Joy and Concern Simultaneously

Yes, you can celebrate Taylor Swift's engagement and still care about the world's problems at the same time.

I know that sounds random, but stick with me—because in Mark 14 is a radical invitation to embrace both justice and joy, both compassion and celebration, both concern for the oppressed and permission for extravagance.

A woman enters the house like she owns it. Jesus is at dinner in Bethany, probably tired from being on the run from religious authorities who want him dead, and she breaks open an alabaster jar worth more than a year's wages. The smell fills the room—pure nard, costly ointment that would have been beautiful, fragrant, nothing like the sticky oils we imagine today. This is luxury poured out without apology.

And immediately, the room erupts in anger.

"Why was the ointment wasted in this way?" they demand. "This could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor." They scold her. They shame her. They turn her act of worship into a moral failing.

But Jesus steps in: "Leave her alone. You always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish, but you will not always have me."

The Twisted Scripture

That phrase—"the poor you will always have with you"—has been sorely abused.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry once quoted this line as an excuse to explain why there was so much poverty in Texas. Republican Congressman Roger Marshall used the line to explain, "Just like Jesus said, "The poor will always be with us. Here is a group of people that just don't want health care and aren't going to take care of themselves.' Prosperity gospel preachers have wielded it like a weapon, suggesting Jesus is shrugging his shoulders at poverty, basically saying, "Eh, poor people are inevitable, might as well buy another yacht." Conservative politicians love to quote it when they want to justify cutting social programs. It's become the biblical equivalent of "thoughts and prayers"—a way to sound spiritual while doing absolutely nothing.

But that's not what Jesus is saying at all! Jesus' entire ministry is about lifting up the poor, healing the sick, feeding the hungry. He clearly doesn't want poverty to continue. What he's rejecting isn't care for the poor—it's the kind of fake, pseudo-pious concern that uses the existence of suffering to shut down all joy and celebration.

There's this sort of sanctimonious self-denial that does absolutely nothing to help anybody. Paul calls it out specifically in Colossians 2:21, "Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!" These regulations, Paul says, "have an appearance of wisdom" but they're really just another form of slavery to physical concerns. They look spiritual, but they're actually useless.

Northwest Iowa, where I pastored for ten years, is defined by very Dutch Reformed mentalities around money—any sort of expense needed intense justification. Every line of our church's budget was scrutinized for waste. "Why can't the staff buy their own coffee grounds for the coffee machine? Should we have the staff clock in and out so we know how many hours they're in their office?"

Of course, there is such a thing as wastefulness, I don't want to deny that, but miserliness is its own pitfall as well.

There are two ditches we can fall into when it comes to resources, celebration, and justice.

The first ditch is extreme asceticism. The early church definitely fell into this—the idea that anything beautiful, anything pleasurable, anything that brings joy is somehow suspect. It's the sanctimonious, pious self-denial that mistakes misery for morality. It's the leftist version of this that says no joy, no fun, no smiles, no happiness—you just have to be miserable all the time because somebody else is miserable.

That doesn't work. That's not sustainable. And it certainly doesn't help anybody.

The other ditch is Epicurean Christianity—the "as long as it doesn't hurt anybody" or "who gives a care, do what feels good" mentality. It's consumer Christianity, the idea that we can consume our way into liberation. But if everybody lived like Americans do, the world could not sustain it, and we have to do something about that.

Jesus walks a different path. He identifies with the poor—he's poor himself, homeless, definitely a couch surfer. But this couch-surfing rabbi doesn't have time for an attitude that says there's no room for joy, celebration, or extravagance.

The Levitical Vision

You see this tension beautifully resolved in the Torah. While there were very firm commands about providing for the poor—tithing to the poor, leaving food out for the poor, caring for widows and orphans—you also had commands about feasting and celebrating. The Israelites were supposed to set aside a significant portion of their income specifically for festivals and celebrations.

"Set apart a tithe...spend the money for whatever you wish: oxen, sheep, wine, strong drink, or whatever you desire." Deuteronomy 14:22, 26

Can you imagine? Saving ten percent of your income just so you could blow it on a party—and then inviting religious professionals, immigrants, and marginalized people to that party too? That's the biblical vision: multi-dimensional people capable of doing multiple things at the same time.

The existence of bad things in the world should not equal our inability to have joy and celebration. This is the same sort of BS mentality that says people aren't allowed to celebrate Taylor Swift getting engaged because, hey, don't you care about the war in Gaza?

We have to be able to hold both. Compassion and celebration. Justice and joy. Concern for the oppressed and permission for beauty.

The Christ Connection

Jesus' last name isn't Christ. Christ is the Greek word for "anointed," translating the Hebrew word Messiah. So this story in Mark 14? This is the actual action of Jesus being anointed as the Messiah—not by the religious establishment, not in the temple, but by this unnamed woman who sees him for who he truly is.

She performs the most important religious ritual in Jewish history, and she does it with reckless, beautiful extravagance.

Other Gospels connect Judas specifically to this pseudo-pious outrage about waste, and then immediately after this scene, Judas goes to betray Jesus. There's something about performative concern for social justice that can actually reveal the darkness in our hearts. When we use the suffering of others as a club to beat down beauty, joy, and celebration, we're not being prophetic—we're being manipulative.

The woman who anoints Jesus understands something that the disciples miss: the existence of poverty is not a reason to have no extravagance. It's a reason to make sure our extravagance includes everyone.

Jesus lived this out. His first miracle is keeping the wine flowing at a week-long wedding celebration. He feeds crowds until they're full with baskets left over. He tells parables of wedding feasts where everyone—even everyone living in the gutter—gets invited.

This is what the kingdom of God looks like: fierce advocacy for justice paired with permission for beauty. Radical care for the marginalized alongside reckless celebration of goodness. The ability to grieve with those who grieve and rejoice with those who rejoice—sometimes in the same breath.

The woman in Bethany fills the whole house with fragrance. She takes something precious and breaks it open so that everyone can experience its beauty. That's what celebration looks like in the kingdom of God—not the hoarding of joy, but the sharing of it.

Perhaps the most prophetic thing you can do is break open something precious and let its beauty fill the room. Perhaps the most radical act is refusing to let the world's shadow extinguish your light.

Because joy—real joy, shared joy, justice-oriented joy—isn't a luxury we can't afford. It's a necessity the world can't live without.