Curious onlookers
Skeptical Pharisees
Fair-weather friends
Bitter enemies
Sincere but fickle disciples
Enthusiastic crowds
Reasoning Sadducees
Dubious elders
A complimentary scribe
Scheming detractors
The list of those who approached Jesus during his final week in Jerusalem is incredibly diverse. The ways in which they engaged him and the expectations they had for him were even more diverse still. But of all those who approached him, only one was told that her story would resonate everywhere the Gospel was going to be proclaimed.What made her approach so special?
Why does Jesus single her out above all others?
And how can her example help us draw closer to Jesus today?
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Grace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: The King in the City
March 23, 2014
A Bold Woman, an Alabaster Flask, and Anointing Jesus
Mark 14:1-11
Good morning. If you have your Bible, open it up to Mark 14. If you don’t have a Bible, slip up your hand, and we will give you a Bible. If you need a notes sheet, you’ll find out in a minute this is a unique kind of Sunday to have your notes sheet with you, so you probably want one of those.
As you know, we’ve been walking through Jesus’ final week before the crucifixion. He has come to Jerusalem. We saw a couple of weeks ago his triumphal entry, we saw last week his judgment upon the temple, and now this week we’re going to be in Mark 14 to see another really insightful story about what it means to relate well to Jesus.
Last week we saw one of the unique characteristics of Mark’s writing. He likes to make sandwiches out of his stories where he’ll start with one theme and then interject a story in the middle, and then at the end he’ll follow up with the initial theme. What we’re going to read this morning, just 11 verses, is another sandwich from Mark. So I’m going to start in Mark 14:1. Remember when you see these sandwiches usually it’s the meat in the middle that really draws the attention and shows us what the Scripture is trying to get at.
“It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest [Jesus] by stealth and kill him, for they said, ‘Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.’ And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head.
There were some who said to themselves indignantly, ‘Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.’ And they scolded her.” (Some translations have, “They rebuked her harshly.”) “But Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.
She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.’ Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him.” (Mark 14:1-11)
So that’s the second slice of the sandwich bread. On either side you have the plot to kill Jesus, and you get the sense that the tide of evil around Jesus this final week is rising almost to the point where it’s going to inundate everything, the priests, even Judas, one of the Twelve, were all conspiring against Jesus.
But in the middle, in the meat, this little vignette of a dinner at the house of Simon the leper in Bethany where a woman does a bold, passionate, perhaps even a bit awkward, thing by breaking open this alabaster jar and pouring it over Jesus’ head. What do we make of this and how does that even help us understand how to relate to Jesus today? So there are some natural questions that just for me as I was reading this week started to rise up.
1. Why Simon’s house? Why is Jesus at Simon’s house? What’s the deal with Simon’s house? He’s in Bethany, and if you read these texts carefully, in the final week Jesus actually never spends a night in Jerusalem. He’s always staying out in Bethany. Now Bethany was a village on the far side of the Mount of Olives about two miles from the city of Jerusalem, so essentially Jesus decided to sleep in the suburbs but work in the city. He’s kind of doing the commute thing.
Part of the reason for that is that some of his closest friends… We know from John 12 and some of the other gospel accounts that Mary and Martha and Lazarus were his dear friends. He loved them a lot. We know from the gospel accounts that he made several trips during his ministry to Jerusalem, and almost always he would’ve stayed with these guys.
So when he’s in Bethany he’s in a place where he knows people. He has close friends. Then in this final week as the King is in the city (the name of our series), he is walking in the morning. So last week, when he was walking on the way in, he saw that fig tree with leaves but no fruit on it. That was on his commute.
I was actually thinking about this a little bit. I don’t know if you guys listen to the traffic, some of you who drive into town to do your work or maybe across town and everything else. In Atlanta, the traffic report is pretty significant, but I have to admit, even though I’ve been here for 10 years, I still have no idea what those guys are talking about.
“Inner loop. Outer loop. Connector. Spaghetti Junction.” All of this. I don’t know the codes of the traffic reports. I could be driving along and I’m like, “Oh good, the traffic. I need to know if I’m going to get caught.” Then I listen to it for 30 seconds and I just keep driving because I have no idea. “Is there something wrong on 85? Rubbernecking? I don’t know. Just keep going, I suppose.”
I was imagining what it would be like if there were a radio station in Jerusalem at the time and there was like a traffic report for Jesus on his daily commute in from Bethany. Now bear with me for a second. You’re already aware of my somewhat quirky sense of humor. One of my favorite things actually is sometimes I’ll be standing out by the door and after a sermon people will walk up and they’ll say, “I know not everyone gets your jokes, but I do.”
So if there were a traffic report, I could imagine it kind of being something like this. “Yeah, this is Captain Reuben here. Looking pretty good on the Jericho Road. We have a caravan right down the Kidron Valley. Roman soldier on the scene, but you’re going to be backed up there quite some time. Over on the east side, temple traffic’s lower than usual for Passover crowds. We have a long line of donkey brake lights from Mount of Olives into the city. Captain Reuben reporting for WZION with all of your Passover traffic needs.”
