Why this waste of oil indeed. The global cost of oil has claimed a lot of focus lately: our economy wrestles with sudden spikes in prices; our ecology wrestles with the scars of extraction from earth; our atmosphere coughs with the smog of summer travel exhaust; our peace is shaken by violent shifts of power or providence in spots like Iran, Venezuela and our own domestic energy strategy.

Why this waste of oil? When gasoline creeps toward five dollars per gallon, home budgets beg us to be wary of where we go and of how much oil we use to get there. Thirty years ago I was just learning how to maneuver a heavy ol’ 1983 Volvo Turbo’s manual transmission –– and to fill up, I’d stop at a station that sold gas for 98¢/gallon. I could thoroughly explore teenage nights and weekends for a five-dollar bill, planning routes based on fun instead of gas efficiency. Not today. I still look for the cheap gas…but you know it isn’t cheap. Costs are up. Questions are asked.

Why this waste of oil? It can feel like pouring a year’s worth of work into every gas tank. Three hundred silver coins –– ancient shorthand for a family’s annual income –– is a lot to pay for oil that’s here today and burned tomorrow (and breathed as its fumes fill the air long afterwards). I laugh a little bit to realize that we no longer mint pennies because a single cent is so small in our inflated era (friends, I had to look up the code for the “¢” sign above because my keyboard doesn’t include it otherwise), but oil costs so much that our gasoline prices still list its going rate down to that most miniscule measure of American money –– to the “mill” –– to one measly thousandth of a dollar.

Why this waste of oil? If we’re wary today, we’re not original. Folks mumbled about wasted oil thousands of years ago, when a woman dumped a bucket of oil on Jesus’ head. Can we blame them? Can we afford to sap our monetary resources while wasting such a finite resource? How or when or for whom is it ethical to stain the earth, dump our oil, aggravate our neighbors’ asthma?

Our community of faith gathers at a church home within an industrial park. We are shaded by seven and a half acres of trees. Wild turkeys have raised chicks on our lawn year after year. Deer and raccoons and opossums and ospreys form our local resident community: it’s our people who drive here to gather together, to serve others, to sing and pray and commune as a congregation.

Jesus defended the woman who poured out so much oil on him. She’d measured what mattered to her: her gift of aromatic oil wasn’t a waste, but an investment in relationship –– a very costly relationship for her, and a relationship that would cost Jesus his life. Jesus then commented to the sticker-shocked crowds that poverty and people’s needs would always face us. We still have to ask ourselves what is worth the price of oil, the price of our natural and budgetary resources, the price of our environment, the price of community life and service for others. It’s not at all easy.

Knowing what we value drives us in two paradoxical directions: where we find what we love, we want to wantonly, liberally invest our all –– and where we find what we love, we want to conserve and protect and defend from destruction and waste. Of course the oil in question here isn’t in our gas tanks, but it’s not a bad metaphor. Our gas budgets, our vacation plans, our grocery bills, our environmental footprints, our contributions to Virginia 529s and 401(k)s –– yup, even our congregational pledging and partnership –– all ask us to scrutinize how we are investing in love. It’s either for the sake of love or it’s a waste.

Jesus accepted the woman’s love. We accept each other’s love as we travel our miles to gather. We commune on Love that Christ offers us in God’s self as we commit our offerings for the love of those loved through the many ministries of our congregation and of Christ’s church. We are both cautious to conserve what is precious and quick to extend God’s loving welcome with reckless abandon. And we do it while some (sometimes we ourselves) mumble or wonder if it’s all worth it (trusting God’s gracious gospel, holding us close through it all, indicates always, yes, it is). –Pastor Joel