Before
we can examine this story of a woman anointing Jesus’s head, we have
to separate out what the story is from what it isn’t.  Much like the
Christmas stories of Luke and Matthew being subconsciously melded
(FYI: Luke has shepherds, Matthew has magi, no one has both!), the
multiple versions of this story have been conflated into a rather
confusing whole.  Each gospel tells of Jesus, at a meal, interrupted
by a woman giving him an extravagant gift.  Each gospel indicates
that someone(s) is horrified by it, and leads to Jesus responding,
“The poor you will always have with you” and informing us that
her story has now become an intricate part of his story.

Matthew
and Mark tell the same story, so there are three stories get
conflated.  Here are the relevant pieces:  in LUKE, and only in Luke,
the woman is named as a sinner; in JOHN, and only in John, the woman
is Mary (sister of Martha and Lazarus); in Luke and John Jesus’ feet
are anointed whereas in Matthew and Mark his head is anointed; the
whole wiping his feet with hair and tears thing is unique to Luke;
the objector is Judas in John while it is the pharisees in Luke, some
people in Mark, and the disciples in Matthew; and in Luke an extra
parable is thrown in as part of Jesus’ counter objection.

As
the Jesus Seminar puts it, “In all probability, the story of a
woman intruder anointing Jesus during a symposium (dinner or males)
took various forms as it was related in the oral tradition,”¹
and “The Fellows of the Jesus Seminar were of the opinion that the
original form of the story is beyond recovery.”²

Which
is to say, there are three stories based on something that might have
happened, which are each told to make their own points.  Today we’re
looking at Mark’s story, and we’re going to derive meaning from
Mark’s story.  One of the great benefits of having various versions
of a story is that we can assume they’ve each developed to offer us
different – and necessary – points of view and lessons.

In
Mark, Jesus’ head is anointed.  According to The Jewish Annotated New
Testament, “Jesus is anointed; the
action could be either that of anointing a king or of preparing a
body for burial.  Mark’s principle of irony would suggest both.”³
The story comes 2 days before Passover in Mark, giving an easy
connection to the need to anoint his body before his burial
(especially since it wouldn’t be anointed after his burial).
However, that also means that it comes after the Palm Sunday parade
in which Jesus’ actions claim the kingship of Israel.  Thus it fits
well as an affirmation of his role as Messiah, a symbolism very
important to the early Christians who would have passed this story
along.  I agree with the Jewish Annotated New Testament, I think the
implication is very intentionally both and: kingship and burial.

Now,
this unnamed subversive woman broke into an all male dinner party,
one to which she was inherently not welcome.  She broke in to offer
an extravagant and intimate gift to Jesus.  The alabaster jar of a
very costly ointment of nard was likely imported from the Himalayas,⁴
and was more commonly used a few drops at a time.  I’m guessing, sort
of like a new car, that once the jar was opened the value decreased
significantly.  This unnamed woman opened the jar and poured it ALL
onto Jesus’ head.  Mark says that this is a gesture made with
fragrant ointment worth about $15,000.

As
Pheme Perkins puts it in the New Interpreter’s Bible,
“The
expansive gesture, breaking and pouring out the entire vial of
expensive ointment rather than using a few drops, forms a foil to the
cheapness of Jesus’ life in the eyes of those who seek to destroy
him.”⁵
SNAP. Wow. This unnamed woman is presented as understanding Jesus’
ministry, passion, purpose, and value.  In particular, she’s
presented as understanding what the disciples do not.  Perkins says,
“The
nameless woman’s gestures shows that Jesus’ followers still do not
grasp the necessity of his passion.”⁶
(The passion in this case being the more formal definition of his
suffering and death.) She stands in contrast to the men.  Her action
indicates a profound understanding of what is happening, while they
remain in denial.  Their RESPONSES to her action indicate exactly how
deep that denial runs.

They
respond with objections, suggesting that her action was an
inappropriate use of resources.  I don’t believe them.  I think they
were jealous of her wisdom, or infuriated at  her audacity in
breaking into their dinner, or ashamed they hadn’t thought to respond
with such vulnerability, or just annoyed with the drama, or maybe all
of it.  I think they were displeased with this woman, and her
presence at their dinner, and her grand gesture and they found some
justification from their displeasure and projected it.  I think this
because I’ve been human for a while now, and I know that’s how I
work, and my reading suggests I’m not alone!  We feel things, and
then we justify them.  The disciples with Jesus that night did it.
They felt annoyed, jealous, ashamed, or something uncomfortable and
they justified it by condemning this woman’s profound and generous
gesture and proclaiming that she was acting unrighteously.

