Let’s
start by remember where we are in Jesus’ ministry with this text. Matthew’s gospel doesn’t actually have a
“Palm Sunday” entrance into Jerusalem the way Mark’s gospel and John’s gospels
do. Instead Matthew has Jesus enter into
Jerusalem on Monday and immediately to into the temple and overturn the tables
of the moneychangers. Then Jesus leaves
and spends the night in the nearby village of Bethany. We read about that two weeks ago.
The next
day, Tuesday of Holy Week, Jesus comes back into the temple. He appears to spend the whole day there
preaching and teaching; and arguing with leaders from different Jewish
sects. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, and
the Herodians all have a go at him. He
silences them all. Then Jesus gives what
we call the Judgement Discourse. We
began reading it last Sunday. If you
follow my daily blog posts we continued it day by day. This is three chapters of woes, predictions,
and warnings. It includes famous
parables like the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids and the Parable of the
Talents.
Now we
pick up with Wednesday of Holy Week.
Matthew doesn’t have a lot to say.
Notice this though: Jesus caused a ruckus on Monday with his entrance
into the city and overturning the tables in the temple. Tuesday Jesus continued to be defiant in the
temple with his teachings. Now Wednesday
starts off and we learn that the religious leaders are gathering and making
plans to arrest Jesus and kill him. But
they say, “Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.” Indeed, laying hands on an apparently popular
man like Jesus in the temple during the busy Passover holidays is risky. Perhaps it is best to do it stealthily; just
having this guy quietly disappear.
So it is
Wednesday. But where is this Jesus
fellow? He came into the temple
Monday. He came into the temple
Tuesday. And remember, the temple is not
in the center of Jerusalem. It is in the
northeast corner. The walls of the
temple compound are the city walls in the northeast corner. There is a gate going right from outside the
city into the temple. The road to that
gate goes to the Mount of Olives and the village of Bethany. So Jesus has been just suddenly appearing in
the temple and disappearing into no place almost instantly for the last couple
days. He is not journeying through the
city. He is not an easy character to lay
hands on.
It is
Wednesday. Is he going to show up in the
temple again?
No. Matthew lays out the events of Wednesday for
us with 16 simple verses. Jesus’ actions
cover only seven verses. Jesus decides
to stay in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper.
In a time
of quarantine this is fitting. Leprosy
referred to any number of contagious skin diseases. Those who had it were usually sent away from
everyone else to live alone. They stayed
alone until either the disease killed them, or if it was a type that could be
recovered from, until they recovered.
We don’t
know anything more about this Simon.
Maybe he was contagious then and Jesus healed him. Maybe he wasn’t there but was in quarantine. This was just his house. What is certain is that Matthew wants us to
make some contrasts.
In verse
3 of our gospel reading we learn that the chief priests and the elders have
gathered in the palace of the high priest, Caiaphas. That would be in Jerusalem.
Where is
Jesus? In nearby Bethany in the house of Simon.
The high
priest’s palace was surely a religiously clean place, especially for Passover.
Simon’s
is a leper’s house. It is not ritually
clean. It is worth noting that houses
could get diseases too. These days we
call it mold or mildew. And just like
today, there were ways to clean them.
Some of the Old Testament laws seem absurd to us but they were also
practical instructions. Instead of
saying mix so many parts bleach with so many parts water and then scrub the
walls and floors, some of the laws in Leviticus are real recipes for cleaning.
Anyway,
what are the chief priests and elders talking about in Caiaphas’ palace? How to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him.
What does
the unnamed woman in Simon’s house do?
Prepare Jesus for being killed.
Do you
see the contrasts?
Biblical
scholars note that all four of the gospels have some sort of scene where a
woman anoints Jesus with an extravagant amount of perfume. Yet each one tells it a little
differently. Worth noting is that in
Luke’s gospel he chooses the Greek word criw which the technical word for anointing to a high public
office. For Luke it is a symbolic act.
Matthew
however simply says this woman pours a great amount of expensive ointment on
Jesus. It is an extravagant act of
devotion. Socially inappropriate? Yes.
Sexually suggestive? Yes. Wasteful?
Yes, at least to any hard-working person who thinks money should be used
wisely and not wastefully.
Matthew is trying to put us in a place to
understand the actions of Judas, which immediately follow.
People
often struggle with Judas the betrayer.
What made him do it? What made
him sell out his friend? There are many
answers. As Matthew portrays it, Judas
has had enough. Here they are, a day
before Passover. Jesus and the disciples
are not in some good clean place like upright Jews, but they are in a dirty
house away from Jerusalem. Instead of
condemning this dirty foolish woman for embarrassing and ritually defiling a
good clean rabbi like Jesus, he commends the whole scene.
What is
Jesus playing at? This is the kind of
thought going through Judas’ mind. He
decides to turn traitor; and make a few bucks in the process.
And yet the truth has been present for
Judas and the other disciples the whole time.
Jesus has told them repeatedly that he is going to be handed over to the
authorities and crucified. Jesus has
been teaching them for years that he is bringing in the kingdom of God. And that the kingdom of God is different –
opposite in fact – to the kingdoms of this world. God’s ways are not our ways. And God’s point of view is not our point of
view. Jesus knew full well that a
“wiser” use of the ointment would be to sell it and give the money to the
poor. But now is not the time.
This woman, misguided and confused and
she undoubtedly was, performs the most extraordinary act of devotion to
Jesus. She and she alone anoints
Jesus. And given that bathing was not a
part of daily life, it is pretty safe to assume that as Jesus was hanging in
agony on the cross the smell of that ointment on his head was still with
him. It was humanity’s one and only act
of pure unasked for devotion to Jesus.
We don’t know enough about this woman
to say much, but it seems likely that she and she alone took Jesus seriously
when he said he would be crucified. She
alone seems to have heard when Jesus said, “You will not always have me…” And so she showed her love and devotion. She is an unlikely disciple, but a true one.
We are at the beginning of Holy
Week. As this week goes on, and
especially as we get to Thursday and Friday, I invite you to hear the stories
anew. We know them so well that we
forget how out of sync they are with the way everything in the world works.
May we be able to see things through
God’s perspective. That way we will know
when to be frugal and when to be extravagant.
We will know when love takes the form of a reassuring voice or the form
of strict accountability. We will know
when to follow boundaries and when to break them. We will probably never to anything that will
make us be remembered by others throughout the ages, but we can still be
devoted disciples of our Lord.
No comments:
Post a Comment