly | 18:32 | |
in the lives and the needs of others. | 18:35 | |
Somehow rather we have ways of suppressing | 18:40 | |
in ourselves and in others the abundant heart | 18:43 | |
and the expenditure of self, | 18:46 | |
which certainly transgresses all laws of reason. | 18:49 | |
And yet in our scripture lesson this morning, | 18:55 | |
this is precisely what our Lord praised | 18:58 | |
in this marvelous woman | 19:00 | |
for here was the total unrestrained giving of self. | 19:02 | |
Sometime ago, | 19:10 | |
I read a marvelous article from Norman Cousins, | 19:11 | |
the editor of the Saturday Review. | 19:15 | |
He had just returned | 19:19 | |
from visiting with Schweitzer in Africa. | 19:20 | |
He said that many times, | 19:24 | |
during the course of his visit, | 19:26 | |
they were told together about the great questions of life | 19:29 | |
and human destiny, | 19:32 | |
particularly in the evenings when the hospital was asleep | 19:36 | |
and the shadows of darkness had come. | 19:40 | |
I wish we had a transcript of those conversations. | 19:44 | |
But when he came back to our shores, | 19:49 | |
he was reflecting upon the fact | 19:51 | |
that to many people, | 19:54 | |
Schweitzer is a little more than a kind | 19:57 | |
of sentimental do-gooder, | 19:59 | |
who is wasting his life on African natives | 20:03 | |
who can neither read nor write. | 20:06 | |
But in a perfectly marvelous way, | 20:10 | |
Norman Cousins goes on to raise a profound issue. | 20:13 | |
He said, "The greatest tragedy | 20:20 | |
in the world is what dies inside a man while he lives; | 20:22 | |
the death of faith, and hope, | 20:30 | |
and feeling, and awareness, and response." | 20:34 | |
He said, "Schweitzer has proven to the world | 20:42 | |
that while we have no control | 20:46 | |
over the fact of our existence, | 20:48 | |
we hold supreme command over the meaning | 20:53 | |
of that existence for us." | 20:59 | |
And he said, "Our greatest tragedy is that we shall die | 21:03 | |
and never know our greatest power, | 21:07 | |
the power of love to give itself for others." | 21:12 | |
And I maintained this morning | 21:19 | |
that the deepest question perhaps, | 21:21 | |
which we can raise with ourselves is | 21:22 | |
to ask ourselves frankly, | 21:26 | |
what in me is dying? | 21:31 | |
For it is perilously possible to become a living body | 21:35 | |
and a dead soul. | 21:41 | |
And to be sure, | 21:44 | |
we do not have control over the fact of our existence. | 21:44 | |
We are here. | 21:47 | |
This is given, | 21:48 | |
but the glorious fact is that we hold supreme command | 21:51 | |
over the meaning of that existence for us. | 21:55 | |
We are spiritual beings capable | 21:59 | |
of almost infinite expansion. | 22:01 | |
For all that I genuinely care | 22:05 | |
for this morning is part of my life, | 22:07 | |
it is part of my spiritual history and destiny. | 22:11 | |
Yes, long ago in Simon's house at Bethany, | 22:17 | |
our Lord understood this, | 22:23 | |
and He called this act beautiful. | 22:26 | |
And He called it beautiful | 22:30 | |
because it refused to count the cost. | 22:31 | |
It had set beauty above utility. | 22:35 | |
Jesus saw here love lifted to a fine art. | 22:40 | |
And here, He honors that fine excess, | 22:46 | |
the surprise which springs from the imagination of love. | 22:50 | |
There is a place in all devotion | 23:00 | |
for love lifted to a fine art. | 23:03 | |
There is a place for a great cathedral | 23:06 | |
like this with soaring arches that are prayers in stone. | 23:08 | |
There is a place for great music | 23:16 | |
that perennial language of the heart. | 23:19 | |
There is a place in life of poetry | 23:22 | |
that spontaneous overflow of great and powerful feelings. | 23:24 | |
There is always the place for the great book | 23:29 | |
which is what John Neilson said it was, | 23:33 | |
"The precious life blood of a master spirit treasured up | 23:36 | |
on purpose for a life beyond life." | 23:40 | |
And so this morning, | 23:47 | |
unashamedly in this sermon, | 23:48 | |
we celebrate love that is not smothered | 23:51 | |
with caution and prudence, | 23:54 | |
and a heart that is lifted out of arithmetic into love. | 23:58 | |
Jesus called this deed beautiful | 24:06 | |
because it enshrined the beauty | 24:10 | |
and the nobility of love's extravagance. | 24:13 | |
Let us move now to our final consideration. | 24:20 | |
You will observe also that our Lord says of this deed, | 24:24 | |
"She has done what she could." | 24:29 | |
