Today we’ve heard two versions of another story that’s familiar to many of us – the story of a woman who anointed Jesus. And I have to say that it’s a story that’s often mis-read, misinterpreted, and mis-remembered. We can be so much influenced by familiarity, or by what we thought we learned in Sunday School or Bible Class, that we can miss deeper and richer meanings.
How many of you remember best the version that says the woman was a sinner? How many of you have heard the story interpreted in a way that goes so far as to label the woman as a prostitute? How many of you have heard versions – or seen paintings – where the woman is indentified as Mary of Magdala – Mary Magdalene? I could answer ‘yes’ to all of those questions. And some of those interpretations can lead us down some very strange paths.
Let’s start again from the beginning – from the Gospels themselves. The first thing to notice is that this story appears in all the gospels – that’s remarkable enough to alert us to the fact that it was a story that had great significance to the first followers of Jesus. I like to think that whenever groups of early believers came together to talk about the life and ministry of Jesus, this story of the woman who anointed Jesus was told over and over again. But – the four evangelists don’t tell us quite the same story. Each of them saw it through a different lens.
Matthew, Mark and John put the story into the context of the passion narrative: Near the end of his journey to Jerusalem, Jesus is anointed for death. Luke shifts it to an earlier time in Jesus’ ministry – and let’s note that he’s the only evangelist who uses the label ‘sinner’. Matthew and Mark say that the host at dinner was Simon the Leper; Luke calls him Simon the Pharisee. Maybe, for Luke, the Pharisees were the true lepers of the kingdom – the real outsiders. But none of these three name the woman. Even though she’s the main character, and even though Mark says: ‘Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her’ it’s a nameless remembrance. There’s a sort of collective amnesia around this particular Palestinian Jewish woman. Three evangelists locate the story in Bethany, but only John, writing many years later, says it happened in Martha’s house, and only John gives the woman a name: Mary.
What’s going on here? Why these radical changes – especially on Luke’s part? What was Luke trying to do? Possibly he wanted yet another graphic illustration of the inclusive ministry of Jesus. Certainly he also wanted it to underscore the extravagance of both the woman’s actions and Jesus’ total acceptance of the gifts she offered – the gifts of oil and of love. Love is cause and sign of divine love and forgiveness, and Luke reminds us again that God knows our hearts and minds. But whatever Luke intended as the focal point of this story, the way he set it out led to a very important distortion in the collective imagination of Western Christianity – the characterization of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. Even in Luke’s text there’s no warrant for this. And because of it, we lost something very important – we lost the story of one of the apostles and founders of our faith.
In Matthew, Mark and John – and we need to remember in passing that Mark’s version is the earliest – the ground of the story shifts, and the woman acts out a prophetic role. Look again at where John placed it in his Gospel. Between the raising of Lazarus and the act of anointing, there’s the plotting of the priests and the Pharisees to kill Jesus. This story of loving service is juxtaposed with one reeking of death and betrayal. It’s a gleam of light and a catching of the breath before the whole tragedy of the Passion unfolds. Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem for the Passover, comes to Bethany to spend time with his dearly loved friends.
Mary’s anointing of Jesus is an act of pure extravagance. We read that the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfumed oil. This was no hidden act – it was a public proclamation, and Mary anointed Jesus so lavishly that everyone in the house participated in it. If you cast your mind back to the raising of Lazarus, you’ll remember that Martha was concerned about the smell of death. It’s as though this act of Mary’s has wiped out any lingering odour of death and corruption, and substituted the perfume of love and life.
And it’s so whole-hearted. The whole jar is used. This isn’t about a few miserable trickles of oil – the kind of gesture we sometimes use when one drip of oil or water stands as a symbol – and we have to explain the significance. This isn’t any minimalist gesture. A whole jar of precious, expensive ointment all gone in one act. And if the guests had known what we know – and what John’s readers knew – that this man is about to die, maybe they’d have been even more vocal in their indignation.
In Matthew, Mark and John, it’s this extravagance that gets up people’s noses – not the presence of the woman. The wastefulness of it all. The money should have been given to the poor. In Matthew and Mark, it’s all the guests who complain, not just Judas, but there’s never any suggestion that any of the money spent on their dinner – or for that matter anything left over – should be shared with the poor. This is self-righteous anger – the anger at people who overstep the bounds. People who do that are out of control – they threaten the established order – they disrupt and disturb. They shouldn’t be allowed!
