Mark 14: 1Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. 2"But not during the Feast," they said, "or the people may riot." 3While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as 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. 4Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, "Why this waste of perfume? 5It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages[a] 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. 7The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her." 10Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. 11They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.
Jesus told me what to talk about tonight. Not that I had a vision of him or heard his voice telling me what to say. I didn’t. I’m simply going on his instructions, that “wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” You have entrusted me to preach the gospel, so I should talk about this woman and what she did from time to time, as part of preaching the gospel.
And I have spoken about her, more than once, in this church. As I don’t remember exactly what I said back then, hopefully I’ll come up with something new. Those of you who remember, let me know if I did. Or not.
The gospel comes to us as a story, a story about God and humanity meeting in Jesus of Nazareth. Including, in Jesus on a cross. This story affects us like a stone dropped in the water: it leaves a widening ring of ripples. Where they stop we can’t say, and we probably shouldn’t. This part of the gospel story, about the woman anointing Jesus, leaves some ripples in my life that deal with hope. But more about that in a minute, if I remember. I hope.
Why did she do what she did? That’s what some of the apostles asked, but in a mean-spirited manner, as in, “Why this waste of expensive perfume? The money could have been given to the poor.” But since Jesus put the kabosh on that kind of question, that’s not what I mean when I ask, “Why did she do it?”
At the time, anointing with precious, aromatic oil could have meant at least three things: 1) an extravagant gesture of hospitality toward an honored, esteemed guest, as in Psalm 23, “you have anointed my head with oil.” So as long as the guest lingers, and wherever the guest goes, as long as the perfumed oil persists, you’ll just know by the smell that he is an honored, highly esteemed guest, deemed worthy of such extravagant luxury; 2) anointing with aromatic oil is for the installation of a king (the word “Christ” means “anointed one,” or “king”); the act of anointing and embalming a dead body, out of respect, or to combat the smell of decay.
That last one, anointing a body for burial, is the one which Jesus ascribes to her actions. If that’s what she had in mind, then her action was very perceptive. Here are these monstrous forces gathering around the Christ, seeking to destroy him, and the disciples seem clueless and in denial about it, all the way up to the moment of his death, it seems. But not Jesus, nor this woman. If she intended to anoint him for burial, then she was very perceptive and honest.
Or maybe she meant to anoint him as king. How’s that for ironic? Because it was up to the high priest to anoint Israel’s kings. But we know what he’s up to. Israel’s promised king is anointed by a woman un-named in all the gospels but one: John identifies her as Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. If Christ’s kingship is what she meant to convey, then her action is very political, and its courageous. Its political because certainly Jesus’ enemies will see it that way. Its courageous because, when they come for him, they won’t stop with him.
But whether she intended to anoint Jesus for burial, or to express his value and honor as a guest, her action is one of love. Or if she intended this to be his one and only anointing as her rightful king, then her action is one of great faith. And to the extent that she had to overcome fear of being identified with Jesus the peaceful rebel, and to overcome any despair over the sheer size and power of Jesus’ opposition, and the tiny size and relative unimportance of her actions, then what she did was also an expression of hope. Hope against all apparently justifiable hopelessness.
And there you have, in her actions, the three most direct ways in which we experience God: in the gifts of faith, hope and love. “The greatest of these is love,” because without love, any hope or faith we have are misguided and destructive.
I want to focus most on the hope implied in her actions. Given the monstrous size and nature of all the forces and people and powers lining up against Jesus, it would have been so easy for this woman to simply stay home and hide in despair. I don’t know what she hoped would happen as a result of her anointing Jesus. Probably not a popular uprising that would sweep away their common enemies. But she must have decided that, whatever happens, whether Jesus lives only another day or another week, it would still be worthwhile to express her love for him, and her faith in him, even if only because its the right thing to do, whatever the consequence. Hers is but the slimmest margin of hope, at least for anything in this world or in this life. But compared to what they’re up against, she has displayed hope of the highest order.
She reminds me of two Jewish women hiding out during the Nazi occupation of Russia, living in the forests near Minsk with the partisans. They were captured one day by a German military patrol. Their captors threw them into a prison for interrogation, hoping to find out from them where other Jews and partisans might be found. That night they were served a weak excuse of a soup, that had a few pieces of fat floating in it. One of the women took out the fat, wrapped it in her handkerchief, and began polishing her shoes with it.
“What are you doing that for?” her fellow prisoner asked?
The woman replied, “Like my father always said, take care of the little things you can handle, and don’t despair over the big things that you can’t. Polishing my shoes is the one thing I can do right now, and it makes me feel better, for the moment at least. Besides, I am not going to appear before the interrogation officer tomorrow looking like a hobo with dirty, scuffed-up shoes. Whatever happens, he’ll know, as soon as he sees me, that he’s dealing with someone who has some self-respect and care for herself, even if he doesn’t.” So the other woman did the same thing with the pieces of fat floating in her broth.
The next morning they were brought before an officer for interrogation, who looked them over, head to foot, and told the soldier who had brought them in, “I thought you fools knew that our enemies live in the forest, they’re constantly on the run, and its not long before they look that way. But you can tell just by looking at their shiny new shoes that these women are not partisans or rebels. Let them go and bring me some real resistance members.”
That is a picture of the hope that often motivates and sustains our efforts for God, goodness and the gospel. Its hard to say what a particular action or ministry will accomplish today, tomorrow or in the short run. At times, the acts of discipleship we are called upon to do must seem like spitting onto a raging forest fire, or an attempt to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. But since they seem to be the right thing to do, we do them anyway. At least in the hope that God will know and remember, and that one day “we will reap what we sow,” even though we don’t know what the harvest will look like. I know I’m preaching to the choir here when I talk about such hope. If we let the stubbornness and the size of the opposition and the obstacles we face affect our response to things like hunger, war, or the worship of idols, we wouldn’t be so involved with Ten Thousand Villages, Christian education, the Relief Sale, Urban Ventures or our other ministry connections. There would not be the gracious acts of care and support for each other as we have experienced them of late. If we let the small size of our congregation and of our resources determine our enthusiasm or our hope for affecting any of these things, I dare say we would all have stayed home tonight, and every Sunday morning.
In spite of all the darkness gathering around them, this woman does the one and only thing she can do: she ministers to the Body of Christ. And she does so compassionately, generously, extravagantly, even artistically, with a flair and a flourish for one of our most powerful senses, the sense of smell. And that is the one thing surely and always before us, today and every day: the opportunity to minister to the Body of Christ today, the people gathered here and around the world this night, to commemorate Christ and this woman who ministered to him. All our worshiop, prayers and ministries come down to this, ministering to Christ through the people we are given to love and to serve.
That is how this woman’s story affects me. Her slim margin of hope was enough to make her do something that will always be remembered, which will always bear fruit, which will always inspire others, which did make a difference. For that particular moment, yes, but also for now and forever and whenever and wherever the gospel is preached. Her part of the gospel story gives us all hope that even the littlest, most fleeting and momentary things we do for Christ and his body are worthwhile, that they are enduring, and that they will be remembered and rewarded. Indeed, they are their own rewards.