I just wonder if Jesus listened to the radio in the morning as he’s making the trip from Bethany into Jerusalem. That really has nothing to do with the sermon, but it does sort of (for me anyway) humanize these stories a bit, because as we’ve been observing, Jesus is walking through this week as fully the divine Son of God, but at the same time in his full humanity. Part of the reason he loves Bethany is because he knows the people there. That’s his community. That’s his place of connection.
Now we don’t know who Simon the leper is. There are several different theories. Some people say Simon the leper is perhaps the father of Martha and Mary and Lazarus, and so this would be the household where he has visited many times. Others say perhaps he is the husband of Martha. Other people say, “Well, maybe he was just a friend from the area.”
But the interesting thing to me is that the word that just sticks out in this story is that he is the leper. It doesn’t tell us if he has been healed of his leprosy or if he is still with leprosy. Most of the time when Jesus meets a leper he heals them, so our guess is that he is probably a healed leper. But still, that stigma, to be called Simon the leper. Anybody who knew their Old Testament law knew it was illegal. It was against the law to dine with or associate with people who had that name leper connected to their identity.
So here it’s just two nights before Jesus is going to the cross. He has two meals left. He’s going to have the Last Supper. We’ll look at that next week. This is his penultimate meal before the cross. Do you know what he has chosen? He has chosen to spend it with people who most in society would’ve rejected. He said, “No, I don’t want to avail myself of the potentially opulent hospitality of friends in Jerusalem. I want to sit with the family in the house of Simon the leper.”
That’s so different from us, at least from me. A lot of times I think about, “How am I going to plan my week?” A lot of times my filter is, “Well, who’s the coolest? Who’s the most fun? Who can I get something from?” or whatever else. Just to be very transparent. Yet Jesus here, his choice is like, “I want to be with Simon the leper.” He’s just friends with people who the rest of society doesn’t particularly embrace. I love that about Jesus.
As they’re sitting there for this meal, something that is frankly quite awkward occurs. It says as Jesus was reclining, this woman (who in John 12, where there’s a parallel account of this story, this woman is identified as Mary) comes in, breaks open this precious flask of rare imported perfume, and just pours it on Jesus’ head.
I don’t know if you’ve sat and just thought about what that would’ve been like. Have you ever been to dinner at someone’s house and you spilled something at their table? I have. Multiple times. Lots of people actually have had the honor of me spilling something on their table. I’m just very good, and I like to gesticulate with my arms, so beware if you’re a tall glass full of Orange Slice.
In those moments, when the spill is going, you stand up and you’re like, “Oh, sorry,” and the host says to you, “It’s okay. It’s no big deal. It was just grape juice on my white sofa. It’s no big deal.” There’s just such an awkward feel when there’s a spill in the midst of it. This is kind of like that, except this time it’s a woman, and it’s precious ointment, and it’s just running all over Jesus and down and probably into his beard and onto his garment. Can you just imagine this whole conversation happening while there’s just perfume running down Jesus’ face?
Yet of all the conversations and all the interactions Jesus had in his final week, this one with this woman is the one he singles out that will be a memorial wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world. It’s amazing. What is it about this action and this woman and what she does that is so noteworthy for Jesus that he says, “This is the thing we will remember wherever the gospel is preached”? What is it? What makes her so unique?
2. Why is this woman unique? In order to get our heads around that, we have to backtrack a little bit and see what Jesus has been dealing with during the time between his temple cleansing and this story. So what has been going on this whole week? Pretty much every day he commutes in from Bethany, goes into Jerusalem, hangs out at the temple, and he has conversations.
The conversations he has been having with the people around him reveal very much about who Jesus is and also about what’s going on in the people who are confronting him. The first one is right after the judgment of the temple. You have some chief priests and some scribes and some elders. They say, “Hey, Jesus, where does your authority come from to do all of this? Who are you to judge?”
Jesus, knowing they want to trap him, says, “Well, you answer me a question. Was the baptism of John from God or from man?” Of course, he’s referring to John the Baptist. It says that the chief priests and the scribes and the elders were perplexed by this question because they knew if they said that the baptism of John was from God then they would be affirming what John had said about Jesus, that he is truly the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
“Yeah, if we say John is a prophet then we have to accept what John said about Jesus. But if we say that the baptism of John was not from God, then all the crowds around here are going to riot because everybody loves John the Baptist and everybody thinks he was an authentic prophet of God.” So they came in to attack and trap Jesus, and Jesus just foiled them.
These chief priests and scribes and elders go (this is literally what the Scripture says), “We don’t know,” and they kind of slink off. But the text says it’s because they were afraid of the crowds. So as they’re coming to Jesus, their ability to see Jesus has been obscured because they are more afraid of what the people around them think than of what God himself has to say, and that’s something we all fall into from time to time, where these voices become of greater value to us than God’s voice, and we miss things.
