SERMON FOR SUNDAY, APRIL 3, 2022 , FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT        TEXT: JOHN 12:1-18, Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9, Luke 7:36-50

          Each of the four Gospels tells the story of a woman anointing Jesus. Matthew and Mark place the event after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the cleansing of the Temple. In John it also occurs during Holy Week.

          Luke is the outlier. He places the story much earlier in his gospel as part of Jesus’ teaching ministry,    and he makes no reference to the Lord’s impending death. In Luke’s version Jesus focuses instead on the forgiveness of sins in relation to the woman who comes unbidden into the house of the Pharisee Simon, where he has been invited to dine. She remains nameless, identified only as “a woman in the city, who was a sinner” (Luke 7:37), and, according to Luke, she stood behind Jesus weeping and “began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment” (v. 38). Simon says nothing about the extravagance of her action, the cost of the ointment or the waste of resources that might have been used for poor relief. He objects to the woman’s character and questions Jesus’ as well. Luke tells us, “Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him — that she is a sinner’” (v. 39). The point is that Jesus understands full well who this woman is, just as she clearly knows him in a way Simon does not. Theirs is a true and intimate relationship of grace. She eagerly seeks the mercy he offers, and he readily receives the love and gratitude she gives in return.                   

          Simon sits in silent judgment on them both until Jesus makes the event about him as well. “Jesus spoke up and said to him, ‘Simon, I have something to say to you.’ ‘Teacher,’ he replied, ‘speak.’ ‘A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?’ Simon answered, ‘I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’ Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little’” (Luke 7:40-47). Forgiveness and love begetting one another in an endless circle, but to join it you have to admit you have done wrong. Jesus did know who and what kind of person the anonymous woman was; he knows who and what kind of person Simon is as well — both sinners. But Simon sets himself apart, more concerned with the failings of this woman and of Jesus, who he thinks should know better, than with his own. And so he is unable to share in the generosity and joy that they experience.

          The accounts in the Gospels of Mathew and Mark are both called “The Anointing at Bethany,” and they are very similar to one another. Jesus is in the home of Simon the leper when the woman, once again nameless, comes to him with an alabaster jar of “very costly ointment” (Mt. 26:7, Mk. 14:3). Nothing is said about her being a sinner, nor does Jesus say anything about forgiveness in what follows. This time the woman anoints his head rather than his feet, and there is no mention of her unbound hair or her kissing Jesus. Some of those present, specified by Matthew as the disciples, raise angry objections about the waste and the fact that the ointment could have been sold for a large sum and the money given to the poor. Jesus comes to her defense: “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me” (Mark 14:6-7). Jesus recognizes that the world being what it is, there will always be people suffering want who are in need of our help. He is not suggesting we make our peace with it. Clearly Jesus expects that his disciples will show kindness to the poor whenever they can. That is supposed to be business as usual for his followers.

          But this moment, as the end closes in (the verses immediately following this passage tell of Judas striking the agreement with the chief priests to betray Jesus), calls for more than business as usual. The woman has not failed the poor; she has recognized Jesus’s extraordinary need and met it. “She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her” (Mark 14:9). Jesus is anticipating his death, and she is the only one willing to join him in that dark and lonely place, the one who steps forward to help him prepare for the future he must face. Jesus is about to be deprived of his liberty, cut off from his friends, robbed of dignity, subjected to cruelty and injustice and in short order to shameful execution. The names of the disciple who betrayed him and the one who denied him are recorded; so are those of the high priest and the Roman governor who condemned him; even the name of the prisoner the crowd chose over Jesus for release appears in all four Gospels. The woman who offers him honor and kindness, however, is not identified.

          That is, not until we come to John’s Gospel. John attributes the act of anointing to Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, all three of whom are friends of Jesus. In chapter 11 we read the story of the death and raising of Lazarus. Jesus comes too late to heal him, and the sisters reproach him for the delay. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” each woman individually tells him (John 11: 21, 32). Jesus reassures them, knowing that God has brought him to this moment for the sake of those present, so that they might see the greatest of his works and believe that Jesus is, as Martha confesses, “the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world” (v. 27). When he commands that the stone sealing the tomb be rolled away, Martha demurs, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days” (v. 39).    But Jesus commands Lazarus to come out, and the man once dead emerges from the tomb alive again. Many do then come to faith, while others, alarmed by what they have seen, go to the religious authorities. In their eyes Jesus now poses an intolerable threat. “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation” (v. 48). “So from that day on they planned to put him to death” (v. 53).

          With this threat hanging over him, there is much speculation as to whether Jesus will go to Jerusalem for Passover. Indeed he does, and he stops at the home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary on his way. Martha serves him dinner. Mary anoints his feet with costly oil and wipes them with her hair, like the woman in Luke’s account. Her action points back to the raising of her brother; the dead man is now very much alive, joining Jesus at the table to share food and friendship. The stench of death has yielded to the sweet fragrance that fills the house. The anointing points forward as well to Jesus’ last night on earth when he will kneel and wash and dry the disciples’ feet, serving them as Mary now serves him. Her act also points to Jesus’s impending death; she, like the nameless woman in Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts, recognizes the import of the moment. They have all the time in the world to tend to the poor, but Jesus will soon be beyond their reach. John names Judas as the one speaking for the interests of the needy and dismisses the criticism as sheer hypocrisy, the pious mask behind which a conniving thief hides.

          Four versions of one story — at the center of all of them is a woman who answers Jesus’ love with her own act of unbridled devotion. There is nothing measured in Jesus’ commitment to us, no limits on his mercy, no loopholes in his commitment to face death so that we might live. The woman, clear-eyed and unashamed, takes her stand with her Lord and invites us to do the same. Love between us and our Savior is nothing less on both sides than “the costly, precious gift of one’s whole self — down to every last strand of hair”    (Matt Skinner). Amen.