What Do You Do When You’re Thunderstruck?

There’s a word I’ve been sitting with this week.

Thunderstruck.

You know the AC/DC song. But strip away the music for a second and just think about what the word means. Thunderstruck. Awestruck. Speechless. The kind of moment where something happens and you just don’t have words. Your brain can’t catch up to what your eyes just saw.

I think that’s exactly where Mary was in John 12.

Six days before Passover. She’s at a dinner with Jesus, her sister Martha, and her brother Lazarus were there. The same Lazarus who had been dead for four days and was now very much alive and eating dinner. A week ago she was crying outside a tomb. Now she’s passing the bread.

And something about the gap between those two moments. Between the grief and the dinner table. It did something in her that no amount of theology or religious practice could have done. She was thunderstruck.

What Happens When You’re Thunderstruck

There’s a pound of expensive ointment in the house. Pure nard. Worth about a year’s wages. This is no small thing. This is the equivalent of your entire salary in a little glass jar.

And Mary takes it, breaks it open, and pours it on Jesus’ feet. All of it. Every last drop. Then she wipes his feet with her hair. The fragrance filled the entire house.

And Judas does the math. A year’s wages. The poor could have been fed with this. He calls it wasteful. Jesus calls it beautiful.

Generosity looks crazy to the greedy heart. Judas heard the same act Mary performed and saw waste. Jesus looked at the same moment and saw worship. Same gift. Completely different eyes.

Here’s what I think is happening. When you’ve seen what Jesus actually does. When you’ve watched him do something that your mind told you was impossible. That’s when the math changes. The calculation stops. You stop asking “what’s the responsible amount to give?” and start asking “what do I have that I can pour out?”

That’s not irresponsibility. That’s a heart that’s been undone by grace.

Three Postures in the Same Room

What I love about John 12 is that John gives us a snapshot of three different people at the same dinner, all of whom experienced the same thing. Lazarus walking out of a grave! And each of them respond differently.

Martha is serving. She’s in the kitchen. She’s making sure there’s food on the table. That is not a lesser response. It’s a deeply faithful one. Some people process grace by getting up and doing something with it. They channel what they’ve received into care for others. That’s worship.

Lazarus is sitting in silence. He’s just… at the table. Present. Quiet. What is there to say when you were dead and now you’re eating dinner? Sometimes the most honest response to what God has done is to sit still and let it be real. That’s worship too.

And Mary is on the floor with a broken jar of perfume.

Serve like Martha. Sit like Lazarus. Sacrifice like Mary. Three postures. All of them responses to the same resurrection. None of them wrong.

Which one are you? And I don’t mean that as a personality quiz. I mean it as a genuine question worth sitting with. When you think about what Jesus has done for you. The actual reality of it. What does your response look like?

What Do You Do When You See Someone Come to Life?

There’s a question I keep coming back to. What do you do when you see a dead person come to life?

For Mary and Martha and the disciples, it was Lazarus. That was the specific moment that cracked the ceiling off their faith. What they thought Jesus might be able to do and what they discovered he actually does, those two things were not the same.

For us, it’s the waters of baptism.

Every single time someone stands in front of a congregation and water is poured over them and words are spoken. We are watching resurrection. Romans 6 says it plainly: we were buried with him in baptism so that just as Christ was raised, we too might walk in newness of life. That’s not a metaphor. That’s what’s actually happening.

Every baptism is resurrection. Not a symbol of resurrection. Not a reminder of resurrection. Resurrection itself. A dead person coming to life, right in front of you.

The question is whether we’re still thunderstruck by it. Whether watching someone come up out of those waters does something in us the way Lazarus walking out of a tomb did something in Mary. Whether we’ve grown so accustomed to the event that we’ve lost the awe of what’s actually happening.

Because if we actually believe it, if we actually believe we’re watching dead people come to life, then the only appropriate response is something like what Mary did. Not necessarily the same act. But the same posture. The same willingness to give something that costs us something.

So What’s Your Bottle of Perfume?

Mary had a specific thing. A pound of expensive nard that she’d been holding onto for who knows how long. Maybe she knew what it was for. Maybe she didn’t. But she had it. And when the moment came, she didn’t think. She just poured.

I think most of us have a bottle of perfume. A specific thing that we know would be an act of worship if we were willing to pour it out. It’s not the same for everyone. For some people it’s money. For some it’s time. For some it’s a skill or a gift or an opportunity they’ve been holding onto waiting for the right moment.

So what’s yours?

And I’m not asking what the responsible amount would be, or what would make sense given your current situation, or what you’d feel comfortable with. I’m asking what you’d do if you were thunderstruck. If the weight of what Jesus has done for you, the resurrection, the cross, the name he called you by in the waters of baptism, actually landed on you this week the way it was supposed to.

What’s your bottle of perfume? And are you going to pour it out for Jesus?

Mary didn’t calculate. She just poured. And the fragrance filled the whole house.