True worship is done not because we want to look good but because we want to make God look good.

Imagine God beginning each day reading the Wall Street Journal. It’s not the edition we have, though. It’s not the one listing the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the NASDAQ, the S&P 500. I don’t think those are the markets God is most interested in.

No, I think God’s newspaper would track the returns on the things in which God has invested: people, places, congregations, the church, the environment, everything that’s part of God’s creation, really.

I imagine God reading the market trends with great joy and with great sadness. It’s not that God has doubts about where his whole portfolio is headed; it’s just that the quotes on God’s individual stocks fluctuate. God’s investments don’t always produce the returns that he’s looking for.

Imagine each of our names being in God’s newspaper alongside the names of everyone in the whole world. Our names would be printed in tiny print in four columns, just for convenience sake. Beside each of our names would be an index and an arrow, telling God at a glance about the status of God’s investment in us, the status of Christ’s life in us.

I wonder, if God picked up a newspaper each morning and scanned the stocks, what would it say beside our names? Where would God’s investment be trending in us? Are we bulls or bears? Was it a good day? A bad day? A good year? A bad year? Where are we compared to a year ago, 10 years ago, 20? What would it say beside the names of our congregations? Is God’s investment gaining? Falling? Or has it been a stagnant stock for quite some time?

It’s good to think about these things because it’s easy to treat God’s investment as our property. It’s easy to go about living our lives as if we had no investor, as if our habits, routines, time, meetings and programs had no purpose, no meaning, no interest beyond themselves.

I often think of the story in John’s Gospel where Mary takes that supersized bottle of expensive perfume and pours it out onto Jesus’ feet, wiping his feet with her hair (John 12). It’s an image that I have a hard time getting out of my mind. Her act seems so reckless, so improper, so irresponsible in so many ways. The amount and type of that perfume cost a year’s wages. Think what good things could be done with that money. How many people could it have helped? And this was a woman letting her hair down in public for an intimate expression of love for a man. Did she really give no thought as to what others might think? How about the values of modesty? Respectability? Order? Stewardship? This does not seem like the proper time, place or thing to do. This was reckless worship.

When thinking of such a scene, I can hear myself speaking through the mouth of Judas:
“Why wasn’t this perfume sold for a year’s wages and the money given to the poor?”
John tells his readers that Judas wasn’t sincere when he spoke these words, for John says Judas had no concern for the poor. He had his eyes on the money. Judas would trade anything to get his hands on some more silver.

But the interesting thing is that Jesus’ replied to Judas as if he was sincere. “Leave her alone,” he said, “for it was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”
I have heard people quote this verse to make the argument that it’s OK to splurge from time to time, to enjoy the finer things a little bit and not get too preoccupied with the poor. “After all,” their argument goes, “Jesus said the poor will always be among us.”

But when people quote these words in that way, for this reason, they would be better off quoting Judas than Jesus, for Jesus is not saying we should sometimes neglect the poor. Jesus is just reminding his disciples about the proper focus for life. It’s Judas who takes his eyes off Jesus, and that’s wrong no matter the reason, even if it’s for one of our “good causes.”

Mary had it exactly right. Worship, true worship, is done not because we have to, not because we expect something in return, not because we might save a lost soul, and not because we want to be fed or strengthened or energized or entertained.

True worship is done not because we want to look good but because we want to make God look good. Worship is whatever happens whenever we become aware that we are in the presence of the living God.

For Mary, that meant pouring an expensive bottle of perfume on the feet of Jesus and letting her hair down to wipe his feet. When it comes to worship, there is not a proper place or a proper time or proper restraint, as if it’s sometimes appropriate to act like we are not in the presence of the living God. You see, when it comes to worship, everything is permissible if it is directed toward God and calls the attention of others to God.

But it’s so easy to live our lives as if our habits, our routines, time, meetings and programs had no purpose, meaning or interest beyond themselves. It’s so easy to live our lives without any concern for our investor.

If God began each day reading the Golden Street Journal, I think this is how the index would track his investment in us: How much of our lives is returned toward him in worship? That’s because God’s investment in us is Christ’s own life, and Christ gave his life to free us for life—life lived in the presence of God and reconciled to God, to each other and to all of creation.

Worship is what we are made for, and our acts of worship call others to the one we worship. When Mary anointed Jesus’ feet with the perfume, its fragrance filled the whole house. As we follow Christ, “through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved” (2 Corinthians 2:14-15).

When we say, “What a waste” when it comes to worship, we act in collusion with Judas.

For the value of our worship is not predicated on what we receive but on what God receives. Worship is a “royal waste of time,” author Marva Dawn writes provocatively, at least according to our consumer-focused culture. That’s because the way to judge worship, true worship, is not what you receive or the poor receive or the lost receive or the hurting receive but on what God receives.

Through Christ Jesus, the eternal God is the focus of our worship, and it is with this focus that we work among the poor, the hurting, the lost and the lonely. Sometimes we can be so focused on being right, relevant or successful that we are no longer faithful.

Mary anointed Jesus’ feet because she had recognized God’s investment in his people, and she was returning that investment to God. What a waste! Judas thought when he saw the empty bottle of perfume. They said that about Jesus, too, when he gave his body over to his enemies.

I wonder, if God picked up the newspaper and flipped to the back pages, what would it say beside your name? How do the things you watch, listen to, wear, say or do help you become aware that you are in the presence of the living God? How do these choices bring others to the awareness that they, too, are in the presence of the living God? Everything counts—every time, every place. They either help you live out the purpose for which you were created or not. They either help others get a whiff of the aroma of Christ or not.

Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and to bear fruit, fruit that will last” (John 15:16a). What would happen if everyone who attended worship services on Sunday mornings directed more and more of their lives toward this end, offering themselves to God because they have found life in Jesus? What would happen if their worship never stopped?

“What a waste!” some people would say.

I think God would say, “What a good, good day for my investment! What a good, good day toward kingdom come, my will done, on earth as it is in heaven!”

And I think the aroma of Christ would fill the whole world.

Mark Schloneger is pastor of Springdale Mennonite Church in Waynesboro, Va.