They suggest that the vial
should have been sold and the money given to the poor.  This is how
we know they really didn’t get it.  Jesus has been teaching them
about kin-dom values for quite a while, but they still stand in the
normal values of the world.  They see the expensive ointment and
assign to it a monetary value.  The woman looked at resource she had,
and used it for the best possible use.  Here’s the thing, at some
point, if it is not to be wasted, an expensive container of perfumed
ointment will be used, right?  I mean, it is possible that it could
be bought and sold for years or decades on end, and I suspect it
would eventually even lose value in aging (who knows, I could be
wrong), but in the end the purpose of it is to be USED. So, if it was
going to be used someday, what better day and what better person than
Jesus?

The
unnamed woman uses what she has to acknowledge his importance
(anointing of kings), to respond to his faithfulness (which would get
him killed), and to prepare him for burial (a gift he received only
from her).  By using it on Jesus, she implies that there is no higher
purpose for this gift than to anoint Jesus.  By using on Jesus, she
implies that she understands that the time of his death was
impending, and she wanted to ease his terrible journey.

It is a profound gift.  Selling
the ointment so that someone else had it and could use it some other
day for some other person, even to give the proceeds to the poor,
would have valued Jesus less.

The
disciples were still in denial about the imminent death of Jesus, I
think that’s the core of why they responded so poorly to her action.
They didn’t want it to be true.  However, this woman – whoever she
was – was willing to face reality.  When Jesus speaks of her, and
says her action will be told, there is another irony.  Her action is
told, but her name is not.  As The
Jewish Annotated Bible
puts it, “The
anointing will be told in remembrance of her,
but her name is not given.  Perhaps the omission of her name is
ironic: the unnamed ‘everywoman’ understands him, while the named
disciples, the authority figures of old (from the author’s point of
view), do not.”⁷

Now,
the named objection
to her action is in the care of the poor, and commentators believe
that Jesus’ answer was a reference to Deuteronomy 15:11⁸,
a portion of the text we read this morning about the Sabbatical year
which was aimed to prevent generational cycles of poverty.  It says,
“Since
there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore
command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your
land.’”  Perkins takes this a bit further, saying, “Jesus
points out that the Law (Deut 15:11) makes everyone responsible for
helping the poor. If the poor are in desperate need, then this
woman’s failure to donate the cost of the ointment is neither the
cause nor the cure.”⁹
I would agree.  The whole of society was aimed at enriching the
already wealthy and powerful on the backs of the poor and powerless.
One charitable action would not have transformed that system.  On the
other hand, she guided Jesus on his way to death, and his death and
resurrection have been significant in transforming society (even if
the process is still ongoing).

I’ve
always struggled with that one line in this story, about the poor
always being with us.  It has felt like a contrast to the vision of
the kindom, and the values of the Sermon on the Mount.  It has felt
like giving up on the world as it should be.  However, the referenced
verse, in context, sounds much different.  Instead of passively
accepting poverty as a part of the economy of the world, the
Deuteronomy passage aims to minimize extreme poverty, AND AT THE SAME
TIME admits that no system will be perfect.  Thus it calls for
compassion and generosity as well.  The whole of the Torah seeks to
create a just society, in particular by giving each family access to
land the freedom to benefit from its wealth.  However, it knows that
widows, orphans, and foreigners will not benefit like everyone else,
and so it finds ways to care for them too.  In this context, it
sounds more like Jesus saying, “life will never be totally fair,
and some people will always be on the bottom, but create a fair
system anyway and take care of those who struggle in that system
too.”  Its a bit different than the verse I’ve tried to make sense
of for all these years.

To
return to this profound, subversive, audacious, and compassionate
woman, I wonder what it would be like to follow in her footsteps.
She listened well, and maybe not even to Jesus.  We don’t know that
they’d met.  It may simply be that she knew the ways of the world and
could read the signs of the days and could tell what was coming.  But
she listened, even to the unpleasantness, and she found a way to
respond.

I
think some of us are more like this woman than we are like other
Biblical characters.  The most likely explanation for her having a
very expensive container of perfumed ointment is that she was
wealthy.  Like many generous donors around here, she choose to use
some of what she had because it was exactly what was needed at that
moment.  Unlike in his response to the “wealthy young man,” Jesus
doesn’t ask for all that she had, he simply accepts the gift that she
gives.  

She
uses what she has for the kindom of God, and the vision of Jesus.
Its value in her eyes is its usefulness to Jesus, not the resale
value!  What a wonderful way to think of our resources – both the
physical ones and time, energy, passion, and labor we have to give.
Whatever the market value of them may be, the most important
usefulness of them is in loving God and loving our neighbors.
Figuring that out may not be simple, linear, or obvious, but will
always be wonderful.  May we figure it out! Amen

1Robert
W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar The Five Gospels:
The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA,
1993), 115.

2Funk
et al,  116.

3The
Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible
Translation,
edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 88.

4The
Jewish Annotated New Testament, 88.

5Pheme
Perkins “Mark” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 8
(Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1995), 698.

6Perkins,
698.

7The
Jewish Annotated New Testament, 88-89.

8Funk
et al, 116.

9Perkins,
699.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady