NILS VON KALM looks at what we can learn from Mary’s “unbelievably extravagant act” of pouring expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet…
Melbourne, Australia
Read John 12:1-8
If I was going to ask you if you would like to invite Jesus around for dinner, what would you say? I reckon most of us would say, “Of course!”
I would have said the same initially, but after reading John 12:1-8, I’m not so sure. I mean, judging from this story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with a year’s wages worth of perfume, I’m not sure if I could handle the awkwardness of it all. He’s hardly your ideal dinner guest.
Mary anoints Jesus Christ’s feet in an illustration published in The Life of Christ by Louise Seymour Houghton (American Tract Society: New York) in 1890. PICTURE: Christine_Kohler/iStockphoto
This story has all the classically awkward moments that Jesus regularly creates in the Gospels. It all starts out fine. There’s a dinner in Jesus’ honour, presumably to thank Him for raising Lazarus from the dead. But then it all goes pear-shaped.
This story has all the classically awkward moments that Jesus regularly creates in the Gospels. It all starts out fine. There’s a dinner in Jesus’ honour, presumably to thank Him for raising Lazarus from the dead. But then it all goes pear-shaped.
All of a sudden, Mary disrupts everything. Overcome with gratitude that her brother, Lazarus, is alive again, she breaks open this hugely expensive jar of perfume and pours it all over Jesus’ feet. Think of how much money you earn in a calendar year. Then imagine splashing every cent of it on a bottle of perfume to honour Jesus. That’s some high-level gratitude!
That’s not all though. There’s also the way that Mary honours Jesus. She would have let her hair down to wipe Jesus’ feet. No big deal, we might think. But, as the New Testament theologian, NT Wright, says, in that culture it was like a woman today hitching up a long skirt to the top of her thighs. It wasn’t a modest act.
You can imagine the murmurs in the air. Was she trying to come onto Him? Does she have no shame? How can He just sit there and let her do this?
And then you have Judas. Surely his question of how this exorbitant amount of money that paid for the perfume could have spent on the poor is perfectly reasonable? After all, isn’t that what Jesus has been going on about for the last three years, calling the poor blessed, saying His very mission is about preaching good news to them, uplifting the outcasts? The fact that this question is even asked by Judas shows that care for the poor was just a given for disciples of Jesus. It went without saying.
So, it comes across as rather odd that Jesus has no problem with Mary’s unbelievably extravagant act. This is a challenge for those of us with a social justice bent. Doesn’t Judas have a point? We’ll get back to that.
Perhaps the most quoted part of this story though is Jesus’ response to Judas. “You will always have the poor with you” is probably the most pathetic excuse for rich and middle-class Christians to not look after the poor (“there’s always going to be poor people, so why bother trying to make a difference? It’s such a huge problem anyway”) that there is.
The problem with that excuse is that it’s the exact opposite of what Jesus meant when He said that the poor will always be with us. To His Jewish listeners (who were all 12 of his disciples), they would have immediately recognised Jesus’ response as being from Deuteronomy 15:11, which says, “For there will never cease to be poor in the land; therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers [and sisters] and toward the poor and needy in your land”. So, on the surface, it’s surprising that Jesus rebukes Judas for saying that the money spent on the perfume could have been spent on the poor.
It could just be though that Jesus is saying here that in Him, all that’s wrong with the world, including poverty, will eventually be put right. But it will only happen because of Him. After all, that’s the great Christian hope. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, part of it was that God’s kingdom would come right here on earth as it already is in the realm of God. When everything is in its rightful place in the world, the poor are blessed, and it’s only in Jesus that this happens.
What many activist-type Christians need to remember is that in following Jesus and being committed to social justice, we’re not trying to build some socialist utopia, a kingdom without a king. We’re trying to – with God – build for the kingdom right here on earth. The kingdom of God is the reign of God, where love, justice, peace and beauty reign supreme in this world, right here. It’s not something we build by ourselves. We can’t.
That’s where we have to be humble and acknowledge that it’s God that we serve, and that when we serve the poor and outcast, it’s actually God we’re serving. And we do it as co-creators of the reign of God here on earth.
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To be Christian is to care for the poor, to have empathy for them and to live that empathy out in compassion. If our gospel doesn’t lift up the poor, it’s simply not the Gospel of Jesus. We can sing all the worship songs we want, have all the Bible studies we want, speak in tongues until we’re blue in the face, but if we’re not following Jesus into the laneways and the alleyways to care for the poor, our gospel is not the Gospel of Jesus.
So, given all that, did Judas have a point when he said that what Mary did was a complete waste and that all the money spent on that perfume could have been spent on the poor?
Well, yes and no.
Yes, because he’d heard Jesus talking about this for three years. But no, because he didn’t care at all about the poor. He even pilfered money from the small amount of funds they had. And he got Jesus all wrong.
Judas missed that it’s all about love. He missed what St Paul said a few decades later in his famous I Corinthians 13 passage, that if we even give away all our possessions, but have not love, it’s all totally worthless. That’s what Judas didn’t get. And, like Judas, it’s what we all need reminding of.
The American pastor, Paul Dazet, remarked recently about Mary’s outrageous act when he took his own step of risky love. In pondering his own act of love, Dazet said,
“I keep thinking about Mary, pouring out that expensive perfume, letting her love disrupt the room’s proper order. She knew what she was doing would draw judgment, yet she chose extravagant love anyway.
Maybe that’s what self-emptying love looks like: choosing to pour ourselves out even when others question, even when it costs us something, even when it makes us vulnerable to criticism. Sometimes the most courageous act is simply showing up with our whole hearts, letting our love disturb the status quo, trusting that grace is worth the risk.”
Grace is indeed worth the risk. Love is always risky. It always lifts up the lowly and confounds the proud and self-righteous. May we always take the risk of Mary’s love.
