New York UBF – NY University Bible Fellowship (NYUBF)

2009 Easter Bible Conference
Message I by Yvette Shin

My Blood of the Covenant, Poured Out for Many
Mark 14:1-26

Key Verse 14:24,25
“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said
to them. “I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine
until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God.”

In many ways, this is the perfect passage for me to write about because, as many of you know, there is nothing I like more than sitting down with people I love and enjoying a delectable meal with them. As much as possible, I will incorporate a meal into my meetings with other people. When I meet with the CBF teachers, we usually meet over Sunday lunch here at church, or over dinner at Applebee’s. With Elaine, there are usually sweets and lots of coffee involved. With Teresa, even though we get together late at night because of her insane schedule, we still manage to enjoy a full meal. Every so often, I meet my friend Madelyn at a diner in the city and we eat and talk for hours. Hyewon and I have often done Bible study over dinner. Just recently, Mia and I have been having our 1:1’s at a cupcake bakery near NYU. And every Monday at Seed, the first thing we do is sit down to a family-style dinner, sharing everything that’s happened in the past week.

Today’s passage focuses on a meal, but not just a casual get-together with friends. This meal had deep spiritual and historical significance. This meal was a commemoration of an event that had taken place almost 1500 years prior, an event that gave birth to a nation and proved once and for all that Jehovah is the one true God.

Jesus Anointed at Bethany (1-11)

But before we reflect about that meal, we have to rewind two days and consider another meal, not a historically significant one, but a more informal one. In the days leading up to the Feast of Unleavened Bread, pilgrims from all over the world would flock to Jerusalem. In anticipation of the festivities, the hospitable citizens of Jerusalem and its satellite towns would host dinners and parties for their out-of-town guests. And this is where Jesus was only days before his death—at a meal breaking bread with merry pilgrims. Though the chief priests and teachers of the law were hard at work conspiring against him, Jesus was spending his last few precious hours of life among those for whom he would give his life.

His host was Simon the Leper who lived in Bethany, the hometown of Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. As Jesus, who was presumably the guest of honor, reclined at the table, “a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.” This woman was most likely Mary, sister to Lazarus. We believe that her act was inspired by the grace she received when Jesus raised her brother from the grave. Mary, though, had a history of impropriety. Luke’s gospel tells of an event in which Mary abandons her hard-working sister Martha in order to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to his teaching. John wrote about a grief-stricken Mary who, though she eventually threw herself at his feet, was reluctant to meet Jesus, believing that his inaction had allowed her brother Lazarus to die. Here we see yet somewhat of another blunder, this time a scandalous one. Though Mark mentions that she poured the perfume only on his head, other gospels mention that she poured it on his feet, even letting down her hair and using it to wipe them. The act of anointing was not all that strange during Jesus’ time; the problem was the high cost of the perfume and the unusual intimacy with which it was performed.

In all these instances, Mary showed her extravagant love for Jesus as her messiah, lord and master. Her proximity to Jesus’ feet reminds us of the Gentile Ruth who married her kinsman-redeemer Boaz and became a daughter of Israel. The perfume made of nard, probably imported from India, was customarily used by brides for marriage; here, Mary uses it to anoint Jesus as her true love and companion.

As Mary poured out the expensive fluid on her lord, the dinner guests started to murmur under their breath. Their main gripe was that Mary’s pouring the expensive perfume on Jesus was a gigantic waste of money. “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” (4,5) They rebuked her harshly as just another dim-witted, stupid woman lacking simple common sense. Mary’s past lack of decorum was working against her; her sacrificial, beautiful act of love and devotion was being torn to shreds by people who had never experienced the deep grace of God.

Jesus, being who he was, immediately came to her defense. “Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.” (6) Jesus saw past the impropriety, past the monetary waste and saw deep into her heart and the love that he found was pure, honest and raw. This kind of love, this kind of devotion, can not be bound by rules and convention. If you try to contain it, it will burst out and explode. (Have you ever felt like this?) Her pouring of perfume was more like a pouring out of her self—her life spilled out unreservedly for the One who would soon spill out his life for her.

