Aunt Kay and Uncle Don were fixtures of my childhood. Their Christian counterparts were our Uncle John and Aunt Betty, neither couple were actual family, but family formed from community—one in the household of faith, the other in the houses of South Kenwood Avenue.

During the summer, after the afternoon soap operas and before the dads came home from work, Aunt Kay would walk across the street to our house, cigarette in hand, to join my mother on the front porch for conversation and neighborhood gossip. But first things first, my mom would instruct us to get an ash tray for Aunt Kay.

We didn’t own ash trays. What my mother was asking was for us to choose the prettiest teacup from her small, but treasured collection, and bring its saucer out for Aunt Kay—you guessed it—to tap her cigarette ashes in it. Gross. Disgusting.

By far, the prettiest teacups were from Aunt Betty, who would bring back a cup and saucer from her trips to Scotland to visit her family. We would purposely choose one of Aunt Betty’s cups, hoping our mother would ask us to put it back—they were too perfect, too much of a treasure for cig butts and ashes.

Well, that was a non-starter, and we were indignant at my mother’s careless attitude toward her fine bone china. What prompted our childish indignation was the house rule that the teacups were off-limits for our al fresco tea parties. Mother did not want us to ruin her lovely teacups with hose water, sticks and mud. Come on, Mom, really? But it was okay for Aunt Kay to ruin them? My pharisaical leanings were showing, and at such a young age.

Jesus had a similar careless attitude, not to fine china, but to alabaster flasks. The disciples, like me and my sisters, knew better. In Mark 14, sandwiched between the chief priests and scribes plotting to kill Jesus and Judas Iscariot’s betrayal, we see Jesus, not on a porch, but reclining at the table in the house of Simon the leper. Then an anonymous woman walks into the room, breaks an expensive alabaster jar, and pours the oil on Jesus’ head.

Talk about the indignation flying around that table—why did the woman waste the ointment? Why did she ruin the flask? We could have sold it all to give to the poor. Mark says that they scolded her.
Then Jesus says, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.” Her act of ruin became a gospel proclamation as she anointed Jesus’ body beforehand for burial, and beauty would come from the ashes of betrayal and death.

We adored Aunt Betty, but my mother knew her better than we did. She would not have minded the burning cigarette finding rest on her bone china gift. In fact, if she were on that porch, she probably would have made Scottish cream scones and served tea in the now saucer-less cup for Aunt Kay, as my mom dumped the ashes in a beautiful display of grace.

Ashes on beauty, beauty for ashes.