On Monday night, the Washington Nationals swept the St. Louis Cardinals to earn their first trip to the World Series. Like most teams who make it this far, they celebrated like the school of fish in my pond who are given food for the first time in days. Piling on each other and scurrying around in ecstasy as if they were unsure where to go or what do with themselves. All because they were finally experiencing what they had been longing for all along.

Sometimes fans are turned off by such behavior. They see it as conceited or amateurish. After all, the Nationals still have to play the World Series, they might point out. You also might hear these fans say things like, “act like you’ve been there before!” In their minds,  if you’ve been there before, you would be more respectful. More focused on what’s next and more mature in your behavior. Even if you’re the Washington Nationals, who really have never been there before, you should still act like you have been there before. It’s only proper.

In Luke 7, Jesus is at the house of a Pharisee who invited him over for dinner. While they were eating, a woman came up from behind Jesus with a jar of perfume and began pouring it all over his feet. With a mix of tears, perfume and kissing, she left a fragrant, wet mess underneath the knees of Jesus.

The dinner host was not impressed. 

Not only was the uninvited guest making a mess — she was a mess. Her reputation as a sinful woman combined with her “wasting” all this perfume forced the Pharisee to condemn her and question Jesus. “How could he let her do that?” It’s fair to assume that he looked at the woman who interrupted his meal and wondered if she could just “act like she’s been here before.” She could have been less wasteful, more respectful and rather than interrupt, she could have properly waited outside.

It’s too bad when we get old we find it easier and easier to act like we’ve been there before.

Even though every little kid dances to music, those same kids will grow up and at some point decide that dancing is uncool. It’s very rare for us to find ourselves in situations where our passion filter gets forgotten and we can just let loose. Not everyone gets to play for the World Series-bound Washington Nationals.

The problem is, I’m not so sure that God is looking for his followers to be people who know how to act like they’ve been there before. I’m convinced that God was very pleased with the sinful woman who wasted her perfume and made a mess with her tears. 

I wonder what it would look like if my worship of Jesus was more like the sinful woman than maybe it has been. 

Maybe I would worship differently if I approached Jesus as me sneaking up on him and interrupting him, rather than seeing it as a scheduled meeting that happened to work well for my calendar.

Maybe I would worship differently if instead of being as safe and as “cool” as I could be, I came to worship trying to discover what valuable thing about me I could waste on him. Even if it were just my tears.

Maybe I would worship differently if instead of showing up to church, acting like I’ve been there before, I acted like I had NEVER been there before, as if I were meeting Jesus for the very first time. Then maybe my passion filter would be forgotten and I would find a new freedom to worship. Even if my encounter with him could potentially annoy the proper, it wouldn’t matter because for the very first time I was experiencing what I was longing for all along.