Day 1123 - A Woman's Good Deed

A lesson for the men’s bible Study at Second Presbyterian Church, Chattanooga, TN, Jan. 7, 2016

The subject of Mark 14:1-27 is the anointing of the son of man by a woman and Jesus’ observation to his objecting disciples objecting over her extravagant waste of money, “You can show kindness to the poor any time you wish,” and the consequences of this event.

A careful reading of Mark reveals many instances of irony in comments of Jesus (See Boren and Jerry Camery-Hogatt for a detailed discussion of iurony in Mark.) Many of these are quite penetrating and severe. This passage of Mark is heavy with irony on many levels. It’s irony challenges our tenancy to hold onto commonly held sense of “value” and also our desire to reduce the complex and difficult parts of the world, such as the poor, to easily understood “labels.”

To refresh our memory, irony is a figure of speech with an outward appearance of meaning that is the opposite of what is implied. When it is done well, it is very difficult to be certain which the speaker means, the literal or its opposite, thus it draws out a contradiction between convention and actuality. If I said, “I worked really hard all weekend and hardly had any time to rest or sleep.” A relatively simple example of irony would be a listener’s response, “Oh how nice.” Irony is a serious play with our “commonsense” or typical understanding of the world. The danger of good irony is that the conventional understanding may be seized rather than the intended opposite.

Let’s read the passage and see what we find.

Mark 14:1   It was two days before the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him;  ² for they said, “Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.”

Mark gives us the full picture of what future befalls Jesus. Verse 14:1 cannot be any clearer, the religious authorities will not rest until they devise and accomplish a plan to kill Jesus.

Where is the irony in these two verses? Who is in charge of the spiritual well being of the people of Judah? What is their charge, but to attend to the spiritual well being of the Hebrews. What festival is beginning? It is Passover that remembers the great act of deliverance of Israel.

Yet here, the chief priests and scribes plot to kill the one who has been sent to redeem and deliver Israel from death for all time.

Mark 14:3   While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. 

When men “sat at table” it really meant they were reclining on mats or couch for a meal. By inference there would be only men present except perhaps for servants who brought food. Yet in defiance of all custom, a woman enters and approaches the central guest.

This woman does not just enter, rather she carries a jar of nard, a spice imported from India that cost about the amount of a full year's wage for someone. She does not just open the jar, the Greek verb, syntribo, means to violently shatter into pieces. (Literally meaning “rub two sticks together, when used with persons it has the sense of “beat to jelly;” with parts of the body, “to crush, shiver;” and here in its metaphorical material sense is to fully shatter. Perhaps all these means are at play symbolically.) The sense of complete destruction of this thing of value is profoundly emphasized and is symbolic of Jesus against the Rome and the religious leaders. It foreshadows his own death. In parallel, this woman being there also shatters conventional custom. One could see irony in the fact that conventional customary value holds this woman is committing an outrage, not giving tribute and honor to Jesus. Which value should these fellow diners accept?

There is more irony. A leper is an unclean person who is fastidiously avoided, yet here Jesus and his associates gather.

There is more irony. On the heels of the chief priests and scribes desiring to kill Jesus, this woman’s anointing might mean two things. The act of anointing signifies the identification of royalty, a king. See for example, 1 Samuel 9:15-17, 10:1. Yet one also anoints the body before burial. Thus a woman who has broken the custom and tradition of the time is announcing and honoring the King, the Messiah in the house of a leper defying every element of the religious leader’s.

⁴ But some were there who said to one another in anger, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way?  ⁵ For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.” And they scolded her. 

The disciples are enraged at this display and “wanton” waste of value. Again, the Greek verb “enrage” expresses a sense of chaos and pandemonium. The word conveys a sense of random, confused and undirected anger, or backbiting in an emotionally riotous or highly charged wrathful atmosphere. Do you see the irony? This woman is disrupting all convention to honor the thing of greatest value (about the be sacrificed), yet the disciples are focused on the material value.  They “scold her” for doing a good thing. “Scold her” in Greek is a verb with two variants of intense action: snort (of horses), and be deeply moved (of people). The reader is left to wonder to what should the outrage be directed, to the woman’s waste of the nard’s intrinsic high worth, to the waste of the valuable nard itself on Jesus, or reflexively to the confused, enraged insiders who do not understand the act’s significance?

⁶ But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. 

Why does Jesus say such a thing? It is because anointing carries these multiple meanings. Not only did the prophets anoint a new king, they also anointed the body of the deceased king before burial. Perhaps the highest sense of irony is that she anoints Jesus as king while simultaneously anoints his body, preparing it for burial.

Then Jesus validates these observations:

⁷ 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.  ⁸ She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.  ⁹ 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.”

Verse 7 is perhaps the most underappreciated and most misunderstood verse in the gospels. I remember my father, as do many others, quoting this verse to justify how pointless it is to help the poor. This only magnifies the subtlety of the irony. This is exactly what we want to think! Yet what Jesus is saying is, “So How does this woman who went to such great extent to honor me prevent you from helping the poor? You can use the things you value as precious to help them at any time.”

This verse, in my mind, captures the essence of the meaning of Christian charity. What things of value to you are you using to glorify Christ?

The greatest irony, perhaps, is what this gracious, honorable act seals. It so angers Judas that he seals the fate of Jesus:

Mark 14:10   Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them.  ¹¹ When they heard it, they were greatly pleased, and promised to give him money. So he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.

Mark 14:12   On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, his disciples said to him, “Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?”  ¹³ So he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him,  ¹⁴ and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’  ¹⁵ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.”  ¹⁶ So the disciples set out and went to the city, and found everything as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal.

Mark is using his literary devices here. Please read Mark 11:1-10 that describes the events of a week earlier as Jesus prepared to enter Jerusalem. This passage almost exactly parallels these verses in Chapter 11. In a sense, Mark is signifying we have come “full circle.” Mark reveals the irony in the act that led to his entry into Jerusalem as King as they are now repeated (in a way) to reveal his true glory in his death and rule in the new Kingdom.

Mark 14:17   When it was evening, he came with the twelve.  ¹⁸ And when they had taken their places and were eating, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.”  ¹⁹ They began to be distressed and to say to him one after another, “Surely, not I?”  ²⁰ He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me.  ²¹ For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born.”

How do you understand these particular verses? Why would the disciples react this way? Is it possible that the disciples do not understand or know of Judas’ weaknesses, or perhaps, even they harbor his doubt in the ever-persistent clash between reason and faith? Mark’s gospel, after all, if it has no other theme, is about having faith.

Mark 14:22   While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.”  ²³ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it.  ²⁴ He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.  ²⁵ Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

Does this passage really need an explication? It is the enactment of what I call “The Shared Meal.” Communion at its most basic level is the place where Christ comes to us. It forms the beautiful parallel to baptism that symbolizes the act of us coming to Christ.

Mark 14:26    When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.  ²⁷ And Jesus said to them, “You will all become deserters; for it is written,

            ‘I will strike the shepherd,

                        and the sheep will be scattered.’

Reflection

The irony of vv 26,27, if we chose to see it, is that even those of us who shall profess and celebrate allegiance to Christ are sinners who will stumble. But this compassionate act of God to send his son for sacrifice to leaders of His own people, an act of value that transcends the most costly exhibit of human value, as the woman’s shattered alabaster jar of nard, overcomes our foibles and redeems us anyway.

There may be another irony in this for us to decide. We put value on action and on earned compensation. We think, “Why should the laborer in the field for 1 hour be paid the same as for the one who labored 8?”  Can the most extreme cost of anything, God, Himself, purchase the thing of least value, any reprobate sinner? Is it for us to decide who has been purchased?