Mark 14:1-11
It’s Wednesday of the week between Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the disciples’ joyful pronouncement that God had raised him victorious over death and that he still lived among them. Today we call it Holy Week – Palm Sunday and Easter are the bookends.
Our guides are Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, in their book The Last Week. They remind us that we all have particular ways of hearing, blurring, and misremembering stories from scripture that get in the way of our understanding what’s really there.
Particularly, they urge us to see that everything in that Last Week was pointing to the conflict between the realm of Caesar and the realm of God, there and then; here and now.
There are many key actors in the Holy Week drama – Roman authorities who had occupied Palestine for about 100 years, now including the Emperor in Rome, a governor from the line of the late Herod Great, and the Prefect of Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate. There were temple authorities who had an uneasy alliance with the Roman occupiers, specifically Caiaphas the High Priest, whose family, the House of Annas, had been in power for generations, Pharisees, scribes and others. Don’t worry, no test.
Most importantly, remember that Jesus was a problem to all these powerful people because he so appealed to the crowds. And open rebellion might bring down the system they had put in place – a system of domination and control.
Jesus, the humble rabbi and carpenter, was now surrounded by crowds who chanted his name and called on him to save them – to begin the revolution and throw off the Roman occupiers. The Gospel of John gives us a glimpse (John 11:48), where the temple authorities say: “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” (Last Week, p. 88)
On Sunday, Jesus had entered Jerusalem on a donkey echoing the great King David but showing his commitment to non-violence. That same day he symbolically went to the temple and challenged the powers to come clean with the people.
On Monday, he entered the outer courtyard of the temple and showed how it had become an abomination. He scattered buyers and sellers and money changers. The temple authorities were ready to have him arrested and executed rather than risk what the Romans would do if the crowds become more aggressive.
On Tuesday, Mark gives us three episodes showing the growing distance between the Jewish authorities and the Jewish crowds who were “listening to him with delight.” (pg. 89)
Now it’s Wednesday. Mark 14:1, 2 tells us the chief priests wanted to arrest Jesus but feared a riot among the people. So they sought a way to isolate him without inciting the crowds. And they succeeded in part, as Mark tells us, because the disciples utterly failed to stand beside Jesus throughout this week.
Time and again, as the disciples jockeyed for position and influence Jesus told them the last would be first and the greatest would be the servant of all.
Three times earlier, Mark tells us Jesus had foretold his death and resurrection and the disciples had told him to stop talking that way. The violence of Rome and the injustice of the temple are vivid enough, but the failure of the disciples makes it all the more tragic in Mark’s account.
Now it’s a stranger, an unnamed woman with an alabaster jar filled with precious ointment, who anoints him as if preparing a body for burial… the first to recognize who he is, what’s going to happen, and how no offering is enough. (pg. 103)
After they bicker about the value of the ointment and its apparent waste, Jesus silences the disciples again and says “wherever the Gospel is told, what she has done here will be remembered.”
- She, alone, seems to know this is the time to acknowledge aloud his looming suffering and death.
- She treats him as the “the anointed one.”
- She is the first one to believe even before the resurrection.
- She becomes what the disciples were not: perceptive and decisive.
- While other Gospels have framed this story in differing ways, Mark – the earliest, least-embellished account – thinks it’s enough to tell her story in a way that she will, indeed, be remembered.
As Wednesday draws to a close, Mark tells us that Judas went to the chief priests and told them he would betray Jesus. They were greatly pleased and promised to pay him. Mark doesn’t say Judas did it for the money, though later Gospels make this the motive. The Gospel of John clearly says that the devil overcame Judas and tempted him.
Rather than single out Judas for particular condemnation Mark continues to refer to him as “one of the twelve…” (pg. 106). He was much like the others who denied, or betrayed, or slunk into the shadows, or otherwise could not rise to the invitation of the Master Teacher to come and follow.
Finally, Mark points us to the stark reality that every one of them fell short. And so, as Wednesday ends, the plot accelerates with Jesus’ deep disappointment.
Mark details the tragic story as a warning to disciples in generations yet to come, we who may now shake our heads and say “how could they not have seen what was happening? How could they have given three years of blood, sweat and tears to Jesus and now slink into the darkness?” (pg. 91).
Honestly, do we imagine we would have done better than the twelve, had we been there among them? Power corrupts and position deludes us.
- While Cardinals gather in Rome the Vatican shows every sign that human failings and agendas are as influential as divine guidance.
- While the Pentagon defends our national interests, it also maintains weapons and armies that have been deployed around the globe, promoting violence as the answer to international dilemmas.
If I had recognized the Christ at all, as the woman at the meal did, I might have found a thimble full of generic ointment and maybe spilled a little – but nothing lavish or extravagant. No sense in getting all worked up.
All I can say about this story is that I might have been any one of the waffling disciples. Because all of us, except the rare few, “pray cream and live skim milk” as the Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick said.
So, was this woman’s act a costly waste or a priceless gift? Certainly the twelve had sacrificed much, but in this hour they neither could see or know.
Our salvation is that Jesus understood that, and he forgave them then and now… and God does, too. It’s now evening on Wednesday. Will we be able to rest or will God keep us troubled and awake?