Now the next round of interrogation happens a little later in the week. This time it is a Pharisee and a Herodian. They come up to Jesus. This is a mix. Pharisees and Herodians are like oil and water. You never would see them together because the Pharisees were hyper-religious. They thought that if you supported Rome in any way you were basically committing idolatry and supporting the pagan empire. “No way. Can’t do it. Stay out.”
Then on the Herodian side, they had a different approach. They said, “No, no, no. Actually we’re going to work with the Roman Empire, and we’re going to get rich doing it.” So when you had the two of them walking up to Jesus at once, immediately Jesus could’ve seen like, “Uh-oh. What’s going to happen here?”
They say, “Hey, Jesus, should we pay the tax to Caesar or not?” There’s no good way to answer this because if Jesus says, “Yes, pay the tax,” then the Pharisee will say, “I knew it! Jesus is into idolatry. He’s supporting Rome.” If he says, “No, don’t pay the tax,” then the Herodian throws his hands up and says, “I knew it! He’s anti-government. Get him arrested.”
Jesus is trapped once again. A modern-day equivalent might be if you had a passionate liberal Democrat and a passionate Tea Party Republican, and they both walked up to you and said, “We’d like to know what you think about healthcare.” So if you’re Jesus in this situation, what do you do?
It doesn’t seem like there’s any way to answer. He says, “Well, does anybody have a denarius?” the coin that was used to pay the tax. One of them pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to Jesus and Jesus is like, “Well, look who’s the idolater now. You have a little pocket idol in there.”
He doesn’t actually say that, but that’s what’s implied because on the coin would’ve been the imprint of Tiberius Caesar’s face, and then around it was an inscription that said, “The devoted worshipful son of the divine Augustus.” Literally, the coin on it said, “This emperor is the son of God.” So if you pulled out that coin it’s kind of like, “Oh, I’m carrying around a little coin that is, in fact, blasphemous.”
So Jesus looks at it, and everybody kind of goes, “Well, somebody had the coin in there.” He says, “Whose icon, whose image is on this?” They all say, “Caesar’s.” He says, “Well then, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what belongs to God.” In that one basic statement, he says, “Yes, the government is instituted by God, and there are times when it is appropriate to support the government, but at the same time, don’t let the government become your god.”
That’s what he’s doing there. What happens in this instance… Again, they’re foiled. They can’t respond because Jesus is so brilliant. But this time, when the Pharisees and the Herodian are there and they’re trying to trap Jesus, they’re obscured because their political perspectives, there are some issues they have that are preventing them from seeing Jesus clearly.
We fall into that too sometimes. Sometimes we feel like we really like Jesus, but there are political things or certain issues out there that are connected to Christians or to the church or to Jesus himself that we just can’t quite stomach or whatever, and it can prevent us from really seeing Jesus.
The next group up, the Sadducees. They say, “Hey, Jesus, how can you believe in that resurrection thing?” because the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection at all. The Sadducees were actually, by reputation, pretty worldly. They just lived it up in the moment. They were generally fairly wealthy.
They said, “Listen, Jesus, let me give you a scenario. Let’s say there’s a woman and she marries a guy and he dies. So she marries his brother. He dies. She remarries his brother. He dies. She marries his brother. Seven times like that. If there’s a resurrection, whose wife is she going to be in the resurrection? Ha, ha! We got you.” Like that. Jesus’ response this time is pretty straightforward. He goes, “Oh, you don’t know the Scripture and you don’t know the power of God.” Like, “You’re thinking about this in totally the wrong way.”
Then he says, “God is not the God of the dead but of the living, because God says in the books of Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,” implying that God didn’t say after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were dead, “I was the God of Abraham, but now he’s dead,” but that Abraham is in fact still alive. So he takes the Scripture the Sadducees would’ve believed and applies it to them and shows them how their reasoning is totally wrong, that in the eternal life in the resurrection people will neither be given nor taken in marriage, and all the rest.
But this time for the Sadducees, when they approach Jesus, the thing that’s blocking their ability to see him clearly is their refusal to embrace the supernatural power of God, actually. They’re so consumed with their own ability to think things through and to reason and their commitment to rationality that they cannot embrace this supernatural promise of resurrection. It’s interesting because Jesus does not condemn reasoning; he just condemns their reasoning.
He goes, “You guys are not reasoning well.” All through this passage, Jesus is actually using his mind so brilliantly. There’s so much great reasoning in here. But this happens to us too. Sometimes when it comes to Jesus, we start thinking about him, but it’s like we just can’t get our heads or minds over the hump of his supernatural power. “Is he really going to intervene? What about the resurrection? Dead people tend to stay dead. What’s this idea? How’s this going to work?”
