The Anointing


"For when she poured this perfume on My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial" (Matt. 26:12 NASB).

During the final days of Jesus’ earthly ministry, Mary broke open an alabaster jar of costly perfume, and anointed the head of her Lord (Matt. 26:6-7; John 12:1-3). A common practice of the day was to anoint with oil the head of an important guest, but this woman had done something extraordinary with the breaking open of an expensive jar of oil. It was an extravagant act of love bestowed upon the Lord; yet, others in the room missed the significance.

The expensiveness of the alabaster jar of oil, being approximately a year’s worth of wages for common folk, was likely a family heirloom. Something unique that once opened had to be immediately used for freshness. What sacrifice! What devotion to the ministry of Jesus! Seeing the life of Jesus, she saw something beyond greatness, she got the message, the Messiah would suffer, and her response was appropriate. She was preparing Him for His death.

John tells us that it was Judas Iscariot, who chided the woman about the waste, especially when the perfume could be sold and money given to the poor. The betrayer’s intentions, of course, were not completely pure, as he was one stealing from the money bag (John 12:6).

Jesus responds in recognizing the perennial problem of poverty in the world, which was something taught by Moses (Matt. 26:11; cf. Deut. 15:11). Nevertheless, He still recognizes that Mary did a good thing in preparing His own body for death. The extravagant gift honored the Lord and all that He was about to do for the sake of the least, lost, and lowly of the world. His death allows sinful people to enter into a right relationship with God. It is the redemptive work of the cross that would transforms sinners and give then the spiritual power so that they could rebuild the fallen social structures of society without which poverty could never be alleviated.

The anointing served as a reminder that something good was going to come out of the calamity of Christ’s death. Imagine an entire bottle of perfume poured on the head of Jesus. The scent would have remained on Him up to the time of His crucifixion. The scent was there at the Last Supper, during the prayer in Gethsemane, when He was arrested, tried by the Jews, judged before Pilate, and then hung upon the cross. In the midst of the bitterness of His death, there was something sweet in the air.

The goodness of Mary’s gift was far more than simply the price attached to the bottle of perfume. She had anointed Jesus in preparation for His death. She gave her most costly treasure to show her acceptance of the reality of Christ’s mission. His mission involved going to the cross, she anointed Him for that very task. She understood that Christ would go to the cross, whereas others simply did not come to grips with what their Master was teaching concerning His own death.

—WGN  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Grappling with the Craziness of an Election Year with the Book of Kings

Image
Well this is another election year, which makes the Tuesday after the first Monday in November the terminus ad quem for all the political madness that comes beforehand in the USA. With all the mudslinging, rioting, and overall incivility, it is hard to believe were still have over five months to go. I am going through the Book of 1-2 Kings at the moment, and the refrain “Only the high places were not taken away” caught my eye, and as I began to meditate upon them, I found them to be a bit helpful in grappling with all that goes on during these turbulent election years. Here a little background is needed. After the days of Solomon there came about a civil war that divided the children of Abraham living in the promise land into two nations—the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. There eventually came about a series of rulers in the kingdom of Judah whose reigns the biblical writer describes this way: Jehoash did right in the sight of the LORD…Only ...
Read more

The Good Thing About God and Judgment

Image
Today, I was continuing my trek through the extensive Paul and the Faithfulness of God by N.T. Wright. There is so much content in this extensive two-volume work, I can only soak in a small percentage of it. Working through Wright is always a work in progress. He is just one of those astute theologians who leaves no stone unturned in developing a point. Wright makes this observation about the way the larger story of the New Testament conveyed in Paul’s works concerns God’s judgment in the world, which is part of the way he has come to setup his rule over the world. On p. 481 Write notes,  The word “judgment” has of course been allowed to slip into negative mode in the contemporary western world, with “judgmentalism” one of the classic postmodern villains. But even a postmodernist whose car has been damaged by a drunk driver wants a court to pass “judgment” against the offender. “Judgment” is in fact a positive thing. It is what restores health to a society, a bala...
Read more

As the Dust Settles in Haiti…

Last Sunday as I was getting my groceries totaled up, the checker asked if I would like to make a donation to Haiti, which I did. The amount was practically nothing, but it did remind me that for the entirety of the previous week, it seemed as if the entire world zeroed in on what was going on that half of the Island of Hispaniola, which was devastated by a massive earthquake on January 12, 2010. News sources consider this the largest earthquake that country had experienced in the last 200 years, and many report an estimated 50,000 lives perished. Events like this always remind me that human life is so precious, yet at the same time, one can never know when life’s flame shall be extinguished. There were lots of voices chiming in on the Haiti situation, and many of them were quite helpful, instructing people on what they could do to help survivors. I even had an acquaintance share his intention to travel to the island to do some aid work. I say Godspeed! I also heard a few disheartening...
Read more