But Jesus also interpreted this event in a broader sense. Let’s read verses 8,9:  “She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 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.” For Jesus, this event was not only a personal, intimate moment but one with prophetic overtones and global implication. Her anointing of Jesus in preparation for his burial, as he put it, would forever be linked to the gospel. And indeed, this story is one of the few occurrences that are mentioned in all four gospel narratives.

Back in the day, a huge part of our Easter celebration would include a recitation of 1 Corinthians 15. People or groups of people would spend weeks memorizing the passage and then reciting it with meaningful motions. Some would even incorporate music and sound effects. We would have contests. It was a big deal. One year, my fellowship paired up with Msn. David Baik’s fellowship to do this. We split into pairs and performed duo-dramas. My partner was a girl named Amy who was a ballet dancer. She was working as a dance therapist with autistic children. She was incredibly sweet and incredibly passionate about her calling to use dance to minister to others. We split the passage up and agreed to memorize our parts. However, on the day we were supposed to recite, she told me that she had something different in mind. Her idea was to have me read the words while she expressed them in motion. Those in charge and they were not happy. The whole point of reciting is to work hard to memorize the Bible passage and hold on to it in our minds. This was kind of missing the point. Nevertheless we did it the way Amy envisioned; I read while she danced. And it turned out to be the most unique, original and unforgettable recitation of that passage that I have ever experienced. Not everyone liked it. A few felt very awkward. Some got it; some didn’t. But it was an offering, an expression of love and worship to God that came from a very personal place. It was Amy’s pouring out of perfume. When we express our love to God, we should do so with reckless abandon, even if it breaks the rules of propriety and offends. Our love for him should pour out from us until we are completely and utterly spent. I pray that each of us, in reaction to the grace of God upon our us, may live lives passionately poured out for our Lord Jesus.

As we move along the passage, we come to verse 10 and 11 which serve as an ominous footnote about what is soon to come. “Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.” We may never understand why Judas did what he did. We do know that money was a temptation to him. Perhaps it was Jesus’ obvious apathy toward money that drove him to do it. What a huge contrast between Mary and Judas. She poured out the equivalent of a year’s wages while Judas sold Jesus out for the price of a slave. How much is Jesus worth to you? Are you willing to offer your most precious treasure to him, or are you only trying to benefit from him? Is your relationship selfless or selfish? Mary had only a few encounters with Jesus; Judas followed him as one of the Twelve for three years. Proximity to Christ is not the measure of our devotion. What matters is whether or not you have received the grace of God and truly acknowledged him as your savior.

The Last Supper (12-26)

When it was time to celebrate the Passover Meal, Jesus instructed two of his disciples to go into the city, meet a man with a water jar, ask him about a place to celebrate the Passover, and he would lead them to an upper room all furnished and ready. At first glance, Jesus’ explicit directions make it appear that supernatural forces are at work. The reality, though, is that he had probably had prearranged the whole thing. So the two disciples, Peter and John followed Jesus’ instructions and found things just as he had told them.

As I mentioned previously, the Passover meal filled with symbolism and spiritual and historical significance. Its origin is found back in Exodus chapter 12 when the first Passover meal was celebrated on the eve of the Israelite exodus from Egypt. God was about to unleash the tenth and final plague on stubborn pharaoh and his entire nation—the Plague of the Firstborn. In preparation, the Israelites were instructed to prepare a meal of unleavened bread and bitter herbs, the bread symbolizing purity from sin, and the herbs representing their bitter enslavement. They were to eat the meal in haste, with their tunic and sandals on and their staff in hand. The real focus of the meal, however, was the Passover lamb. Four days previous, they were to set apart a one-year old lamb or goat that was without blemish or defect. On the night of the meal, they were to slaughter the lamb at twilight and take some of the blood and sprinkle it on the frame and doorposts of their home, thereby sealing the entrance with the blood of the lamb. Then they were to roast the meat over fire to symbolize suffering and judgment. At midnight God released the angel of death. Those homes without blood lost their firstborn—from the firstborn of Pharaoh, to the firstborn of the prisoner, to the firstborn of the livestock. There was not a house without someone dead.