So these are the folks Jesus is encountering. Then after this, there’s a scribe who comes up, and he says, “Hey Jesus,” because he saw Jesus has been answering well. He says, “Jesus, what’s the most important commandment?” He’s authentically curious. We know what Jesus said. “First, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Second, love your neighbor as yourself.” They have this great conversation. With this curious scribe, Jesus is very instructive, very helpful.
Then of course, just a few verses later at the end of chapter 12, they’re talking, and Jesus sees this widow, and she comes up to the temple offering area, drops in her last two bits, two pennies, and Jesus says, “Out of her poverty she has given.” He loves her generous heart. In the final interaction before this scene in Mark 14 is the beginning of Mark 13 where the disciples, while they’re in the temple, they’re having all these conversations. Jesus is foiling everybody, just amazing, incredible confrontation, and he’s so brilliant.
Then one of the disciples pipes up and says, “Yeah, but Jesus, these walls and this structure… It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” Jesus uses that occasion to remind them not to trust in these structures. We talked about it last week. The mountain of the temple, and even though sometimes it feels way more trustworthy, way more secure, way more alluring to put all of our chips into something that is so beautiful and tactile in front of us, in fact that system is crumbling away, and Jesus himself is inviting us, summoning us to follow him and to trust him with all we are.
It’s amazing because in that Mark 13 passage he talks through the end of the age. They say, “What’s this going to be like? What’s going to happen?” Jesus explains to them step by step, and essentially he says, “That temple is going to be totally destroyed, but if you stick with me and you listen to me, I will take care of you.”
For me growing up, that Mark 13 passage was always a little bit terrifying because the imagery is so intense and apocalyptic, but as I’ve read it more and understood it at a deeper level, it’s really reassurance actually because Jesus’ theme throughout all of it is, “Stick with me. Listen to me. I will carry you through this.”
So these are all of the interactions Jesus has been having this week. He has these people who are scheming, these people who are trying to expose him as a fraud, they’re trying to trap him. With those people, what Jesus does, his answers actually have a way of revealing what’s truly in their hearts. He tends to respond to people on the terms with which they approach him.
When somebody comes to him with true curiosity, he meets their curiosity, responds to their questions. When they approach him with hostility, he’s not hostile back, but he is actually a little bit abrasive in such a way that it can reveal that hostility. Everybody he encounters, he meets them where they are and reveals what’s going on inside of them. Some people don’t like it and they walk away. Other people begin to embrace it. They keep walking with the Lord.
So these are the interactions he has been having all week, and now we get to this woman. What makes her unique? Well, by comparison, she is like the first person to walk up and embrace Jesus for who he is, not trying to trick him, test him, expose him, not trying to figure out more about him. She just says, “Yes, I completely want to express my devotion to you.” Jesus says, “Excellent. That is the model. I love that. Let’s tell that story in the future. That is important.”
3. Why “pure nard, very costly”? So what this woman does is she takes her flask, her jar, a box of sealed nard. Now nard (let’s just say it up front) is a funny word. Good. We’re going to say it a lot in the next few sentences. Nard was an imported fragrance from India. It grows up in the mountains, at like 10,000 to 15,000 feet. I think I have a couple of pictures of the nard plant. It’s a little flower. They actually extract the oil used for the perfume out of the roots. There’s another picture of the roots.
As I was reading this week, I called Michael. You guys know Michael Johnston, big beard. He helps with a lot of production stuff on Sunday morning. I said, “Hey, Michael, could we get some nard for Sunday? I’d like everybody’s bulletin, everybody’s notes to smell like nard.” He said, “Well, maybe. I don’t have 300 days’ salary to spend on it.” I said, “Yeah, just call around a little bit. See if there’s any place in Atlanta that sells some nard.”
So he made some calls, and he texted me back, and he said, “I found this shop down in Toco Hills that sells some of these things. I’m going to head down there and check it out.” So he’s texting me, and the news I got back from Michael at the shop was frankly a little discouraging. Check out this text exchange.
He gets there and he says, “Spikenard leans a little too much toward the unpleasant body odor side of olfactory experience.” If that’s true, it makes the phrase in John 12:7 a little bit different when it says the aroma of the perfume filled the entire house. So I text him, “Uh-oh. Any pleasant nard out there?” He says, “If there is, it would probably be here, though I think this is the only nard there is. I did see some blends that used olive oil as a carrier.”
So we’re trying to work out the thing. Next text. I said, “Okay, cool. Maybe the shop guy would have a suggestion of something like nard that could give the suggestion?” Then, “Sandalwood is earthy but not going to make someone suspicious that the person next to them refuses to bathe.” If you ever wonder what we do during the week Sunday to Sunday.
So Michael and Amy (his wife was with him) found Nardo, which is a perfume. So a couple of days ago, we printed up all the Grace notes with the sermon outlines on them, and then we doused a bunch of things in Nardo, like some cloths and things, and we put it in the Tupperware bins, sealed together. It’s possible. I’d invite you; smell your sheet. Is anybody getting a Nardo infusion, or does it just smell like paper?
