Going all in!!!

 

GOING ALL IN!!!

Mario D’Couto

            Going all in! I am pretty sure you may have come across this phrase which basically implies giving your 100% or more in whatever you do, leaving no room for any compromise and while this can be applied in a wide variety of contexts, in this blogpost/reflection, the focus would be on going all in, in one’s relationship with God and why it is necessary. In the Gospel of St. John (John 12:1-9), we see two characters, namely, Mary (the sister of Martha; not the mother of Jesus) and Judas, where one was looking to give (Mary) while the other was looking to take (Judas). When Mary anointed Jesus at the banquet given in His honour, she gave her very best. In fact, she may have laid down her very future when she poured the perfume on His feet since that jar of perfume, may have very well held every hope and dream she had ever had. To understand the meaning behind this, let’s take a look at what life was like for a Jewish maiden at that time.

 To be married ranked high on every Jewish maiden’s wish list. Their culture, even their religion, made marriage and especially childbirth the highest form of honour. To be barren was a disgrace but to be unmarried was even worst. Hence with that being said, it was a common practice at that time that by age twelve, most young Jewish women had been promised in marriage, if they weren’t already married. Fathers usually arranged the union, though the girls were given a say in the matter. Several factors were involved. One was the bride’s price, the compensation paid to the bride’s father by the groom. But the bride was often expected to bring something of value to the union as well.

            When both sides agreed, the betrothal – the engagement part of the ceremony – was performed. An ornate document called the ketubah was signed by the future bride and the groom and the ceremony was sealed by a kiss. From that moment on, the couple were legally bound to wed, though the actual wedding ceremony might not take place until several years later. The agreement can be dissolved only by death or by divorce. As far as we know, Mary never had the opportunity to marry and because she and Lazarus lived with Martha, it appears that their parents may have died several years before. The fact that it was called Martha’s house is interesting as well for the family estate usually went to a son. Some commentaries speculate that Martha may have been married and widowed and the house in which she was staying would have been an inheritance from her husband.

As for Mary, the alabaster jar of perfume which she had may have been a part, if not all, of Mary’s dowry and with no father to arrange her marriage, time was ticking away. The perfume would have certainly been worth more than three hundred denarii (which was nearly a year’s wages at that time) as this was no ordinary perfume. The material used to make the perfume, namely, nard, was made from an aromatic oil extracted from the root of a plant grown mainly in India and so it had to be imported. It was not something she could just pick up from a nearby store down the street. Hence, through this act, Mary was pouring out her very life in love and sacrificial service.

            Contrast that with the attitude of Judas and we will find a complete different picture. Judas may have thought to himself, “If something doesn’t change fast, I may have to consider switching careers.” Of course, no where do we see this kind of explicit thought process from Judas but judging from the way he carried himself and especially from the act of betraying his Lord and master for thirty pieces of silver, it is quite obvious that he nurtured other ambitions in his heart despite being with the Lord for three years. He wasn’t like the rest of the disciples. The only non – Galilean of the group, he was determined to make his mark on the world but making a mark required money and money he didn’t have, judging by the weight of the moneybag he wore around his waist. It was getting more difficult to embezzle the funds or as he may have liked to call it ‘compensation for services rendered’.

While Mary, in her devotion, was unconsciously providing for the honour of the dead, Judas, in his selfishness, was consciously bringing about death itself. What a contrast between the money box of Judas and the alabaster jar of Mary; between the thirty pieces of silver and the three hundred denarii; between true liberality and hypocritical interest in the poor because let’s not forget, although it seemed that Judas was trying to show himself as someone who cared for the poor, John gives us the real reason for his statement as seen in John 12:6.

 Judas was too materialistic to be concerned with the beauty of Mary’s deed. He failed to see that some offerings are so sacred that a price cannot be put on them. He must have also been very clever in hiding his turpitude and greed from the knowledge of the eleven while on the other hand, Our Blessed Lord must have treated Judas with the same loving gentleness as the others, to have kept his sin hidden, even though He knew what Judas was up to and even though Our Lord revealed the knowledge of the treason, Judas was completely fixated and determined to do the evil. Notwithstanding the revelation of the knowledge of the crime and the fact that his evil was stripped naked, he was not ashamed to consummate it in all of its ugliness. Some men turn away from horror at their sins when their sins are put bluntly before them. Yet, in the case of Judas, despite seeing his treachery described in all its deformity, he chose to go ahead with it nonetheless as Nietzsche once wrote, “Evil, be thou my good”.