Around 1500 years later, the people of Israel were still celebrating the Passover meal but with major modifications. Passover lambs were slaughtered and sacrificed at the temple instead of in people’s homes. They still celebrated the meal with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, but wine became a part of the ritual, a very important part. Everyone was instructed to drink no less than four cups of wine. Even those who were the poorest of the poor were to make every effort to have at least four cups of wine during the Passover.

As Jesus sat down to what was to be his last meal, he broke the terrible news about his betrayal to his disciples. “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me.” (18) It was unfathomable to think that one of the disciples—a member of Jesus’ trusted inner circle—would do such a thing. One by one they insisted, “Surely not I?” (19) How interesting that their denials came across as more of a question than a statement. Maybe deep in their hearts, they too doubted their loyalty to Jesus. Though Judas was the one who opened his heart to Satan and caused Jesus to say that it would have been better if he had not been born, perhaps all of the disciples harbored doubts and uncertainties of their own.

This may sound odd, that Jesus’ disciples may have doubted. But in my experience, doubt is more common than we think. People don’t like to talk about it for fear of being condemned or at least looked down upon as difficult. Some popular Christian writers today have been very critical of those who seem to encourage a dialogue about doubt, because they fear that doing so makes doubt seem cool. But if you have ever fallen into doubt, you’d know this it is definitely not cool. In fact, it’s like hell. When your faith in God and your Christian beliefs are attacked (and it will be, especially if you’re in college) and you find that you can’t even defend them because you only accepted it blindly and never truly struggled with it, then you understand that doubt is not fun. Doubt is not something you nurture because you are rebellious or because you want to kick against authority; doubt is a weapon that Satan uses against us, something we fall into when we are weak spiritually, and who has never been weak spiritually? During the middle school program at the Purdue International Summer Conference last year, I held a workshop called “Doubt Club.” I promised the kids absolute confidentiality, so I won’t disclose the things we discussed, but I was surprised by the number and kinds of issues kids struggle with. For some it’s hard to talk about them with their parents or their other Christian friends, and so they have no one to confide in. Sometimes, simply advising someone to just believe isn’t enough to dispel the uncertainty that haunts us. My point is that Judas was not especially evil; he was a weak man who never struggled against his greed and who made a mistake—the worst mistake in all history. We may sit on top of our high horses and say that we would never betray Jesus as Judas did, that we would never be so foolish as to value money over God. But how many times have we succumbed to our weaknesses and made foolish mistakes? How many times have we pretended that our faith was intact when in fact we were still unsure about so much? We are human beings, messy bundles of doubts, anxieties and fears. But in Christ, we have hope to be much, much more. Despite our weaknesses, our Lord Jesus still invites us to his table to break bread with him for eternity.

Although the mood of the meal had changed, Jesus pushed through. “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.”” (22) It was at this point that Jesus made a departure from the usual Passover customs. Nothing was to be eaten after the supper, specifically after the meat of the lamb. But Jesus introduced this new step, breaking the bread and distributing it to his disciples calling it his body. “Take it; this is my body.” Previously, Jesus had called himself the bread of life. He said in John 6:51, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”” Here at the Passover, Jesus was confirming that he truly was the bread of life.

The disciples were probably caught a little of guard. But there was more. Let’s read verses 24,25: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. “I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God.” When it was time for the third cup of wine, Jesus declared, “This is my blood of the covenant.” Jesus owned not just the bread but the wine, too, calling it his blood. In doing so, he incorporated himself into the Passover celebration. No longer was the lamb necessary; it was his flesh and his blood that we would eat and drink to sustain the covenant. Jesus had officially become our Passover lamb once and for all.

