A Woman Anoints Jesus
A Woman Anoints Jesus
Apr 3, 2022
John 12: 1 - 8
A shocking event: a lady of ill repute enters a gentlemen only dinner party; crying, goes to Jesus, her tears wetting his feet; letting her hair down – something that should never be done in public; she dries his feet with her hair; and then anoints his feet with costly perfume.
This is a story that oral tradition seems to have carried for forty to ninety years in different forms to the canonical gospel writers. Our lesson this morning from the Gospel of John is one of the forms of this story. Mark and Matthew have an older rendition of it in largely identical language. Luke has a third form.
More than likely these three accounts are based on the same event. First Mark – forty years after the fact – writes it into his gospel; Matthew – fifteen years later – copies it with little editing into his gospel in the same general context with mostly the same wording. Luke hears a different oral account that gives the story a different meaning. And finally, John hears it differently or simply uses this story line for making a third point. This gives us an interesting way to look at the processes of oral transmission of biblical sayings and stories and of the freedom the oral story tellers or gospel writers took in putting the stories into new contexts that gave the story new meanings.
Let’s start with Mark (Mark 14:3-9), the earliest copy of the story that we have. It is placed near Jerusalem during what we call Holy Week, the last week of Jesus’ life. Jesus is at the house of Simon the leper in Bethany; he was reclining there. [It was probably a dinner event, the men lay on mats near the low table.]
“A woman came in carrying an alabaster jar of myrrh of pure and expensive nard. She broke the jar and poured (the myrrh) on his head.” Mark reports that some of the men at the dinner thought that this was a waste; the myrrh could have been sold for 300 silver coins and the money given for the poor. Jesus responds that we will always have poor – we can always do good for them, but this woman has anointed his body for burial.
Luke, early in his book (Luke 7: 36-50), reports that one of the pharisees, named Simon, invited Jesus to dinner where Jesus, as was the custom, reclined at the table. “A local woman, who was a sinner,” came into the men only dinner party “with an alabaster jar of myrrh and stood there behind (Jesus) weeping at his feet. Her tears wet his feet, and she wiped them dry with her hair; she kissed his feet and anointed them with the myrrh.”
The pharisee thought if Jesus were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman was touching him, a sinner.
Jesus responded to the pharisee’s thoughts saying that if a moneylender forgave one person a debt of 500 silver coins and another person of 50 silver coins because neither could pay their debts, “Now which of them will love him more?”
Jesus affirmed Simon’s answer that it would be the one who was forgiven more.
Then Luke reports that Jesus said, “Do you see this woman? I walked into your house, and you didn’t offer me water for my feet; yet she has washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You didn’t offer me a kiss, but she hasn’t stopped kissing my feet since I arrived. You didn’t anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with myrrh. For this reason, I tell you, her sins, many as they are, have been forgiven.”
This is probably the same story, done a little differently. This time it is about Jesus’ forgiving sins instead of anointing Jesus’ body for burial in a couple more days.
Finally, the Gospel of John (John 12: 1-8) includes this story with additional modifications. This event happens six days before Passover – one of three Passovers in the Gospel of John as apposed to one in the three synoptic gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Jesus, in the preceding chapter, raises Lazarus from death, here he has dinner in Lazarus’ home. Martha, of course, was serving; Lazarus was at the table with Jesus. Mary – the one who had sat listening to Jesus when her sister, Martha, had to do all the work – “Mary brought in a pound of expensive lotion and anointed Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair.
Judas says “Why wasn’t this lotion sold? It would bring a year’s wages, and the proceeds could have been given to the poor.”
Jesus says, “Let her keep the lotion for the time I am to be embalmed. There will always be poor around; but I won’t always be around.”
One story, probably, in three very different applications. The oral traditions brought the stories down this way or the gospel writers of Mark, Luke, and John used the core story as they needed it in their narrative accounts of Jesus’ ministry. We don’t know which. The Gospel of Thomas does not contain this brief story; maybe someday we will find another early collection of Jesus’ sayings and teachings that will give us more insight into how this story evolved over the forty to seventy years during which these four gospels were written.
Given what we have, what meanings to we find in this story as it is reported in these three forms?
Mark, followed by Matthew, used this story to address the tremendous problem that the early Church had trying to explain or deal with the death of their Messiah. So he has Jesus predict his death and resurrection three times several chapters earlier and here references his death by interpreting the woman’s anointing of his feet as a preparatory anointing of his soon-to-be-dead body when an anointing would typically happen. As Jesus foretold his death, it became God’s plan rather than the Roman Empire’s defeating or overpowering God’s Messiah. Therefore, we can accept Jesus as God’s prophet and messiah even though he was killed by the system he sought to overcome.
Luke applies this story to emphasize that Jesus could and did forgive sins and that the greater one’s sins, the more one rejoices with forgiveness. Like the statement that only the sick need a doctor (Matthew 2: 17), Luke is also justifying Jesus’ practice of talking and eating with the poor and sinners of his society, helping them rejoice boldly with their forgiveness of extensive sin. Or maybe Luke was preparing or urging us to accept the gentiles who had been sinning for generations before finally learning of Jesus and following him.
John in the third form of this story affirms the future death of Jesus by his prophesy, saying that Mary should save the costly lotion “for the time I am to be embalmed,” as he puts it.
What observations and/or lessons do we find in these variations in this story of Jesus’ anointing by a woman?
First, the word “anointing,” Jesus is anointed by this sinner woman, or this woman of ill repute. Mark (and Matthew) and Luke report this as an anointing of feet or a pouring ointment on the head; that is what the title Messiah or Christ means. It is this woman of questionable behavior, this sinner, who anoints Jesus. At the moment, I can think of no one else in the Bible who anoints Jesus to make him the Christ or the Messiah.
Jesus associated with sinners: tax collectors, prostitutes, and probably thieves and beggars and riffraff. Let us never look down on anyone simply because he or she does not meet our own behavioral standards. We can learn about God’s work and love through the sinners around us. Include these sinners among the neighbors whom you love.
Second, a brief comment on Jesus’ statement that we will always have the poor among us. He does not say that we should not love and care for them, as some interpreters want to say. He is only supporting the woman who anointed him, this one time implying that occasionally money can be spent for special moments. I suspect that he sided with Judas’ comment that it would have been better to sell the lotion or nard and use the money to improve the lot of the poor. Certainly, this is no excuse for us, living in this prosperous and luxurious culture, to let our society keep segments of our community in ongoing poverty. Such an interpretation of this comment flies in the face of everything for which Jesus stands.
Finally, this story is about forgiveness. Because of what this sinner woman did, Jesus said that her sins were forgiven. The woman seems to have said nothing; it is her act of love and caring that was the basis of her forgiveness.
We need to remember that our loving our neighbors – next door, down the block and around the corner, across town, and across the world – is a basis for forgiveness. Maybe you can’t say “the right words” that the institution of the Church requires in order to be “saved,” but you can love your neighbors openly and honestly and find God’s forgiveness.
This is the “word” of God displayed through the actions of a sinner woman. Let us all be ready and waiting to receive sinners into our fellowship and programming and mission. God will teach us and lead us through the grace that these sinners will bring to us.
Amen
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