I’m not sure how this works. My idea was that it would be something similar to what happens in a magazine where that thing falls out and you’re like, “Oh, Acqua di Gio. Whoa! Strong smell.” Not sure if it totally worked, although if you would like, you can find me after the service and you can smell some of the Nardo perfume from the source.
I shared it with a few people after the 9:00 service, and there was a varied response. Some people were like, “Oh, that’s kind of nice,” or, “Oh, that smells like organic soap.” A few people were like, “Ugh!” One person made the observation, “Well, it must’ve been pretty good for the ancient world. They didn’t have the Yankee Candle shop back then, so their fine scents were probably limited.” To me, it smells kind of like the dorm room of a guy I knew in college. He had Grateful Dead and Bob Marley posters. So, you can think about that.
Anyway, the fragrance of nard is just pouring, and it’s an incredibly distinctive smell. It’s interesting because the emphasis for the disciples… They missed the beauty of the action, and they quantify it. So here’s this woman expressing real love for Jesus, and the disciples are writing down, saying, “Well, how much does that love really cost and could it have been applied otherwise?”
Can I just say something? If you’re measuring love in dollars and cents, it’s not really love. Love doesn’t say, “What’s this going to cost me?” Love regrets that it cannot give beyond its means. That’s what real love is like.
The disciples look at this woman and they say, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? This ointment could’ve been sold for more than 300 denarii.” A denarius was a day’s wage, so it’s basically a year’s salary that this woman is pouring out. Can you just imagine being there, and in this one moment to create a perfume and anointing upon Jesus that will last at most a few days, just thousands of dollars?
4. Why is this not a “waste”? When the disciples look at it, in one sense they are right. This money really could have been better served given to the poor. You could’ve done a lot with this amount of resources, but what Jesus points out to the disciples is that it’s not always right to be right. What has happened is that the disciples are verbally abusing this woman, Mary, in the middle of dinner, and Jesus stands up for her, the underprivileged, the woman who is just getting berated by the disciples.
He says, “Stop that! You’re missing the point.” The disciples are saying, “Why this waste?” and Jesus is saying, “Why do you trouble her?” They’re saying, “Why this irresponsible use of money?” and Jesus is saying, “Why this irresponsible treatment of a person who’s right here?” Even though the disciples in some sense have a good point, they weren’t right because their argument was abusing this woman.
I don’t know. I’ve only been married three years, but I have learned in my marriage it’s not always right to be right. I don’t know if you guys have ever had that conversation where, men, you win the battle of one fact but you lose the war. I went in last night to the living room and asked Amy, “Hey, have we ever had any of those conversations where it’s not always right to be right. You know, like I would really try to prove a point but came across like a doofus and made you really mad?”
So we sat there. We thought for a little bit. I was actually really pleased that it took us awhile to think of an example. If she would’ve whipped out a notebook and said, “Well, actually, yes. I’ve been waiting for you to ask, and I have 17 examples from the last two months,” I would’ve been pretty discouraged. If your marriage is running on that kind of notebook, that’s bad news. You don’t want to keep a list of those sorts of things.
But we did remember one occasion when we were driving up to a wedding in Knoxville. The way we had to go through town and then up, and it was at traffic time. I was navigating. Amy was driving. I had the map in front of me. I’m looking at Google Maps on my phone, so I can see literally what turns need to be made, and so I’m suggesting various routes, but Amy also has lived in Atlanta her entire life so she has an intuitive map.
So she wants to go some other ways, and we just keep going back and forth, and I just kept driving home the point, “We need to make this turn. We need to make this turn. We need to make this turn.” I was just so insistent on being right that I missed the person sitting right next to me. That was terrible because by the time we finally got out of Atlanta we just rode for two hours in silence to Knoxville.
Have you guys had those kinds of car rides? It’s amazing how you can be sitting next to your wife, facing the same direction, and yet she somehow has managed to get her entire back toward you. Sort of that move. We’re driving sidesaddle now. Amy is a master at this, and the truth was I was so off. It was not a good decision for me to push. We reminisced, and we were laughing the same way last night about this, and then at the very end of the conversation, Amy goes, “But you know, I was right.”
But here’s what’s happening. These disciples are missing the beauty of the moment and the person in front of them. They have all these ideas. “They could’ve sold this for the poor,” and all that, but it’s not always right to be right. Sometimes it’s more right to pay attention to the person who is right in front of you. Figure out what’s going on. Recognize. Where’s Jesus in the room? What does Jesus think about what’s going on right here?
If you ever get into one of those conversations with your spouse or your girlfriend, your friend, or whatever it is, or your sibling, and you feel like you’re moving in that direction where you’re going to end up riding in silence for two hours, just stop for a minute. Say, “Okay, wait a second. Jesus, where are you in this room, and what do you think about what’s going on?” Because according to Jesus, this is not a waste.
