When we give generously and sacrificially, it’s not because God needs anything but because we want to show our love for him. Giving is an expression of obedience, of gratitude, trust, and increasing joy. It is an outpouring of worship.
And God seeks out and recognizes those who worship him (John 4:23).
This is what Jesus did in the days leading up to his death and after his resurrection. The day before he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey was the Passover – the biggest holiday of the year. But, as people poured into Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples went the opposite direction.
They headed, instead, to Bethany, the home of some of his closest friends and many who believed in him. The Bible doesn’t say why he went. He had just been there (John 11). Maybe he wanted to prepare his friends for what would take place. Or maybe he just wanted to be with people who loved him. And while he was with them, a moment turned into worship.
The last time Jesus went to Bethany
The last time Jesus had come to Bethany, his friend Lazarus was dead. The young man’s sister, Martha, always faster than her sister, had run to him. She greeted him with some words that were filled with disappointment (“If you had been here, my brother would not have died”) and also with hope (“But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you”).
“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her.
“I know that he will rise again in the resurrection …” Martha said, anticipating a day far in the future.
Then Jesus said something remarkable: “I am the resurrection ….”
There was no waiting for a “last day.” Jesus’ beloved friend, Lazarus, was alive again, that day. Their rabbi friend who had demonstrated power over nature, over the spiritual realm, and over sickness, showed the village of Bethany that even death could not withstand him.
That’s what had happened the last time Jesus visited Bethany.
On this day in Bethany
So on the day before the Passover, Jesus was visiting people who had already seen a miracle and who recognized it as an outpouring of his love (John 11:5, 47). Many who witnessed it had come to believe in him (v. 45), and the grateful residents of the town of Bethany prepared a dinner in his honor. In Jerusalem, the religious leaders were plotting to arrest and kill him (verses 45-57); but in Bethany, he was loved, honored, celebrated. These people had become his own.
Jesus was reclining at the table with the people when Lazarus’ sister, Mary, approached with her gift. It was a pound of pure, costly, scented ointment in a jar carved of rare alabaster.
Without invitation, she took the most expensive thing she had and poured it out on Jesus’ feet.
She knelt down, weeping. She wiped his feet with her hair. She worshiped. She communicated something to Jesus those watching could not understand.
Jesus didn’t move to get up, though the whole house was filling with the mess and the smell of her sacrifice. Maybe the conversation stopped as they all looked on. It’s likely that it was uncomfortably silent. What Mary was doing was over-the-top extravagant, to the point of being improper (like David when he danced before the Lord in public).
Mary cried openly. Her hair had come loose as she displayed her deep affection for Jesus in front of a room full of men. She focused completely on offering her gift, showing no regard for their opinions. No one could deny that this was an act of true and pure love.
Except one. One of the invited guests (the same one who would betray Jesus) became angry about the squandering of this expensive product. An entire pound of ointment “wasted” on Jesus’ feet … the feet that walked to Mary’s home, where he saved her, gave her brother back, and brought the hope of eternal life to her town.
Maybe this jar contained the only thing she had that she considered a gift valuable enough for her Lord. And if she had not given it to Jesus this day, that pound of perfume would have been wasted. It certainly wouldn’t have been remembered two millennia later as the offering that prepared Jesus’ feet for what was coming after they walked him back to Jerusalem. But it was, and it is remembered, even to this day.
Jesus responded to Judas: “Leave her alone.” The anointing was for his burial, he said (Matthew 26:12). Mary’s act of adoration had become a visually and sensorially prophetic moment. And a night became holy because of her largesse.
That evening, while the Pharisees plotted against Jesus’ life, more people came to believe in him (John 12:11).
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. – Matthew 6:21
Photo: Courtesy of Willis Frank, Estate of Frank Wesley (1923-2002), the first painter to create a distinctly Indian Christian art. His works have been featured at the Vatican and on the funeral urn of Mahatma Gandhi. In this watercolor image, Mary of Bethany washes Jesus’ feet with perfume and tears.
