Mark 14: 3-9
3 And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. 4 There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? 5 For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. 6 But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. 8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. 9 And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”
In our passage we have the innards of what interpreters call a Marcan sandwich: two similar episodes sandwiching a dissimilar one – the contrast heightens the meaning.
On one side of our passage: In vv., 1 & 2 we see the intellectuals and the society movers and shakers plotting to kill Jesus. They’re making political calculations, and figure that they’ll make their move once the Passover is in the rearview mirror and the people have dispersed.
Then at the other end: In vv. 10 & 11 these politicos are handed a present: one of Jesus’ inside group is ready to hand him over to them. My understanding is that Judas’ unexpected offer moves up their timetable to arrest Jesus, and now they’ll take Jesus whenever Judas finds a good time.
So, bookending or sandwiching our passage: both from those in power and from Jesus’ close associates you have ill intentions. Not love, but envy and disgust. Not love, but lust for power, hatred, quitting, greed.
But in the middle of this malevolence, a “beautiful thing.” A woman who remains nameless in Mark (though the gospel of John identifies her as Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus) breaks an alabaster flask of nard and pours the perfume onto Jesus.
Nard is short for spikenard, an aromatic plant from the high Himalayas. It’s traveled a long way to Bethany.
Alabaster was the container of choice for perfumes; the soft rock sustained the fragrance. The stone flask swishing with spikenard was sealed shut in fire. The only way to access the fragrance was by breaking the elongated neck of the container. In other words, this couldn’t be parceled out over time, had to be used all at once.
And when that neck was shattered the fragrance that filled the room might be decades old, since it was common for mothers to pass down nard to their daughters, generation to generation.
So you have something exotic, fragrant, old, sentimental – Mark says that it’s very costly. And the woman breaks open the flask and pours the contents over Jesus’ head.
The onlookers immediately react… and they’re not happy. On the contrary, their sensibilities are offended. They spoke to each other about her indignantly. What a waste. How impractical.
Imagine you had come through the austerity of Post WWII Europe and were magically suddenly transported to a Christmas morning of an American family with young kids in 2024. You watch kids open one present after another, never stopping to say thanks, perhaps even whining a little. Ugh! A little revolting!
That’s the feeling of the onlookers, which other gospels identify as the disciples. How out of proportion. Mary’s spectacular lapse of judgment! Misallocation of resources.
The poor… hello? Do we want them to have a square meal for once or do we want Jesus smelling good for a little while?
In fact, it appears that the disgust arising from this scene was enough that it triggered Judas to decide go to the authorities and arrange for Jesus’ arrest. I’m out…I’m not putting up with this anymore…
Back to our scene, the onlookers didn’t keep their disdain to themselves. After Mary empties the flask she saw disapproval in faces, a few woman rolled their eyes, some older people slightly shook their heads, pursed their lips. They began scolding her…
From a commentary: she must have wondered whether after all, she had made a foolish mistake. Many of those similarly criticized for their own self-offering for Christ’s service know a similar qualm…
But Jesus will have nothing of it. He cuts them off: Leave her alone…
Then they get an earful: Why do you trouble her? This is classic Jesus, redirecting the conversation. They’re asking why she didn’t donate to the poor.? Jesus counters, why is any of this your concern.?
Then he goes on the offensive. She has done a beautiful thing to me. Beautiful is the translation of the Greek word, kalos. Kalos is sometimes translated as good, but good in its most robust sense. Not simply nice or pleasant. But harmonious, proportionate, deeply appropriate, beautiful in significance, in execution, in form and expression. In the Greek Old Testament, kalos is the word used in Genesis: And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
Perhaps you’ve seen photos of those massive apartment buildings in Russia that were built during the Cold War. The architectural style is called “Brutalist,” which sounds right for these featureless, purely utilitarian, seemingly intended to make the blood turn cold buildings.
Well, contrast that ugly efficiency with kalos! Kalos is where we get our word calligraphy. Even in a decaying, often ugly world, sometimes you come across the exquisite, the beautifully rendered. Ah…! Kalos.
She has done a kalos thing to me. Mary’s costly gift was deeply appropriate. You shouldn’t be appalled by it. If anything, you might’ve admired the unexpected, uncommon beauty of her expensive sacrifice.