Jesus reinterprets the whole thing, and he starts talking about how you will always have the poor with you. People in the past have abused that verse out of context as a reason that we shouldn’t care for the poor or that because the poor will always be around, it’s not worth making the investment to help the poor with financial and relational means, but if you know Jesus’ teaching at all, he sides with the poor.
He loves the poor. He finds himself more often with the poor than with the rich. He sits with Simon the leper in his home. So that can’t be what Jesus is saying, that you should just disregard the poor. In fact, what he is saying here is a quote from Deuteronomy 15. In Deuteronomy 15, it says if people will obey God there will be no poor among you.
Then a little bit later it says in verse 11 the poor will always be among you. It’s anticipating that people are not really going to obey God. They’re really greedy and they set up all sorts of broken economies. But then even after he says the poor will always be with you in verse 11, God says in Deuteronomy 15, “You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.” (Deuteronomy 15:11) It’s a crucial passage.
What Jesus is saying is, “No, no, no, no, no. The priority for the poor is important. It’s very important, but at the same time the priority of adoration for me goes hand in hand. It’s okay that this woman has come and chosen to do something really extravagant,” and some would even say wasteful in her expression of adoration toward Jesus. He’s saying, “This is beautiful, actually.” Why? Why is it so beautiful? Jesus describes it. He says, “She has anointed my body beforehand for burial.”
5. Why anointing? What’s the key here? That word anointing. What she’s doing here is a sign that she has recognized who Jesus really is and what he is really up to. That’s what makes this such a beautiful moment for Jesus. He says, “Finally, at last, after the Sadducees and the Herodians and the Pharisees and the chief priests and the elders and scribes, here comes this woman, Mary, who gets it, who knows who I am.”
That word anointed is such a powerful, deep, pregnant word. It’s the same word messiah. Messiah means anointed one. Christ is the Greek way of saying anointed one. In the Old Testament (you guys know this), they would anoint kings, they would anoint priests, and they would anoint prophets. This was a way of affirming on earth what was already true from God’s perspective in heaven.
So that means like when Samuel comes (he’s the prophet) and he anoints David to be the next king, when he’s doing that, it’s not like Samuel pours oil on David and God says, “Okay, fine. Well, I guess David has to be king now.” No, it’s that God has already chosen David to be the next king, and the anointing from the earth perspective is acknowledging or recognizing what God has already declared in heaven.
So when this woman comes to Jesus and anoints him, she is saying, “I recognize you for everything that God in heaven says you are, the true Son of God, the true King.” Just imagine, as she’s anointing him, she is recognizing him as the King, which means she is willing to trust his will in every situation.
We just sang it actually. “Lord, reign in me.” That’s the kind of song you sing to the rightful, sovereign King. Then she says, “I recognize you as a true Prophet.” That second sense of the anointing in which it really means she’s saying, “When you speak, I hear your words as the words of God himself, and when I seek guidance, I will seek guidance from you.”
It’s amazing, because a lot of times we’re willing to say, “Oh yeah, God, reign in me,” but then when it comes to finding counsel and direction in our lives, we’ll read the Internet, we’ll talk to our friends, we’ll talk to our parents, we’ll read some books or whatever, but we forget to just go to Jesus, the true One who gives us the words of life from God. But that’s what she’s doing. She’s recognizing Jesus for that.
She’s recognizing him as the true Priest from God, the One who makes reconciliation, intercedes for us that our sins might be forgiven. Sometimes we try to work off feeling bad or we feel guilty because we’ve blown it or we’ve messed up or we’ve done something that offends God, and rather than coming back to Jesus, the true Priest, we think that if we can just serve the poor or be a little bit nicer next time or just stop doing that, we’ll deal with it, but that’s not it.
The Bible teaches us that in every one of these areas we come to Jesus as the King, as the Prophet, as the Priest. Not only that, but Jesus says, “She has anointed me for my burial. She has recognized that I’m the Prophet, the Priest, and the King truly from God, fully representing God, the Son of God in all glory,” yet human form standing before her, but he’s also the King, the Prophet, and the Priest who’s going to become preeminent, superior, above all through death and resurrection. That’s the other piece sometimes we have trouble with with Jesus.
We like the idea of him being the King or the Prophet or the Priest or serving all of these different roles in our lives, but we’re not always so happy about the suffering side of it. “Wait a second. Death? Suffering?” We don’t always like that part, and yet here what Mary does, what this woman does with the nard in anointing Jesus is she’s embracing all of those aspects of Jesus. “You’re the Prophet, you’re the Priest, you’re the King, and you’re going to die and you’re going to be raised again. I accept everything you are and the way you are doing this.”
It’s such a profound and wholehearted embrace of Jesus. I wonder for us. Do we see Jesus this way? Have we anointed the Lord in our lives in this way? By anointed, I mean have we from our perspectives embraced what is already true from God’s perspective, that Jesus is the true King, he is the true Prophet, he is the true Priest, he is the true Lord?
