December 13: An Extravagant Gift: A Beautiful Act
♫ Music:
Day 13 - Friday, December 13
Title: An Extravagant Gift: A Beautiful Act
Scripture #1: Song of Songs 1:12 (NKJV)
While the king is at his table, my spikenard sends forth its fragrance.
Scripture #2: Mark 14:3–9 (NKJV)
And being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as He sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. Then she broke the flask and poured it on His head. But there were some who were indignant among themselves, and said, “Why was this fragrant oil wasted? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they criticized her sharply. But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a [beautiful thing] for Me. For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always. She has done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint My body for burial. Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”
Poetry:
“Anointing”
by Maria Lisella
as the winter sky cools on its way to night.
You ask me “… before you go, can you …” And I do.
Unwilling to go, needing to go, I organize items
on the table, as if anointing them for you, talk you
through the maze of meds, the need to eat something,
anything all day. I swirl and spin the hospital furniture --
the walker, the tables into place. Your prayer books
next to the phone, small laboratory cups of mouth
washes for who remembers why there are three of them.
I make my way to Second Avenue, chase the subway car,
look up to see a woman giggling. I must have missed
a transient, funny incident on the platform. She wants
me to join her, I do, smile back, blink and recall the last thing
you asked. “Would you take a hot cloth, wash my face …”
as my grandmother did on cold mornings knowing
each child would tiptoe on chilled wooden planked floors
as my mother did for me to gentle me into mornings.
I reach my stop and think quite possibly, I forgot
to warm your face as night falls in a place where
the weather never changes, where you live just for me.
AN EXTRAVAGANT GIFT: A BEAUTIFUL ACT
“I have no say, no position, and I am valueless … Who am I in this world if I am no one in the sight of culture, society, decision-making?
“Sometimes I wonder whether men will ever understand that women are human beings and have equal rights to decisions, to be part of society.”
“In India, it's still male dominated. To make a way for yourself gets very difficult sometimes, because we are not taking a woman as a human being.”
The above words come from women in rural India who participated in a study conducted by me and a Biola research team in the winter of 2007. These women were struggling to be recognized at a most fundamental level—to be seen as human. Can you imagine living in a culture where your voice and presence is constantly devalued? The devaluing of Indian women begins at birth. In many parts of India, a common greeting toward a pregnant woman is, “May you be the mother of a hundred sons.” In other words, if you are the mother of a son you are blessed; to have a daughter is seen as a burden.
What is God’s reaction to women who are often devalued and unseen in many parts of the world?
In today’s passage, Christ elevates the status of women by singling out the actions of one woman and commands that what she has done for him should be told whenever the gospel is proclaimed. What actions are worth such an enduring tribute?
While in Bethany, Christ stays in the home of Simon the Leper. He reclines at a table as a woman comes into the room with a vial of extremely expensive perfume. She shocks everyone by breaking the vial and pouring it over Jesus’ head. Those watching, led by Judas, are indignant. They are of the opinion that the perfume has been wasted when it should have been sold to assist the poor. Jesus disagrees. What the disciples call wasteful, he describes as beautiful. One New Testament scholar notes: “Mark translates the Greek word kalos as ‘good work’ (vrs. 6), but in its larger meaning, it conveys a sense of beauty that gives goodness and artistic glow beyond its instrumental value.” At the heart of social justice is the idea that everyone’s words, actions, and perspectives are worthy of our attention and acknowledgement. Christ acknowledges the actions of this woman—who is not even named—and commands that “wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her” (Mk. 14:9). As we read this devotional today, her testimony lives.
“Who am I in this world if I am no one in the sight of culture?” tragically asks an Indian woman. Barbra Myerhoff, in her study of abandoned senior citizens in a secluded Jewish nursing home, concluded that “unless we exist in the eyes of others, we come to doubt our own existence.” This Advent season let’s treat everyone we meet—neighbors, classmates, Amazon delivery people, and especially those ignored by society—as if they really exist and are, like Jesus modeled, truly seen.
Prayer:
Jesus, today let us look upon others with new eyes. Let us not rush past others but take a moment to see them as you did. A simple smile as person rushes by communicates that they do exist; you are special to me and our Savior.
Amen
Tim Muehlhoff
Professor of Communication
Co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Anointing for Burial
Rose Datoc Dall
Oil on canvas
Mary is most commonly depicted as lovingly anointing Jesus’s feet (John 12:2–8). Less remembered is that Mary also anointed Jesus’ head (Matthew 26:6–13, Mark 14:3–9). The disciples protest Mary’s extravagant expression of using spikenard, an expensive ointment, to anoint Christ, but Jesus rebukes them. For it is Mary alone who realizes something that the disciples don’t seem to comprehend—her anointing is a memorial act intended for Christ’s impending death and burial.
