Jesus, MBA

There’s money all over the place in Holy Week. It begins with Jesus overturning the money changers’ tables and scattering money all over the floor in the Temple. In the middle is the extravagance of the woman who anoints Jesus, and the cash on the barrel Judas negotiates to hand Jesus over. At the end, those same silver pieces come crashing back onto the Temple floor.

It’s a good thing that God doesn’t manage the wealth of grace the way we manage money. That’s what caught Jesus’ eye about this woman, and sent the onlookers into frenzy. The woman managed her expensive oil in virtually the same way God manages the wealth of God’s grace. She was extravagant with it. She lavished it for no apparent reason.

We don’t run our banks, our savings and checking accounts, our IRA’s, our 401 K’s, our money market funds, our mutual funds, or our stock portfolios that way at all. But that’s not the worst of it.

We’ve turned our time, our attention, our energy, our talents and everything we can manage to count, measure, calculate, tabulate, buy, or sell into a commodity. With the best of intentions, we even talk about children as our most precious resource. We always want to know the return on investment. We’re always looking to weigh the risk against the gain.

God, in Jesus, invites us into another way of reconciling accounts. Simply receive the precious gift of God’s outpouring love with open hands. Don’t hang onto it. Let it splash over those closest to you. They are as deserving and desirous of God’s generosity as you are.