Along these lines I always think of those in the medieval era who spent their careers planning and building these august cathedrals which they knew wouldn’t be completed in their lifetimes. Why spend your working life building something so fabulous especially as your own life is so…un-fabulous?
One repeated two-letter word of our text offers sufficient explanation: Me. Jesus. It’s for Jesus; thus the sacrifice makes wildly good sense. It’s kalos.
Mom, why are you spending $150/month + gas money and time to take your kid to music lessons? You do realize that the chances of his being a music professional are slim? This is primarily for the church’s worship down the road, because the church’s Savior should be praised skillfully!
In the Lord’s work, for the sake of the body of Christ, in order to know Christ more…
You’re giving that much money? Spending that much time? Enduring that much frustration?
Yet these extravagances can be entirely appropriate, the way things should be, beautiful. Because they come out of love for Jesus.
Speaking of the Soviet Union era, while we served in Newton I used to occasionally break out an old photograph: Soviet Christians gathering covertly in a snow-covered forest, standing while listening to the preached word and preparing for communion. A rare thing to take on such risk and cost for worship, but also kalos – beautiful, the way it should be. Because Jesus is worthy of these extravagant risks!
Because the Lord Jesus is worthy. I want to say that 5000 times until it just starts to sink in. He is worthy of everything we got, of the most rigorous sacrifices. The more his people come to know him, the more they feel deep in their bones what David once said. I will not offer the LORD my God… sacrifices that cost me nothing.
Jesus is the Eternal Son through whom the Eternal Father created all that is: bats, maples, spleens, galaxies, memory, singing, the mountain ranges we call Appalachian and Rocky, horses, wheat, seraphim, and the potential for all.
He is the Son of the Blessed – from eternity a perfect life that is glorious, complete in itself, inexhaustible, in joyful relationship with the Father in the fellowship of the Spirit.
God [the Son] has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself; and is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He has made….– Westminster Catechism.
Yet God loved and pitied us in our darkness, so leaving the brightness and clear air of heaven into the foul darkness of our dimension Jesus came. Taking on humanity 100%, he became acquainted with grief and frustration, he endured desertion, he walked resolutely toward suffering, ultimately submitting himself to what would be a physically painful and spiritually appaling death on a cross.
Yet the suffering didn’t sour him, cynicism never cast a shadow over one fiber of his being. So that today he joyfully calls sinners to himself, he stands beside the winos and sex addicts and the irresolute and malicious, and eagerly reconciles them to the Father by virtue of his atoning sacrifice.
This is real, people.
Brothers and sisters, There could be and perhaps there should be aspects of our life – costly gifts, costly decisions in the name of Jesus – that the world shakes its head at… yet we know are wildly appropriate. Beautiful even. Kalos!
Jesus goes on: For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.
Give to the poor or give to Jesus? As you get older you start to realize that, almost always, you’re not choosing between doing good or evil, you’re choosing between two or more good things. Which means, you’ll regularly have to choose against a good thing in order to choose the better.
The choice to leave good company in order to meet with the Lord. The choice to get out of a warm comfortable bed in order to spend time in prayer.
Or the type of choice that Mary made at another time, as recorded in Luke 10: 38-42. Her sister Martha is a good-hearted activist, practical minded, thinking of others…and she’s annoyed that Mary isn’t working alongside her. Yet Jesus says, Mary has made chosen the good portion – to sit at Jesus’ feet while he is teaching; to be a student of the Lord when it’s time to be a student. Sometimes the beautiful thing is the impractical choice.
The economist Thomas Sowell had it right, as he almost always does: “There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs; and you try to get the best trade-off you can get, that’s all you can hope for.” The point being, Christians should learn that they can’t have it all; they often must choose the Lord out of other goods. Like more family time, better sports opportunity…
You will not always have me. Our Lord tells his disciples that time is running out. One day he will leave and then the opportunity for this kind of beautiful thing is past. Things don’t last, and not all stages of time are the same, and those realizations should make a difference in what we decide to do now.
We have children in our care now. Some day they will leave the house and establish their own house. Now is the time – the only time you’ll have – to bring them up to love the Lord above everything, to form them into sturdy churchmen. Young people, with all the energy you have, now is the time to rejoice in your Creator – get off those phones and discover what is so great about God! Seasoned saints, out of love for your Christ, now is the time to be fruitful within your families and within your church and set an example.
