CHAPTER 14
TRAITOR OR WORSHIPPER?
1 Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. 2 “But not during the festival,” they said, “or the people may riot.”
3 While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
4 Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5 It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.
6 “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8 She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9 Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. 11 They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over. Mark 14:1-11
It is amazing how God’s timetable overrides man’s plans. Passover was only two days away, God’s time for His Son to be sacrificed as the Passover lamb. Yet the religious leaders did not want to kill Jesus during Passover because Jerusalem was crowded with visitors from all over Israel and they were afraid of an uprising which their action might trigger.
But something happened that set the ball rolling. Jesus was the dinner guest of Simon the Leper. (Was he someone Jesus had healed, since leprosy made a person unclean and an outcast?) A woman gate-crashed the party, unnamed by Mark, but the other gospels seem to indicate that it was either Mary Magdalene, or an unsavoury woman who had responded to Jesus.
As an act of love and appreciation, she doused Him with her most costly perfume – valued at more than a year’s income. This enraged some of the dinner guests – Judas Iscariot, maybe. Why did he react by deciding to sell Jesus to His enemies? Was Jesus’ comment directed at him, showing up his yetzer harah and tipping him over the edge?
What Jesus recognised and valued was the devotion that prompted this woman to sacrifice her most costly possession as a gift to Him. He interpreted what she had done, for her. She may not have recognised her action as preparation for His burial but He did. Not only that, but her act of generosity would immortalise her forever right alongside her Master’s death and burial.
How would Judas be remembered? By his betrayal of Jesus? How would she be remembered? By her lavish gift of love? What an epitaph – engraved on a page of every copy of the Bible in every language and read by every generation throughout history. Traitor or worshipper? And, as always, it was about money, generosity or greed. The story would be told and written, down the ages!