Or to put it another way, | 24:34 | |
"She has done that which lay in her power." | 24:36 | |
But I hear someone say this morning, | 24:42 | |
after all, | 24:43 | |
this isn't a very extravagant word of praise, | 24:44 | |
but I maintain that it is for a very simple reason. | 24:48 | |
There are precious few people in this world | 24:52 | |
whoever do all they can. | 24:56 | |
So few of us ever do what lies immediately at hand. | 24:59 | |
You see, we all prefer to indulge in a kind of revering. | 25:06 | |
It's much more poetic to think in terms of what I cannot do | 25:11 | |
than it is to get down to the dull, prosaic business | 25:17 | |
of trying to decide what to do with life. | 25:21 | |
This morning, it is far more engaging | 25:26 | |
to indulge in a sort of revering and self-dramatization. | 25:30 | |
And imagine what I would do with $50,000, | 25:35 | |
which I do not and will never have. | 25:38 | |
Far more engaging to do that | 25:42 | |
than to decide what to do with the $5, | 25:44 | |
which I do have. | 25:46 | |
Far more poetic this morning, | 25:49 | |
to imagine what I would do | 25:51 | |
where I possessed of the gifts | 25:53 | |
and graces of Schweitzer, or Einstein, | 25:55 | |
or some giant of the human race far are more engaging | 25:59 | |
to do that than to get down to the dull business | 26:02 | |
of looking at my one talent. | 26:05 | |
For like a great many people in the world, | 26:10 | |
I belong to the common 5/8. | 26:14 | |
I'm a little more than 1/2, I hope, | 26:17 | |
and not quite 2/3. | 26:20 | |
This is where life finds many of us | 26:24 | |
and is so much more engaging | 26:27 | |
to think in terms of that, | 26:31 | |
which we cannot do. | 26:33 | |
But our Lord was not amused | 26:36 | |
in reading this for what it was. | 26:38 | |
He saw here one who did that, | 26:41 | |
which lay in her power. | 26:46 | |
And this morning, | 26:49 | |
this scene speaks powerfully to all of us | 26:50 | |
of the enormous importance | 26:55 | |
of the consecration of personality. | 26:58 | |
The unmeasured sharing and giving are the best | 27:02 | |
that we have and all. | 27:09 | |
For you see what this story really says to us is this, | 27:14 | |
that personality is a sacred treasure | 27:19 | |
and it is an unspeakable tragedy | 27:25 | |
to carry a personality through life in an unbroken jar. | 27:29 | |
Our Lord is saying, | 27:36 | |
"Break it, | 27:38 | |
give it, | 27:41 | |
use it, | 27:43 | |
spend it. | 27:45 | |
And then you will know the meaning of life." | 27:47 | |
For after all, the highest use of life is | 27:54 | |
to spend it for that, | 27:59 | |
which will outlast it. | 28:02 | |
And Jesus said of the deed of this woman | 28:05 | |
that this sacred holy waste would always be spoken | 28:09 | |
of her as a memorial. | 28:15 | |
And in His own life, | 28:20 | |
as He came to the end of the road, | 28:23 | |
He did not disavow the sacred waste | 28:27 | |
for there that day on Golgotha | 28:31 | |
as He was lifted high | 28:34 | |
on His lonely hill there | 28:36 | |
in the self-surrendering love of that cross, | 28:40 | |
there was a strange meeting of reason | 28:44 | |
and ectasy of moral obedience and sacred waste. | 28:47 | |
I close this morning with these lines from Santayana, | 28:56 | |
"O world, thou choosest not the better part! | 29:02 | |
It is not wisdom to be only wise, | 29:09 | |
and on the inward vision close the eyes, | 29:14 | |
It is but wisdom to believe the heart." | 29:19 | |
Let us stand. | 29:26 | |
Oh God, our Father, | 29:38 | |
who in the beauty | 29:41 | |
and the brightness of life has set our feet | 29:42 | |
in pleasant places, | 29:46 | |
humbly do we consecrate ourselves anew | 29:49 | |
to the godly and fruitful life. | 29:53 | |
In all our days, | 29:57 | |
grant us the contentment of self-forgetfulness, | 29:58 | |
the joy of spiritual service, | 30:03 | |
and the grace of the abundant heart. | 30:06 | |
And now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling | 30:11 | |
and to present you faultless before the presence | 30:17 | |
of His glory with exceeding joy, | 30:19 | |
to the only wise God, our savior, | 30:23 | |
the glory and majesty, | 30:27 | |
dominion and power both now and evermore. | 30:30 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 30:40 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 30:48 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 30:56 | |
(bell ringing) | 31:16 | |
(uplifting music) | 31:28 |