About the Artist:
Filipina American artist Rose Datoc Dall was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in northern Virginia. She received her B.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in 1990. Mrs. Dall works predominantly as a contemporary figurative painter. Dall’s figurative work is distinctive for her graphic compositions, her unconventional use of color, and her linear graphic sensibility. Rose is also known for her body of religious artwork in addition to her figurative work. Mrs. Dall has received several awards and honors for her work and several of her works are a part of permanent collections in public and private institutions. Rose’s art has appeared on book covers, in books, and is featured in several publications online and in print. Currently, in addition to exhibiting, Mrs. Dall enjoys teaching private figure drawing and painting workshops, and lectures on occasion as a way of giving back to her community.
https://www.rosedatocdall.com/about
About the Music: “Pie Jesu” from the album Requiem
Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem is a Requiem Mass, which premiered in 1985. It was written in memory of the composer's father, William Lloyd Webber. The best-known part of Lloyd Webber's Requiem, the "Pie Jesu" segment, combines the traditional Pie Jesu text with that of the Agnus Dei from later in the standard Requiem Mass. It was originally performed in 1985 by Sarah Brightman, who premiered the work in a duet with boy soprano Paul Miles-Kingston.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_(Lloyd_Webber)
Lyrics: (Latin)
Pie Jesu (x4)
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona eis requiem, dona eis requiem
Pie Jesu (x4)
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona eis requiem, dona eis requiem
Agnus De (x4)
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona eis requiem (x2)
Sempiternam (x2)
Dona eis requiem
Sempiternam (x2)
Requiem
Lyrics: (English)
Pious Jesus (x4)
Who takes away the sins of the world.
Give them rest.
Pious Jesus (x4)
Who takes away the sins of the world
Give them rest
Lamb of God (x4)
Who takes away the sins of the world
Give them rest (x2)
Forever (x2)
Grant them eternal rest
Forever (x2)
About the Composer:
Andrew Lloyd Webber (b. 1948) is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed twenty-one musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. Several of Lloyd Webber's songs have been widely recorded and widely successful outside of their respective musicals, such as "Memory" from Cats, "The Music of the Night" and "All I Ask of You" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from Evita, and "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Lloyd Webber has received numerous awards, including a knighthood in 1992, six Tonys, seven Olivier Awards, three Grammys, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Brit Award, the 2006 Kennedy Center Honors, and two Classic Brit Awards for Outstanding Contribution to Music in 2008, and for Musical Theatre and Education in 2018. The Really Useful Group, Lloyd Webber's company, is one of the largest theatre operators in London. He is also the president of the Arts Educational Schools, London, a performing arts school located in Chiswick, West London. Lloyd Webber is involved in a number of charitable activities, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Nordoff Robbins, Prostate Cancer UK, and War Child. In 1992, he started the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation which supports the arts, culture, and heritage of the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lloyd_Webber
https://www.andrewlloydwebber.com/
About the Performers: Sarah Brightman and Paul Miles-Kingston
Sarah Brightman (b. 1960) is an English classical crossover soprano singer, actress, and dancer. Brightman began her career as a member of a dance troupe and released several disco singles as a solo performer. In 1981, she made her musical theatre debut in Cats and met composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, whom she later married. She went on to star in several West End and Broadway musicals, including The Phantom of the Opera, where she originated the role of Christine Daaé. After retiring from stage acting and divorcing Lloyd Webber, Brightman resumed her music career as a classical crossover artist. Brightman's 1996 duet with the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, "Time to Say Goodbye,” topped the charts all over Europe. Brightman is the first artist to have been invited twice to perform the theme song at the Olympic Games, first at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, where she sang with the Spanish tenor José Carreras, and sixteen years later in 2008 in Beijing, this time with Chinese singer Liu Huan. In 2012, Brightman was appointed as the UNESCO Artist for Peace for the period 2012–2014, for her "commitment to humanitarian and charitable causes, her contribution, throughout her artistic career, to the promotion of cultural dialogue and the exchanges among cultures, and her dedication to the ideals and aims of the Organization.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Brightman
https://sarahbrightman.com/
Paul Miles-Kingston (b. 1972) is a British singer who achieved fame as a boy soprano classical singer. In 1982, Miles-Kingston won a choral scholarship into Winchester Cathedral Choir. While a chorister, he sang many solos in services, broadcasts, and oratorios; he toured Western Canada with the choir in 1983, and sang with them at the BBC Proms. Miles-Kingston achieved success as treble soloist in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem, appearing with Sarah Brightman, Plácido Domingo, and the Winchester Cathedral Choir at the world premiere in New York City and the British premiere in Westminster Abbey. Miles-Kingston was awarded a silver disc for the single “Pie Jesu,” which received gold and platinum discs for the album and sold over four hundred thousand copies by 1985.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Miles-Kingston
About the Poetry & Poet:
Maria Lisella was born in Jamaica, but has spent the majority of her life and career as a writer in New York City. The author of three books of poetry (Thieves in the Family, Amore, and Two Naked Feet), Lisella has taught literature and English as a second language at various colleges while also having served as poet laureate of Queens, New York, since 2015. She also works as the poetry editor for the journal VIA: Voices in Italian Americana. https://poets.org/poet/maria-lisella
https://marialisella.contently.com/
About the Devotion Author:
Tim Muehlhoff
Professor of Communication
Co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project
Biola University
Tim Muehlhoff is a professor of communication at Biola University and co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project, designed to reintroduce civility into our private and public disagreements. Tim is also an author whose latest book is End the Stalemate: Moving from Cancel Culture to Meaningful Conversations (Tyndale House).