In every covenant established between God and mankind, ratification through blood has always been involved. After the Fall, God clothed the man and the woman with garments of skin, implying bloodshed. With Abraham, God mandated circumcision as a sign and seal of the covenant. The Mosaic covenant, probably, the bloodiest covenant of them all, involved the shedding a blood in the form of numerous sacrifices for forgiveness and sanctification. An example of this comes from Exodus 24:8 which says, “Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.”” The simple truth is that we can’t come before God without blood. Our sins render us unfit to do so. The blood of Jesus, our Pascal Lamb, is our only connection, our only lifeline to our Creator.

While meditating on this passage, one word spoke out to me, the word pour. Mary poured out perfume on Jesus, while Jesus poured out his blood for many. I don’t think this is mere coincidence.
Jesus said back in verse 8, “She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.” He suggests that this woman possessed some sort of insight that no one else had, that perhaps her pouring out of this precious, expensive, cherished liquid was in some way prophetic.

Days later, Jesus was about to do something very similar, only he poured a substance that was much more precious, much more expensive, much more cherished than exotic perfume. Jesus poured out blood, his very life, as his love for the whole world. In all the synoptic gospels, Jesus specifies that it was his blood of the covenant that was being poured out. This was a very personal act of devotion. This was not some generic ceremony or sacrament or ritual that he was performing. When Jesus raised the cup and passed it around to his disciples, he was giving them a piece of himself, leaving a part of himself with them until they would be reunited in glory in the Father’s kingdom. When Jesus poured out his blood, he poured out himself as his expression of full devotion to God and to God’s beloved humankind.

The act of pouring is very extreme. You can’t pour tentatively or half-heartedly. Pouring requires total, complete, utter commitment. When you pour something, there is a moment when you’re tipping the pitcher or the glass or carafe that you completely surrender control and let everything—everything completely spill out. Pouring is like surrender. It is the entire relinquishment of oneself. Jesus poured himself out for us. Our response should be to pour ourselves out to him.

Sometimes we think our devotion to God is already too much. I know that many of us here really work hard and do our best to serve God. Many of us suffer from exhaustion or even illness because we give so much. Sometimes we wonder, ‘Does God really want all this from me? Does he really want me to pour myself out like this?’ We echo the complaints of the guests in Bethany saying, “Why this waste?” This past semester, I had to be at NYU four to five times a week, pouring out lots of time commuting, lots of gasoline, and lots money for parking and parking tickets. Sometimes I felt I was pouring out too much. Did God really want me to give this much? The answer is yes, of course. He wants it all. But he wants us to want to give it to him. He wants our love and devotion. He wants first place in our hearts. He wants our thoughts, our actions, our desires. He wants to be in everything, when we eat, when we hunger, when we laugh, when we cry. Our lives should be lived for his glory, every word and action an act of praise. And the funny truth is that when we do so, when we pour ourselves out for him, we aren’t miserable. We may be tired, but we are also full of joy. I have to say that these last two semesters have been the best yet for Seed at NYU. We have awesome freshmen and undergrads who participate in everything. We have fabulous grad students who serve as excellent mentors. Our website is getting noticed and people are actually subscribing to our notifications. Mondays are bringing us closer to God and each others. Thursday prayer is helping us mature in our devotion. And the newsletter—this spring’s issue will be jam-packed with edgy articles and the best art ever! Was it worth pouring out all the time, money and gas? Absolutely!
But this is only part of the blessing. If we, figuratively speaking, shed our own blood for him, he blesses us with a fountain of Spirit that gushes within us and even flows to others. Our shed blood is replaced with living water, the Holy Spirit, for eternity.

Jesus is our Passover Lamb, who gave his flesh and poured out his blood so that we could be forgiven and live a new life. I pray that our response to Jesus’ sacrifice may be to pour ourselves out to him and for those he loves.

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