You might wish you had more time. You might wish you were at a different stage of a different life. But hear the wisdom of Tolkien/ Peter Jackson:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
She has anointed my body beforehand for burial. By this we don’t have to suppose that Mary had Jesus’ death in mind as she poured the nard over him. But Jesus says that by her anointing him she has in fact… probably without meaning to… prepared his body for burial. Without realizing it, her deed of love accomplished something more significant than she understood, and thus has been incorporated into the Gospel, the story of the world’s salvation, the great metanarrative that makes paltry all other accounts.
So it was that the corpse of Jesus, when Joseph took it down from the cross and wrapped it in linen, would have stunk of sweat and blood and other stench of death… but also the smell of spikenard lingered.
I had to stop and think: what’s the big deal that his body was anointed for burial? What does it matter how the corpse of Jesus smelled? After God allows him to be betrayed, arrested, abandoned, cheated from justice, mocked, stripped, whipped, crowned with thorns, to have nails hammered into, crucified, taunted, sneered at, suffocated, pierced – after all that what does it matter that he had been anointed? Especially when the one anointing Jesus didn’t realize he was about to die?
Still speculating here, and zooming out from just the anointing for burial: Why did God determine that Jesus, who died so brutally, be buried in a rich man’s tomb? Why not continue the theme of humiliation and have Jesus’ body be cast into an unmarked, mass grave? And then three days later, representing cast off humanity…
And one more step back: why were God’s angels summoned to worship Jesus the firstborn when God brought him into the world that night in Bethlehem? Why were the wise men with their gifts summoned to worship the toddler, Jesus? Why were the heavens torn open at the baptism and the voice speaking of God’s Beloved Son? Why the transfiguration when the glory of Jesus is revealed?
Why these scattered rays among the darkness? Coming back to our passage: among an account of drudgery and sorrow, especially within the final humiliation, why is there space given to such things as an accidental anointing with oil?
My guess is that all along we are given these reminders to assure us that despite the suffering that is unfolding in Jesus’ life the eternal Father loves the eternal Son. And so it was that after a filthy and cruel execution, after an episode in which Jesus shrieks out the My God my God why have you forsaken me, it was the will of the Father to honor His firstborn Son by an elevated burial. Which included the redolence of spikenard.
And so, with this act the woman has entered into the love of the Father to the Son.
Also, in the book of Leviticus you have many references to offerings of animals that are a pleasing aroma to God. It’s a strange idea to us moderns – but only because we’ve lost touch with old and basic truths – that in order for God as he is to dwell with man as he is will require a blood sacrifice, and a legitimate, effective sacrifice was the one that passed the divine smell test.
And so, in the plan of God, Mary’s anointing of Jesus became an earthly sign pointing to a heavenly reality. The fragrance on the body of Christ pointed to a truth that couldn’t be observed with the senses: that the death of Jesus Christ was the true and final sacrifice that pleased God in atoning for the sins of the world. Just listen to how Paul puts it in Ephesians 5:2 – And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Brothers and sisters, the anger of God turned away – propitiated – by the violent death of the God made flesh. Truly! By the blood of Jesus God has redeemed us out of the exile of separation from him. We are reconciled to him, he doesn’t count our trespasses against us. Forgiveness! Peace! Let that waft over you!
Who can say all what Mary’s anointing meant in the eyes of heaven? But we do know that the woman has entered into the story of the gospel, and that her sacrificial act of love would be forever told alongside the proclamation of the death and resurrection of Christ. In other words, this relatively insignificant bound by space-time act still had something eternally epic to it.
And so it goes. Our beautiful deeds done out of love for Jesus do not add any details to his death – that was a one-time event. But like the lingering smell of spikenard, our sacrifices for Christ become part of the great epic of the Spirit of God advancing the Kingdom of God into the world of darkness. Because they’re attached to the Resurrected Christ, our labors of love and sacrifices of faith are not in vain. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Hebrews 13:16
Our sacrifices for Jesus have meaning… only because of His sacrifice.
Surely he has borne our griefs/ and carried our sorrows/ yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted/ But he was pierced for our transgressions/ he was crushed for our iniquities/ upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.
Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted
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