In John’s account, Judas is the one who underscores the extravagance by carefully tabulating the monetary value for us. John has his reasons for contrasting Mary with Judas. Judas the bean-counter. Judas who said, sanctimoniously: ‘you could have fed three hundred of the poor with this money instead of throwing it away.’ It’s as if Judas was putting a black and white choice before us. Either you love Jesus with all your heart or you love the poor. And you’d better choose the poor. It has echoes for us of what goes on today. Should we be extravagant in our worship or should we pare down our sanctuaries – get rid of the organs and the stained glass and the carved wood and the brass lecterns, and spend all we have on the poor and disadvantaged.
In Sydney Carter’s hymn, Judas asks Mary
…’now what will you do
with your ointment so rich and so rare?’
And, according to Judas, Mary went ahead and wasted the equivalent of 300 times the daily wage of a labourer. But then, who was it that went out and put a price on Jesus’ life, and bargained with the authorities for his fee. Judas measured out the value of a life in silver coins. Mary, with her act of extravagant love stated clearly that it is impossible to put a price on that life, and thus transcends the logic of economics and outcomes and moved into the realm of grace – of gratuitous love.
We can’t ever manipulate the Gospel to suit our purposes. Jesus escapes every pigeonhole we try to fit him into. Here, he’s clearly not interested in either/or love but in both/and. From his perspective, Jesus sees Mary’s act quite differently from Judas. John says simply that Jesus said: ‘Leave her alone.’ But Mark and Matthew add (in the NRSV translation) ‘she has performed a good service for me’ – or as the RSV has it ‘She has done a beautiful thing.’ Her action, outrageous in the onlookers’ eyes, is something quite other in Jesus’ eyes – it’s a good work, and an appropriate work. Jesus knows what lies ahead, and in this story of John’s, so does Mary. A reckless gesture transformed into an act of passionate love. A beautiful work.
We can love both Jesus and the poor. Yes, there’s always time for good works, and yes, we recognize that one way of responding to the incarnate Jesus, is to see him in every person we meet during life.|
‘the poor of the world are my body’, he said,
‘to the end of the world they shall be.
The bread and the blankets you give to the poor,
you’ll find you have given to me,’ he said,
‘you’ll find you have given to me.’
But that’s only part of it. Helping the poor may be a constant requirement, but it doesn’t substitute for personal acts of love for particular individuals at particular times and in particular need. We’re called to both almsgiving and acts of love and compassion. Sometimes the acts of compassion may take precedence – and we need the gift of discernment to know when those times come along. There are times of crisis. The dinner in Bethany was one of these – and Mary recognized it.
Of course, she did rather more than that – she recognized Jesus as the Christ – the anointed one. This is what we can miss if we get hooked into Luke’s version. Anointing was a prophetic role. In the ancient Near East, it was a rite that signified selection for a special role. Mary’s act was a prophetic act. In John’s Gospel, this story anticipates three crucial parts of the rest of the Gospel. First, it anticipates Jesus’ death and burial. Jesus will be anointed again after death, but that second anointing is secret. It’s done by men who are afraid to make their faith public. Here, at Bethany, Mary makes a public declaration.
Secondly, in this account, unlike those of Matthew and Mark, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet, not his head. This anticipates John’s account of the Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, and that act itself has two meanings. The one we’re most familiar with is the model of service and discipleship. The Diaconate has good reasons to have the towel and basin as its symbols. But there’s another, more difficult, meaning. To take part in this act is to participate in Jesus’ suffering and death. Being the Body of Christ visible in the world is never easy or comfortable or predictable.
Thirdly, Mary’s act anticipates the great love commandment. ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you are to love one another.’ Mary is the first person in John’s Gospel who lives out that commandment. Now, we know all too well that we often fall short of that commandment. We’re not perfect. Nobody is, and Jesus knew that perfectly well. To use one of the least popular words in our vocabulary as children of God, we’re all in need of repentance. We’re all called to turn our lives around. That’s what Luke wanted to emphasise in his telling of today’s story. But today we’re reminded again that God’s household is run on extravagant lines. God’s love, and grace and justice are deeper and wider than all our imaginings. God is always about to do a new thing. God is always waiting to break into our lives and turn our grudging trickle of love into an extravagant outpouring.
And we’re all called to be a community of God’s people in this world. It’s a collective responsibility. Jesus did not say anywhere that poverty is the natural order of things. He said that it’s our calling and our responsibility to care for people in need, especially for those least able to care for themselves. And, as the story of the prodigal son reminded us last week, not to go about this in a grudging or dourly calculating way as some of our government agencies are inclined to do. There’s an abundance of joy in the story of the prodigal son – maybe we need sometimes to stop and ask God for the gift of joy? In today’s story, Jesus is saying that it’s OK to stop and celebrate God’s presence even when we know that things are not right around us, even surrounded by death and dying. God is with us.

Let me finish with words from today’s Psalm.
How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house
and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.
Ps 36: 7-9

Rev Dr Barbara Peddie, 03 April 2022