This is a bit of a surprise for me as I was reading this passage. In years past, when I’ve read this passage, it’s always been about the extravagance of the gift. I’ve always thought, “Oh, the focus of this passage is just how extravagant this gift is.” But actually, Jesus describes the woman’s gift as simply what she has. She recognized Jesus, and when she recognized Jesus for who he is, she thought, “Oh, well, whatever I have is for you. This is yours. Yeah, okay, if it’s a flask of nard, yes, of course, I’ll pour it out upon you in adoration.”
It’s funny. When I was reading this passage a few years ago, I was in South America with a team from Grace. We were working with some youth from Ecuador and from Peru and some of the high schoolers from Grace also. We were trying to work through some discipleship. How can we reproduce some of the intergenerational, next-generation discipleship we do here with their communities down there?
So I brought my guitar because I knew we would be doing some worship stuff. My guitar was such a beautiful instrument. I got it right after I graduated from college. It was like my first big purchase as an adult. I drove up to Washington DC because there was a little shop there with an amazing Brazilian guy, and he made this guitar out of all solid wood, Sitka spruce top, and then Indian rosewood back and sides. It was a Martin D-28 model. If you strummed that guitar it like sustained for years. It was just like you’d strum it, and it sounded so amazing.
So I was down in Ecuador. There was a worship team. It was a Latin American worship team of Ecuadoreans, Peruvians, and one of the guys, who was the main worship leader, said, “Hey, can I borrow your guitar?” I said, “Totally. That’s great,” because he didn’t have his guitar or have a guitar with him. We were there and he played it all week.
Then literally at the end of the week, because it was right before Easter I remember… I was reading through these passages again just in preparation for Good Friday and Holy Week and Easter. At the end of the week, I read through this story, this exact passage, and I remember thinking to myself (it was in the evening), “Oh Lord, I wonder what kind of bottle of nard I’ve got.”
The next morning, the worship leader came up to me at breakfast and he said, “Hey Jon, would you give me your guitar?” So this is a dangerous passage to read. I did what I always do when I feel like God is leading me to do something but I don’t want to do it. I said, “I will pray about that.”
So I went back and spent the day just seeking the Lord, but I knew already. Of course, you can ask God, “What’s my bottle of nard?” and then have a guy come ask you for your favorite guitar, your only guitar, the guitar you love. So I gave it to him and that was that. No, don’t applaud. But this is the point. See, this is the interesting thing.
Because for me always this passage has been about the extravagance of the gift. That’s what I’ve only thought about, “Oh my guitar. Wish I was playing it now.” But as I’ve read it more and more, and particularly this week, what I’ve recognized is this story is not so much about the extravagance of the gift as it is about the preeminence of the recipient.
It’s that when you recognize Jesus for all he is, preeminent, superior, Lord, it is natural. You just, “Yeah, of course. I will adore you with everything I’ve got. There’s nothing that I possess that would be limited from you because you are all of these things.” When we see Jesus this way, worship at this level is no longer like a conscious sacrifice.
Like, “All right, I’m getting the nard and I’m going to pour it out. I’ve been saving this for a long time so you’d better appreciate it. It’s worth thousands of dollars.” That’s not how the worship goes. It’s like, “I see Jesus. Yes, I’m getting the nard and I’m dumping it. I’m anointing you. Yes, I embrace you for all you are.” It’s because this woman recognizes Jesus for all he is that worship just springs out of her heart. It doesn’t even seem optional.
This is a bad example, but when I was in college I was a freshman and I was playing baseball on the baseball team, but we didn’t have a pitching coach. One of the seniors on our team was Tommy John, Jr., which means his father is the Tommy John. I don’t know if you know a lot about baseball, but the Tommy John was a pretty successful pitcher for about 26 years in the major leagues.
He pitched in the 60s, 70, and the 80s. He won 270 games. He actually was the first pitcher to ever undergo the surgery where they transplant a tendon from another part of your arm into your forearm so you can pitch again if you blow out your arm. That’s what Tommy John surgery is. It’s named after Tommy John. A lot of Braves pitchers are dealing with that right now, unfortunately.
But anyway, when I was a freshman Tommy John came to be our pitching coach at Furman. For me, that was amazing. I had so much respect for him, and I really liked him a lot, and I wanted to learn everything I could from him. Because I had this perception of who he was, I was probably annoying. I was like always around.
I was like, “Hey Tommy, do you need some water? What about some baseballs? Do you need me to bring you some baseballs or shine your shoes? Can I get you a granola bar? Do you want me to run over to McDonald’s and get you a burger, anything?” I was just always around him, and I’m a 17-year-old freshman in college. I didn’t really have anything amazing to give him or anything else.
