Gospel according to John 12:1-8 

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT 

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ²There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. ³Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them^* with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. ⁴But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ⁵‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii^* and the money given to the poor?’ ⁶(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) ⁷Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it^* so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. ⁸You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

                                                                                                                                                                     John 12:1-8, NRSV

This is the last Sunday before Holy Week in our season of prayerful wandering. Next week we will enter Jerusalem with Jesus and the last phase of his mission on earth. 

Last week we engaged with three distinct identities in Luke’s story of the Prodigal Son. This morning we have three more in John’s story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet before his passion. And in fact, this entire season of Lent in year C has been all about identity.

In Year A the Gospel stories in lent are all about the power of God to heal and reconcile and resurrect. In Year B they are all about what we must do and how we will suffer in order to follow Jesus. But this year, Luke’s year, the stories are all about identity. Who are we as Christians? Beginning with the very first reading on Lent I with Jesus being led into the wilderness. But first, unlike in Matthew or Mark, Luke gives us Jesus’ full genealogy, the full rundown of his divine credentials in between his baptism and his tempting by the devil. Identity. And so too, in this last week before Holy Week begins, identity is the thing.

This morning we find Jesus in Bethany, a town just east of Jerusalem. At the home of Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus, whom Jesus has just raised from the absolutely dead. Really. Resurrected. Actually. Jesus has just resurrected Lazarus from the grave. (we heard that story last year.) This year’s Lent V story begins just after that miraculous resurrection. The family is hosting a dinner in Jesus’ divine honor for his raising of their beloved brother.

A thanksgiving meal, as it were. In this morning’s Gospel reading Jesus and Lazarus are at the dinner table together, and I imagine that Jesus is drilling his friend on the experience of death and resurrection. So Lazarus, what was it like?

Martha serves the meal, while her sister Mary fetches a jar of very expensive oil. Probably the oil that was left over from the anointing of Lazarus. And Mary takes the costly oil and anoints Jesus’ feet. This is the second week we have heard about a wasteful extravagance in the service of love.

And it is the second chapter in three consecutive chapters in John’s Gospel that speak of foot-tending.  Today’s reading is the beginning of chapter 12. But chapter 11, the chapter in which Lazarus is resurrected, begins by introducing Lazarus’ sister Mary with the line: “Mary was the one who anointed Jesus with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair.” And then there is this morning’s story. And then in the very first scene in chapter 13, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper. Immediately after Mary has washed his feet in chapter 12.

And I can’t help but wonder, did Jesus get the idea to wash the feet of his desicples as the ultimate service of love, from Mary? Was the foot anointing that takes place in this morning’s reading, the true source of that message? Was Mary the example, the teacher?  I mean, we get the idea from Jesus – every Maundy Thursday we hear how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. But did he get the idea from her? In this morning’s reading? Are we really following Mary with our tradition of foot washing? 

This story of the woman anointing Jesus with oil is told in all four Gospels. But really very differently. In Matthew and Mark, it happens at the home of Simon the leper. And after Jesus has entered Jerusalem.

Mark’s version is appointed as the reading for the Monday in Holy Week. And the woman anointing Jesus is unnamed. And it is his head, not his feet that are anointed. In both accounts she pours expensive nard, extravagant oil, on Jesus’ head.

The story also appears in Luke. Although this morning we hear John’s version, not Luke’s. In Luke, the incident happens at the home of a Simon the Pharisee. Not Simon the Leper. And an again unnamed woman is anointing his head and kissing his feet. In Luke’s version we are told that she is a “sinner.” 

Suggesting that maybe this Mary is Mary Magdalene. But she is not. We are told this information because it is Jesus’ forgiveness of her,  and not her wasting of expensive oil on him, that seems to be the point if the story. And so the part of Luke’s story that resembles this morning’s story in John is not the wasting of expensive oil, but that the woman particularly tends Jesus’ feet.

John’s account, the one we heard this morning, takes parts from each of these three Synoptic accounts – John borrows from Mark and Matthew’s version the indignation of the dinner guests toward the woman who is seemingly wasting precious resources on Jesus’ comfort rather than the survival of those on the economic margins. And John borrows from Luke’s version the emphasis on tending Jesus’ feet.  John incorporates each of these core pieces of the story and then adds one more element to the mix. An element that changes the conversation altogether. John names the characters.

John does not speak of a nameless women and the non-descript guests who chastise her, John gives us their identities. 

He names the woman. She is Mary the sister of Jesus’ friend Lazarus. And she is identified from the start, from the beginning of the previous chapter, as “Mary, the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair.”  Mary is her name, and the one who anoints the feet of Jesus is who she is. That is her identity. 

And not for nothing, but this Mary has real agency. A rarity for women in scripture. The oil she is using is hers. It does not belong to Judas or to Jesus. It is not their decision as to how it should be used.  She has all of the agency. Mary can use the oil any way she wants to.

Nonetheless, in today’s reading, as Mary tends Jesus’ weary feet with this costly oil there is an objection from the peanut gallery, as it were. Some one asks, why isn’t this fancy oil sold and the money used more appropriately?  And once again, unlike the other Gospels, John provides us with a particular identity of the objector. 

