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MARK’S GOSPEL…WASTED – 33

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Mark. 14:3-9

“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. 

“Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly. 

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.””

What a waste! A whole year’s wages, a dowry, an investment, a life’s savings…gone! Soaking into a man’s hair, clothing, down His face, onto His hands, feet…dripping onto the floor, all that wealth only a spreading stain on the ground! 

(In another rendering of the story, it was the disciples who had a lot to say about her action). 

The people were aghast! What was she thinking? What was she doing? One spokesman protested, this time probably Judas Iscariot, since he usually had money on his mind, measuring everything in terms of silver and gold. They all joined in. What a waste! What about the poor? Why didn’t she do something about “the poor” seeing she was so willing to part with her wealth?

Jesus saw right through their hypocrisy. What did they really care about the nameless, faceless “poor”? They had every other day to do something about the poor. Did they do anything?No! 

This is was an opportunity to go on the attack, especially on a woman who was a nothing in society. Perhaps this was even a subtle way of insinuating that they were better than her. 

Anger rose up in Jesus’ heart, intense sadness at their cruel, heartless indifference to her real motive. These were His people, but all His years with them, painstakingly teaching them about love and mercy, went up in smoke in a moment. Their hearts were exposed. Remember…what you say is what you are!

He retorted with a stinging rebuke. “What do you really care about the poor? Leave her alone. She has done something so great that history will mark her deed as special, to be remembered until the end of time!”

Jesus saw both their hearts and her heart, not with criticism, judgement, measuring actions by worldly standards but reading her love and their absence of love that directed their responses to Him. 

This woman had no name. She was just a woman off the street. Some even wrote her off as wicked, a sinner, an undesirable! What did she want in that company anyway? How had she managed to gatecrash the party? 

It seems that she has crept in with one overriding intention. Armed with her greatest treasure, she suddenly stood up, took the lid off, smashed the priceless alabaster, box and doused Jesus with its contents. 

As the oil slowly dripped from His head to His feet, its fragrance began to fill the room. The odours    of bodies, the memories of toil and hardship, the feelings of loneliness, emptiness, frustration…the things that occupied the thoughts and took up the lives of the onlookers were momentarily drowned by the subtle perfume, enfolding them all in a quiet calm. 

Jesus read even deeper into her action. She had no idea what she was doing, but He did. Always with His mission in mind, with its encroaching suffering He was to endure for all mankind, He saw her deed as an act of pure worship, a celebration of the mercy that would touch everyone who believed, herself included. 

In that moment of intense spiritual interaction, Jesus accepted her sacrifice and the woman received His gift of grace. She would return home a new person despite whatever anyone else thought or felt. Her past was gone, her future bright with hope because of this man whom she had honoured by her faith, knowing deep in her heart that He was who He said He was, the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. 

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – ALL GOD’S DAUGHTERS

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ALL GOD’S DAUGHTERS

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

This is another one of those occasions when Jesus’ mercy and kindness to women offended men. The Samaritan woman and the woman caught in adultery are two other incidents when Jesus treated women with dignity, even when their behaviour was sinful, and the men didn’t like it.

In the Jewish culture of the time, women were viewed as considerably less than men. They were not much more than possessions; their word was not accepted in a court of law; they could be divorced and thrown out on a whim. But Jesus championed women and lifted them to a place of dignity and respect by the way He treated them. He honoured the crown of His creation and often showed men up in public for their high-minded arrogance, an attitude He hated.

Jesus was a rescuer of women. He rescued Mary Magdalene from a life of demonic torment; the Samaritan woman from guilt and shame; the woman caught in adultery from death by stoning; the woman with the issue of blood from isolation and premature death; the woman who was bent over for eighteen years from a life of pain and indignity, (these two women who were outcasts because of sickness, He called “Daughter”), and all the women who followed Him from a meaningless existence.

Most of all, He rescued them from their despised position as less than men. He treated them as equals, honoured them as participants in the great mission of the church gave them an equal share in the gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. .

It was the women who braved the hostility of the religious leaders to be near Him at the cross, to follow His body to the tomb and to anoint Him for burial. It was the wealthy women who often provided for Him and His disciples and it was a woman to whom He first revealed Himself after the resurrection.

People who appear in the gospel narrative alongside Jesus will be remembered for many things, but none received the commendation Jesus gave this woman by specifying her place in history, nameless though she was. Was He in fact saying, “You men are so mean-spirited that all you will remembered for is your insensitivity, but she poured out her very best for me”? Could anything be better than that?

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – TRAITOR OR WORSHIPPER?

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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!

Miserable Money-Minded Misers!

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MISERABLE MONEY-MINDED MISERS!

Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill Him. ‘But not during the festival,’ they said, ‘or the people may riot.’

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. Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, ‘Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.’ And they rebuked her harshly (Mark 14: 1-5).

Funny, isn’t it, how people suddenly have sympathy for the poor when someone else spends his or her money extravagantly! Of course, however, in their own way of life they never give the poor a thought.

Jesus was invited to a meal at the home of Simon the Leper. That’s strange. Lepers were outcasts of society. They were diseased and “unclean”. They had to remain in isolation, cut off from friends and family because their condition was infectious. Since “leprosy” was a term for a variety of skin diseases, not only true leprosy as we know it, the sufferer could recover and return home once he had been declared “clean” by the priest and had offered a sacrifice for his cleansing.

So, was Simon the Leper a recovered “leper” or was he perhaps one that Jesus had healed during the course of His many visits to Simon’s hometown, Bethany? We don’t know, but whoever he was, for some reason Simon had invited Jesus to a banquet. Luke tells the story of a bad woman who poured perfume on Jesus’s feet during a banquet at the home of Simon the Pharisee. Could they ne one and the same person? John records a similar incident in the home of Lazarus and his sisters after Jesus had raised him from the dead. His sister, Mary, showed her devotion and gratitude to Jesus by anointing His feet with expensive ointment.

For whatever reason the gospel records differ according to the writer’s purpose, this incident brings home an important lesson, one that Jesus encapsulated in His statement:

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money (Matt. 6: 24).

Jesus used a rabbinic teaching method here, called a chiasm, to drive home an important point. There is a central thought in this construction to which two supporting statements lead up to and away from. Let me set it up as it should look to help you understand.

A  No one can serve two masters.

B  Either you will hate the one

C  and love the other

C’ or you will be devoted to the one

B’  and despise the other.

A’  You cannot serve God and money.

Can you now see how A and A’ match, and B and B’ and C and C’ are similar statements with C and C’ as the centre of the teaching? The rabbis used this very effective method of teaching for emphasis. The main point of what Jesus was saying was not that you cannot serve two masters, although this is true, but why you cannot serve two masters. You will either serve God or money depending on the one you love and are devoted to.

Those who criticised the woman for “wasting” her dowry did not understand the measure of her devotion to Jesus. It was not about the value of her gift but the measure of her love that they were, in the end, questioning. Their miserable, money-minded judgment of the woman showed up the identity of the one they served.

In John’s account, it was Judas who objected to Mary’s expression of love for Jesus because he obviously loved money, not his Master. In Luke’s account, the host was Simon the Pharisee, and he proved that he had no love for Jesus by withholding the common courtesies of a host for his guest; washing the dust off His feet and anointing His head with oil. It was left to an unsavoury, but repentant woman from the street to do what Simon failed to do for Jesus, with her own tears, her own hair and her valuable perfume which was her wedding dowry.

The lesson is clear. We can only show how much we love the Master by what we do with what is most valuable to us. When we lavish our love and our resources on those in need, we do it for Him and to Him.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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