He never could remember my name. He was always like, “Hey Stallsworth! Hey Stillton! Hey Smallwill!” I was like, “Yeah Tommy, what? I’ll be whatever last name you want me to be. I just like hanging out.” I sat next to him on the bench at every game. I remember asking. I was like, “Who was the best hitter you ever pitched to?” He goes, “Oh, Rod Carew.” I was like, “Oh, Rod Carew! It’s amazing!” This is my little world.
It’s a bad example but maybe it gets at just a little bit of what’s going on in this passage. Tommy John is a great guy but he is not Jesus, and yet because I recognized who he was and respected so much of what he had done in his life, in his identity, in everything else, my heart was just naturally moved to serve and be around him and learn from him. How much more so when it’s Jesus? This woman recognizes. She fully gets it, and it’s beautiful, and she’s just naturally adoring.
This is what actually happens in heaven. We see these glimpses like Revelation 4, where the 24 elders are around the throne, and it says they see the Lord, and they are so just enamored. They cry out, “Oh, he’s holy.” They take their crowns and they just throw them down. They’re not going, “Well, I really had to work hard for this crown. I put in a lot of hours, but here you go.” It’s just natural. It’s like, “Jesus is so amazing. Yes, of course.”
There’s this phrase in 1 Samuel 6, when they’re trying to move the ark of the covenant and God’s glory bursts out and it’s a terrifying situation. They say, “Who can stand before the Lord, the holy God?” The truth is when we see the Lord for all he is, you can’t stand before that. Suddenly your whole life is just, “Here you go.” It’s not a debate anymore. It’s not like a, “Well, should I adore or should I worship or should I really…?” No, it’s just given.
This is what Paul talks about in Philippians 2. He says Jesus humbled himself, taking the form of a servant, enduring death, even death on a cross. But then, he has been given the name that is above every name so at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. There’s this picture that every knee will bow because in that moment every eye will see.
No longer will there be these barriers or these blockages that keep us from seeing who Jesus is clearly, but there is a time when that’s all removed, and no matter who you are or where you came from or what you thought about growing up in your life, when you see the Lord, it’s like, “I’ll bow.” My knee hits the ground.
This passage isn’t so much about the extravagance of the gift. For Jesus, who spends his time in heaven, a place where they use gold as a substitute for asphalt, what’s a few thousand dollars? What’s a year’s salary compared to this? This oil, this nard, for Jesus, yeah, it’s beautiful, but it’s a temporary thing. Do you think it impresses him? No, what impresses him is that she has recognized him and embraced him for who he is. That’s what so beautiful.
6. Why “the Gospel” and this memory? This is my favorite part. When Jesus is talking about this gift, he says, “Wherever the gospel is preached, wherever people tell about my victory and my identity as the true King, anywhere in the world through history, this story is going to be told.” What Jesus does is take a temporary act… Yeah, it’s extravagant, but it’s a temporary thing. It would’ve lasted only a few days. He takes that gift and he turns it into something whose aroma resonates through nations and through generations.
This is what Jesus does when we come to him with our adoration, and it’s stuff that to us seems so precious. To him, he probably has like (I don’t know) fountains of nard in heaven. I don’t know, but when we bring the precious things we have to the Lord and we hand them over to him, do you know what he does?
He takes those and he says, “You’ve done a beautiful thing for me. Actually, I’m going to remember that. That’s going to be a memorial through the generations. That’s going to be a memorial through the nations. That’s a story that’s going to be told. I’m going to take your little fleeting gift that seems so precious to you, and I’m going to turn it into something of eternal value.” That’s what Jesus does when we recognize who he is, and that is so beautiful. So let’s pray.
Father, thank you for this Scripture. We ask that you would begin just removing some of the obstacles we have in our hearts and minds to seeing you clearly. Lord, this morning, we want to take some time to just remember and to embrace and to recognize that you are the source of guidance from God. You’re the One who gives us the words that are dependable, the words of eternal life. Lord, if we’ve been seeking guidance in other places, come now and just bring us back to you.
Lord, we want this morning to remember that you are the true Priest in heaven who lives to make intercession for us, who opens the way of forgiveness that we might stand in the very presence of God. So Lord, if we’ve been trying to work off what we feel bad about, trying to earn your favor, if we’ve been trying to feel bad enough, act nice enough to feel good enough about ourselves, Lord, we just want to throw that aside and we want to embrace you as the true Priest.
We want to embrace you as the One who paid the price, you as the One who made the way open for us to be forgiven and innocent and seen as pure right now without any further work. Lord, finally this morning, we want to take the time to recognize you, anoint you even, just confirm in our lives from an earthly perspective what is already true in heaven that you are the true King and that your will, your direction, your wishes are preeminent in our lives.
Lord, we want to take the time to recognize and just be grateful that you came and you laid down your life. You’re the true Prophet, Priest, and King who laid down his life willingly. Lord, as we see those things, just draw forth from us that kind of adoration that befits you in all your glory. In Jesus’ name, amen.