Be Extravagant in Love
Rick Hamlin
6 min read ⭑
Jesus shocked those around him by refusing to conform to society’s dictates. I believe he means for us to take risks too, especially out of love and compassion and care. To love your neighbor as yourself might mean shaking things up for some of your neighbors. The ones who get it will get it.
How else can we change the world unless we reach out to those who feel especially unloved? As we’ve seen, the Pharisees are often depicted in the Gospels as Jesus’s adversaries, his challengers, because their power was challenged and their reputation threatened. Then again, Jesus could just as easily dine with them and welcome them as followers, even if they felt they could only come to him in the middle of the night.
I have a picture over my desk, a copy of one of my favorite paintings that shows how one of those Pharisees, Nicodemus, came to Jesus in the middle of the night, the safest time to approach him without being noticed. He would ask Jesus endless questions, stepping away from his role in society and following an inner urge. In the painting by the artist Henry Ossawa Tanner, the two of them are on a moonlit rooftop: Nicodemus, with a long white beard, leaning forward; Jesus, illuminated by warm firelight rising from the stairs. Nicodemus calls Jesus “Rabbi” without any of the other Pharisees’ apparent backhanded manipulation. He wants to learn. Right away, he gets language that has enhanced followers of Jesus ever since. “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above,” Jesus tells him, describing what it means to be born anew. “Born again” is the phrase we often hear, an opportunity for us. Baffled, Nicodemus goes straight ahead looking for some literal explanation. Born anew?
Nastia Petruk; Unsplash
How could anyone be born after growing old, re-entering their mother’s womb, he wonders. It doesn’t make any sense. Good luck with that kind of thinking. Jesus goes on to challenge him with mystical language that must have made Nicodemus’s head spin. It does mine. And yet, isn’t that Jesus’s very point? We can’t reach him, we can’t find God, we can’t understand these profound things by being literal-minded. Being born from above means being born of the Spirit. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
So it is with everyone who is “born of the Spirit,” Jesus says. (I had a colleague who would turn to this phrase — playfully — to describe another colleague’s unpredictability; you could never know where the wind blows.)
“If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” Jesus asks. Think of all the earthly miracles Jesus has performed. And now Nicodemus’s nighttime visit gives Jesus the chance to offer a summary of his calling. It’s the one Bible verse that people best remember, chapter and verse, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
I love being reminded of its context. Who was he speaking to? A late-night visitor, like you or me. Savor that, Nicodemus. The passage is repeated so often that it can lose some of its transcendent power. Then again, I know a man who, when he saw other college kids like himself holding up signs at a ball game that said “John 3:16,” he figured it was a reference to some team’s score. Nevertheless, it led him to search, delving deep into Scripture for the first time. Perhaps it worked its mysterious power because, after much investigation, discernment and prayer, he went on to seminary and became a minister.
Beware, Jesus can change the course of your life, as he did for Nicodemus. The man, apparently transformed by that secret visit, makes two more crucial appearances in the Gospel of John. First, when the Pharisees were agitating against Jesus, asking why the temple police didn’t arrest him, Nicodemus speaks up to his fellow Pharisees, reminding them that their law “does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?”
Then, even more poignantly, he showed up at Jesus’s burial, digging into his deep pockets to provide about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes for the body, which he and Joseph of Arimathea, another secret disciple of Jesus, used as they wrapped the body with the spices in linen cloths and laid him in the tomb. Myrrh might be familiar to you as one of the three gifts the wise men brought to Jesus as a newborn babe, a prefiguration of the Lord’s untimely end.
Nicodemus took risks to show his love. He went outside his circle, beyond his comfort zone, facing possible rejection from his group, even after Jesus’s brutal death, when there could have been little hope or promise in being a follower of Jesus. It didn’t stop him. “Oh, love that will not let me go . . .” to quote the words of a beloved hymn.
“Be big. Love Jesus. Know how wrong you are and have been, and know that forgiveness is waiting for you.”
For another extravagant display of love, I think of the woman who anointed Jesus’s feet or head (the accounts differ) with costly perfume or oil. In three of the Gospels, it happens shortly before the Last Supper and irritates some of the disciples, who question the extravagant display, asking why the ointment wasn’t sold instead and the money given to the poor.
Get your priorities right, right? But Jesus applauds her gesture and notes that the poor will always abound, whereas he will not be around much longer. “She has anointed my body before its burial” (even before what Nicodemus did). He promises that what she has done will be retold and remembered whenever his story is told. In the Gospel of John, she is identified by name, Mary, the sister of Martha.
In Luke, the incident seems to occur earlier, when a Pharisee invites Jesus into his house to eat with him (once again, Jesus meeting with the wrong people — his apparent adversaries — not the sort of thing you see much in contemporary politics). There a woman, a so- called sinner, comes, bringing an alabaster jar of expensive ointment. She weeps at his feet, bathing them with her tears, kissing them and then anointing them with the ointment.
The Pharisee is shocked. Shouldn’t Jesus have known what kind of woman this was, touching him and kissing him? Jesus responds with a parable, once again about money. Maybe it’s because when you put these things in financial terms, we’re more likely to get the point. Don’t our heads often revert to money? Jesus describes two debtors, one who owes five hundred denarii (a denarius was about a day’s wage for a laborer) and the other only fifty. When they couldn’t pay, the creditor canceled both of their debts. “Now which of them will love him more?” Jesus asks. Simon the Pharisee answers, supposing it would be the one with the greater debt.
Bingo. “You have judged rightly,” Jesus says. Still, he doesn’t let Simon off the hook. After all, Simon didn’t wash Jesus’s feet with water or kiss him or anoint his head with oil, whereas she bathed his feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, and anointed them with oil. “Her sins, which were many, have been forgiven,” he says. Was that what she expected? That he would tell her that her sins are forgiven, as he does? I don’t think so. She’s not looking for any bargains. It’s not a quid pro quo visit. She enters the Pharisee’s house, coming to Jesus with an expression of unfathomable love and an investment in it, all of which pays off. The gift is reciprocated multiple times.
“The one to whom little is forgiven,” Jesus says, “loves little.” Not this woman, about whom he says, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” The differing stories, the various accounts, the named and unnamed figures, they all merge for me into one overall message. Be big. Love Jesus. Know how wrong you are and have been, and know that forgiveness is waiting for you. Especially when you match it with love.
Rick Hamlin is the author of numerous books, including Everlasting Jesus, Finding God on the A Train — a Book of the Month alternate selection — as well as Ten Prayers You Can’t Live Without and Pray for Me. He has served on the staff of Guideposts, most recently as executive editor, and contributes to their various publications, including the devotional Walking in Grace. Rick has written op-eds for The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Taken from Everlasting Jesus by Rick Hamlin. Copyright © 2026. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, an imprint of Church Publishing, Incorporated.