Imagine spending three years of your life with the Messiah, yet walking away more or less the same or even worse than when you started. Well, that is what happened with Judas and it can happen to any of us if we don’t settle, once and for all, the question of Christ’s lordship in our lives and until we determine whom we will serve, we run the risk of developing a Judas type of heart instead of a heart of sacrificial love.

Thus we see that Mary’s hope didn’t lie in what she could get from Jesus but from what she could give while on the other hand, Judas’ focus was on what He could get. That is the difference between a love that is extravagant and a heart that is mean and tight – fisted. Mary had a heart of gratitude while Judas had a heart of greed. Judas came to his senses too late. His greed caused him to do the unimaginable, namely, to betray his Friend, to betray the Son of God. But the grief that soon replaced the greed could not heal his soul nor his mind and so after trying to give the money back, he went and hung himself.

Without gratefulness, we are prone to the same hardness of heart and darkness of mind that drove Judas’ treachery. If we refuse to recognize the immensity of God’s grace and its incredible cost on Jesus’ part, sooner or later, we will take it for granted and once we begin to do that, we begin to abuse God’s grace, trampling it under our careless feet in a maddening rush for yet another blessing. Without gratitude, we become like the people Romans 1:21 describes, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened” and dark minds can do dark things, as was evident from Judas’ action. How sad it is when it is possible to know God but never truly experience Him. If we want intimacy with God, we must nurture a grateful heart that glorifies Him.

Jesus laid down His life for you and me. He did not have to do it. He could have just said a word and ten thousand angels would have flown to His rescue. But instead, He chose not to use His own power. He humbled Himself and chose the way of sacrificial death. There was never a hint of selfishness in His sacrifice, no self-interest, not a hint of mixed motives. Jesus laid down His life knowing fully well He wouldn’t walk away alive. Such an act would cost Him everything and yet He still gave it all up. Such a thing is not just impressive; it’s revolutionary! He did it out of love – extravagant, lavish, life-changing love.

To conclude with one last note, Mary showered her love for our Blessed Lord with kisses on His feet but Judas’ kiss was a kiss of betrayal. How it must have hurt the heart of God. All the time, through the three years, they had had spent together, all the teaching, all the love and then to be rejected that way. Our blessed lord knew it was coming but even He seemed surprised by the chosen signal that night in Gethsemane when He said, “Judas, you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:48)

Unlike Judas’ stingy, mocking gesture, the loving attention Mary lavished upon the Saviour’s feet had nothing to do with manipulation or control which is why Our blessed Lord said in Mark 14:9, “I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her” and this is true indeed, since the sweet scent of Mary’s extravagant sacrifice still lingers today, the story of a woman who loved so much that she gave up just about everything and that is a lesson for us to emulate that when we choose to love God and our neighbour, we do it whole-heartedly without any ulterior motives or lukewarmness. Despite Judas given the chance to change, he rejected the last appeal and from that time on there was only despair in his heart. We may fool our neighbour but we cannot fool God and God watches everything we do. God gives us only one choice, we are either with Him or not, as it is written in the book of Revelation, “I know your works: that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. But because you are lukewarm and are neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:15-16) and that is why when we choose to follow Our Blessed Lord, He expects us to go all in, to put in our best efforts and give it our all in coming closer to Him. This of course should not be misunderstood with the fact that it is all about our efforts because ultimately everything is God’s grace and the fact of the matter is that God’s grace is available to all but are we willing to respond to it whole-heartedly, to go out all in, reciprocating the love that He has shown to each of us? That is something for you and me to ask ourselves, to ponder and to reflect over. Sure enough, human as we are, we will fall from time to time but are we putting in the effort is something that God watches and appreciates. I hope this blogpost/reflection may helped provide some food for thought in your own spiritual journey in as much as it was for me. Until then, God love you and stay blessed.