Sermon — April 6, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
“But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples… said,
‘Why was this perfume not sold…and the money given to the poor?’” (John 12:5)
I have to say, I’m pretty sympathetic to this question. Leave aside, for a minute, the parenthetical remark about Judas, and imagine yourself in the room.
Jesus and his disciples have come to dinner with Mary and Martha and Lazarus. They’re reclining around the dinner table, as ancient people did for formal meals. It was a normal thing to do to offer water for your guests to wash their feet before the meal, or to have a servant wash them, or even to offer to wash them yourself. In a dusty place where people wear sandals, this is a basic way of making people comfortable as a host, the local equivalent of asking “Can I take your coat?”
In a place and time without commercial soap production, oil was often used to wash or bathe. washing the feet with oil might be a step above washing with plain water, but it was probably a normal thing. Using perfumed oil would be even more luxurious, but not bizarre.
Mary does do something a little strange. Rather than scraping off the oil with a metal scraper like you might see in a museum, or with a cloth or a towel, she wipes the oil from Jesus’ feet with her hair. Which is odd. But in another way, it’s perfectly in character, because this is Mary we’re talking about, and this Mary—not the mother of Jesus, but the sister of Martha and Lazarus—this Mary is known for her single-minded, almost over-the-top devotion to Jesus, which sometimes comes at the expense of the practicalities of life. You might recall the other story of Mary and Martha, in which Mary leaves Martha alone to do all the work of hosting Jesus and his other disciples, while Mary sits attentively at his feet. (Luke 10:38–42)
And so perhaps it comes as no surprise that Mary acts this way. She doesn’t offer a bowl of water to Jesus to wash his feet. She doesn’t have a servant carry out the task. No, Mary’s going to wash his feet herself, and to wipe them off with her own hair; this kind of whole-hearted attention has Mary written all over it.
And she does it lavishly. And that’s where the grumbling begins. Mary doesn’t dry Jesus’ feet with her hair because she can’t afford a cloth. She doesn’t offer him a bowl of plain water with apologies for her frugality. No! She anoints his feet with perfume, she washes his feet with a whole pound of oil infused with nard, an exotic aromatic plant. Try to picture a pound of perfumed oil. 16 ounces or so, about a pint. That’s a very high perfume-to-foot ratio. By Judas’s reckoning, this is 300 denarii worth of foot cream—ten months’ wages for a laborer like one of the disciples—and there it is, poured out on Jesus’ feet, and dripping onto the floor.
People often criticize churches for spending money less than immediate needs. Rather than feed the hungry, we repair bells, and refurbish organs, and restore stained glass. There’s an answer for this: These things last for decades, and they enrich our community with beauty. There are neighbors who never walk through these doors who’ve told me that they love to hear our bell ring again. There’s a caretaker who visits a parishioner who likes to stop and look at the stained glass, even from the outside. Anyone can come and hear a brilliant organist play a beautiful instrument any time, free of charge.
But this perfume? It’s poured out on Jesus’ feet, and the fragrance fills the house for a night, and then it’s gone. 300 denarii down the drain, never to be smelled again; that’s ten months’ wages of operating money, not a capital expense. (If you’re laughing and you haven’t served on the Vestry yet, I’ve got a great opportunity for you.)
So I’m sympathetic to what Judas has to say: ‘Why was this perfume not sold…and the money given to the poor?’” Some of you might be sympathetic as well. This isn’t good stewardship of the gifts that Mary has been given. Having heard everything that Jesus has to say, wouldn’t you think that he would want that money to help someone else, rather than be poured out on his feet? But no, Jesus says, “Leave her alone… You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” (John 12:7–8) And thereby he provides an easy quote, which the Church has used for two thousand years to justify spending money on itself, in sometimes frivolous ways. It leaves me with a little bit of an ick.
I’m pretty sure that John the Evangelist felt that ick as well. Because while stories like this appear in all the Gospels, it’s only in John that we get the details about Judas’s motives. In Matthew and in Mark, the disciples in general criticize the waste. And Jesus responds in the same way: “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” But I get the sense that John isn’t totally convinced. And so he notes that it was Judas who asked this question, and, oh, by the way, it wasn’t in good faith—Judas is just going to steal the cash. Jesus gives a theological response, and it reads as if John thinks it’s a little weak, so he bolsters it with an ad hominem attack.
But I don’t think Jesus is giving us an excuse. It just doesn’t make sense that the Jesus who begins his ministry in the Gospel of Luke by saying that “the Spirit of the Lord has anointed [him] to bring good news to the poor” would end it by being anointed by Mary in order to deliver the dismissive bad news that “you’ll always have the poor with you,” so you don’t need to lend a helping hand. But if that’s not what it means—then what’s going on instead?
Something like a thousand years before, the rise of the great King David had begun with his anointing by the prophet Samuel. Samuel goes to try to figure out which of the seven sons of Jesse God has chosen to be king, and one by one the Spirit rules them out, until the youngest is called in from where he’s been keeping the sheep. Samuel takes a horn of oil, and pours it on his head. He anoints him. In Hebrew, he yimshah him; and this is where we get the word “Messiah,” “anointed one.” In Greek, he echrisen him, and this is where we get “Christ,” “anointed one.” David is the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed King. And ] people in Jesus’ day were hoping for a new Messiah, a new Christ, a new Anointed King.
And now, six days before the Passover, before the great national feast, which celebrates the people’s liberation from an oppressive Pharaoh’s rule, Mary anoints Jesus. And the very next day, what we call Palm Sunday, Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem takes place. It’s as if Mary is Samuel, and this anointing is the beginning of Jesus’ rise to power.
Except… it’s an anointing turned upside down, the anointing of a king who will turn the whole idea of kingship upside down. Samuel sought out David, but Jesus comes to Mary instead. Samuel needed the Spirit’s guidance to recognize the future king, but Mary is full of single-minded devotion. Samuel anoints David’s head, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet. David’s anointing begins his ascent to the throne, Jesus’ anointing begins his ascent to the Cross. David’s is a royal ritual; Jesus’ is a preparation for burial.
“I am about to do a new thing,” God says. (Isaiah 43:18–19) And Jesus is a new thing indeed. He’s going to be a new kind of king, he’s going to make the people around him a new kind of people.
We often think, in our democracy, that people hold certain ethical beliefs, and these lead them to political views, that then lead them to support certain leaders. I’d suggest to you that it really works the other way around: people choose to follow a charismatic leader, a person they come to trust, whose own priorities can reshape their views about policy or morality. And I often worry that the church sounds too much like Judas or the other disciples who scold, who tell people, with good intentions, what they ought to do in the name of Christianity; and too little like Mary, who lets her whole life be transformed and restructured by the choice to follow Christ.
Mary doesn’t sell the perfume to feed the hungry or clothe the naked. It’s true. She wastes it all to express her devotion to a king who bends the knee to wash his people’s feet; who tells her that she’ll meet him when she feeds people who are hungry, and visits people in prison; whose followers, in the Book of Acts, would sell not only a jar of perfume but everything they had and distribute the money to those who were in need. (Acts 2:44) It’s an anointing turned upside down for a man who turns kingship upside down, and whose people the Romans would one day accuse of turning the world upside down. (Acts 17:6) May God give us the strength so to pour out the perfume of our hearts in service to God’s love, that we may one day stand accused of turning the world upside down. Amen.