In Matthew the objection come from “the disciples,” as a group. But in John, the objection is raised by Judas, particularly. And John does not stop by just offering us a name. He tells us, in parentheses, 

that Judas is the one who is about to betray Jesus. And John does not even stop there with his identification of Judas. John tells us in a second set of parentheses that Judas did not object because of his love for the poor, but because Judas was a thief and had a habit of using the money from the common purse for his own needs. In other words, the objection flows from sinister motives and Judas is nothing short of a dirty rotten scoundrel. 

This is TMI. Really. This is too much off-topic information.  Why is John telling us all of this? Isn’t this passage about the appropriate use of our resources in this weary suffering world? And yes, that is the theme in Mark and Matthew’s versions. But not here. 

This passage in John’s telling is all about identity. John wants to be absolutely sure that we know that Judas is the bad guy. That we know that he will betray Jesus, and that he is a thief to boot. Mary is loving her neighbor with everything that she has. And she is doing it even in the face of descent from the disciples. 

It is an aside that the Gosepller shares with us so that we are clear about the identity of Judas. But that lets us know that Mary has no clue, which makes her even more courageous as she stands up to him. And so even as a chosen disciple chides Mary for anointing Jesus, she continues to do what her heart tells her to do. She continues to anoint him, to tend him, to offer him relief from his pain. This is her identity… and, I believe, it is the paradigm that John’s Gospel offers us for our own identities as followers of…..Jesus and…Mary. 

And then there is Jesus. His identity here is fully human and fully divine. In this holy season of Lent, we have gone from the slanderer who challenges Jesus’ identity as divine, to this morning’s anointing of Jesus’ feet with costly oil that assures us of his identity as fully human.  John makes sure that we know that he is fully divine by opening the story with an almost redundant reminder that Jesus has just raised

Lazarus from the dead. How could we possibly have forgotten, it just happened in the previous chapter? Lazarus has no other role in today’s story. He is mentioned only to confirm the divinity of Jesus. The whole setting of the dinner is in celebration of Jesus’ divinity. And then Mary anoints his feet, and we are reminded that just as Jesus is fully divine, Jesus is also fully human. Only humans need anointing.

And then Jesus delivers that totally baffling, thoroughly confusing, completely perplexing last line of this reading when he seems to justify Mary’s use of costly oil to soothe his own weary feet and suffering spirit by saying: You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.  Okey dokey. The end.

This is the showstopper. 

This is the piece that we are tempted to drive right by on our way to coffee hour. Because it is so confusing. What does Jesus mean by this? Doesn’t Jesus care about the poor more than he cares about the ritual of his own anointing? Isn’t this the same Jesus who has spent and entire ministry telling us to sell what we have and give it to the poor? Imploring us to relinquish our earthy delights, surrender our material comforts and our wealth and feed those who have no bread.

With all due respect, this Jesus sounds like a bit of a hypocrite here. I mean, when his feet are soaking in fine grade-A nard his tune seems to change. Give YOUR comfort and wealth to those who are poor, but leave MY comfort out of it. It is sooo not what we expect to hear from Jesus. 

Or is it. I think that this is one of those places where the truth is buried in a very hard realization. In this passage, Jesus is speaking directly and specifically to Judas. He is not talking to his disciples in general, as in Matthew’s account. He is speaking specifically to Judas in response to Judas’ veiled concern for the poor.  Here Jesus is responding specifically to Judas’ insincere indignation that serves as a shill for his own unholy agenda. Judas says: Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii^* and the money given to the poor?

He is not concerned about the plight of the poor. He is concerned only about what he can take for himself. It is the point of all of those parenthetical asides.  Judas is just using the poor as a distraction. A distraction from his true identity as a thief. He wants the money from the expensive nard for himself. No matter that the nard does not belong to him. 

It is hard not to see the many parallels of this passage taking place right before our very eyes. Here and now. The abject coveting of every neighbor’s nard by the chosen few. And holy cow, was Jesus right, the poor are still here. And they are multiplying like rabbits. Because we are witnessing the betrayal right before our eyes. 

The savage disregard for human dignity with which those who have been entrusted to forge and shepherd our way are using the so-called “best interests” of their flock to steal them blind. To take their wages and health care and education and personal security and free speech and human rights and peace of mind and I could go on all morning. It is hard not to see the betrayal perpetrated by our chosen few in this morning’s description of Judas.

And so Jesus responds to what he knows is Judas’ gross deceit.  I think Jesus respond almost sarcastically to Judas – in a way that lets Judas know that he knows that the “poor” are being used as a cover story.  Jesus says, Judas, “the poor” will always be with you. But I will not be. As if to say, Judas, there will always be a reason, and often times a seemingly good reason, to distract you from me……from God. 

To focus your will and your energy on something other than God before you. The excuses will always be with you, is what I think Jesus means here. 

And this, I think, is the hard lesson in this morning’s passage. Because I am sorry to say, I know in my bones what he is saying. I think of all the “good causes,” all the good excuses that sometimes distract me  from the harder work that God is calling me to do. That distract me from the hard work of loving my neighbor without expectation. The hard work of letting go without distress. The hard work of investing everything I am in this mystery that is God, so far beyond my understanding. And so I, like Judas, am often good at putting socially responsible names on my distractions. 

Our challenge as Christians, is to be more like Mary than Judas.

Fortunately, as we heard in this morning’s reading from Isaiah, God is about to do a brand new thing. The Good news this morning in Isaiah:

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

 Hold that thought.

Easter is right around the corner.

Amen.