Judas wasn’t your best guy. Why you brought him in, we’ll never understand. How he ever became treasurer for your disciples’ accounts must have happened with mastered manipulation. As it is, though his intentions weren’t the best, he may have had a good point here. And saying it might have been the mic drop of the night.

“This perfume was worth a small fortune,” he protests. “It should have been sold and the money given to the poor.” Really now, isn’t helping the poor really what Jesus had been saying? Whatever happened to “sell all you have and give to the poor?" Even if Judas supposedly had designs on keeping the money for himself, the idea was probably hanging out there in everyone’s mind anyway.

Calm Before the Storm

The night was supposed to be one for Jesus to relax with his close friends. The small dinner party was at the home of siblings Mary, Martha, Lazarus. Martha was serving as she always did, and Lazarus was seated at Jesus’ table, a living, breathing reminder of the miracle and blessing Jesus brought to this family. Four days earlier Lazarus was dead, buried and rotting in his grave. Jesus reversed all that by calling and bringing him back to life.

No surprise that people knowing of Lazarus’ death and resuscitation, delayed as it was, began to believe Jesus was the one they’d been waiting for, the Messiah. But that was not altogether a good thing. Powerful priests couldn’t stand the thought of him having such a following. Romans wouldn’t think well of it either, and they very well could ramp up the oppression of the regime and destroy what little they had, Temple and all. “Let this one man die for the people.”  The plot to be rid of him gets serious.

For that night though, everyone was enjoying the food and camaraderie among them all. Maybe they were all in a good mood knowing Jesus’ poll ratings were rising. The biggest festival of the year was next week, they were headed into Jerusalem, what could possibly go wrong?

Shockwave and Wonder

Yet the room was silenced in an instant. Mary enters and approaches Jesus. She was one of those women who was often near, in the background, yet adoringly attentive to Jesus. Tonight though, she is bold.

Quietly, Mary approached him and poured a jar of very expensive ointment, a kind of perfume on Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. The scene left everyone somewhere between shock and awe, emotions hanging over them as heavy and strong as the fragrance the ointment emitted.

The shock was that a woman would be so brazen and yet so humble in public like this. Yes, the perfume was exorbitant, costing what would have been nearly a year’s wages for an average laborer. Where would a woman get that kind of money except maybe from what would have been her wedding dowry? Her act would have sealed her future as absent from husband and family to provide for her.

What’s more, wiping his feet with her hair would mean she had to touch him, hold him with her hands as she massaged the oil into his skin. It was an act that revealed how submissive to him she felt, for cleaning and anointing feet was reserved for slaves and servants to administer to guests. Nevertheless, to do so was to administer emotional support and care.

A dearly sacrificial service and worshipful tableau it presented certainly. Even so, the scene also called out the proverbial elephant in the living room. Denial was deeply rooted among the disciples despite Jesus having warned them of what was to come. To do what Mary did, to virtually anoint another with this kind of oil, was as if preparing a body by embalmment. The heavy fragrance in the room was all too familiar, having been used on Lazarus’ body so recently. The men were confronted with that which they couldn’t concede.

Judas broke the mood shattering the intimacy of the moment with his criticism. Heads would have nodded, and voices grumbled in assent. That’s right. Deflect the focus. Make this what it is not. Don’t show us what we don’t want to see.

In a movement of grace wrapped around eternal purpose, Jesus acknowledges both what Mary did and Judas said. “Leave her alone,” he admonishes them. “She did this in preparation for my burial.” Mary’s gift is acknowledged for how she understood the extreme loneliness and abandonment Jesus was already feeling and his need for comfort in his resolve to complete his mission of God in the face of death.

Death Doesn’t Have the Last Word

Interestingly though, Jesus does not reprimand Judas despite knowing his true intentions. His words almost concede that Judas is correct in bringing up the plight of the poor. “You will always have the poor among you.” Their needs are not going to miraculously disappear. Disease, life holding on for survival, existence straddling the margin of barely making it up against destitution, all this will be the fate of many. Add into it suppressive systems and structures, not to mention how life can turn on a dime when war is on your doorstep. Yes, the poor, the sick, the oppressed, the deprived, the refugee you will always have among you.

Still, another perspective is the poor you will always have with you. Jesus affirms what Judas had said. Keep close to you the needs of the poor. Do not distance or elevate yourselves from them. For you are necessary in doing what I came to show you in relationship with God and Neighbor.

His words become an imperative. Keep the poor among and close to you, for “I will not be here with you much longer.” The day would soon be when Jesus would not be the one healing, teaching, proclaiming God’s love. Mary’s extravagant gift to him honored that coming reality.

It’s been said that Jesus can’t be separated from these whom he loved dearly, the least, last and lost as they are often called. In these words though, Jesus bestows on any who would love him to love others as he loved. Even as he would die and not be around as before, Jesus asks that his followers to do that for others which they had seen him do and taught. In this then, Jesus is honored and worshipped in the same extravagant manner as Mary had done for him.

This ointment poured upon him holds not just the aroma of death but the fragrance of his love.

John 12:1-8