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Two days before the Passover, at the end of the week after Jesus rode into
Jerusalem on a donkey, a week of continued witness, teaching, about matters like the greatest commandment, within a tumble of argument, conflict, plotting to kill Jesus, who doesn’t run away, but carries on upturning the tables, calling for a true temple, a house of prayer for all peoples….
If it is going to be for all peoples, it must be a house of love, and truth, and generous humility….
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The woman pours out her love and gratitude and respect/faith on Jesus as he was, still healthy, functioning, teacher, healer, leader….
She does not know what is to come?
She is aware Jesus is opposed, threatened, but like him, is getting on with life, even in the land of Herod, and in the province of Pilate, and the city of the priests….
She lives in the will and love of God regardless of the danger.
She is not immune to the dangers. Jesus will be killed. She will be bullied and disrespected. But she does the good she is able to do.
And Jesus accepts it, and says, This is a greater good, a kindlier, stranger caring than she imagined.
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The woman runs into trouble from the people around who want to get Jesus trapped in trouble.
They don’t directly say: All this ointment should not be wasted on Jesus, but it is a thought near the surface of their minds, because it corresponds to a suspicion, a hostility to Jesus which is deep in them, maybe has them uncontrollably in its grip.
Can they think straight, when they are so hostile, and yet want to be respectable – can they get near to admitting to themselves what they think about Jesus?
They want to be rid of him, but they do not want to see themselves as killers.
(When it comes to the killing, they want the cover of law, to say, He ought to die, and that brings them out of the business as those who have righteously, innocently, simply done what the law requires.)
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They do not directly attack the woman. They rather indulge in a rather clever discussion of the ethics of charity.
They see the ointment. They do not see or value the love the ointment carries from the woman to Jesus. They rather see the money it cost, the money they could get if they put it on e-bay. A whole year’s wage, some say.
They do not see the costly love in it, because they do not respect a woman, and they don’t think Jesus is worth that much – they rather tend to put a negative valuation on him.
They want to make their objection to this anointing morally respectable, at least in their own estimation. So they say, Why is all this poured out on this one man, when it could be used to feed many poor people?
In making this argument, are they not as morally respectable, as morally self- assured as the Pharisee of Luke 18.9-14 who boasts of giving a tenth of all his income?
So they criticise the woman, give her trouble. She may be generous in heart, but she lacks good judgment, a proper sense of priorities. She makes a spectacle of herself in the middle of a respectable dinner party, she is out of place.
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Jesus comes to her defence
He does not say, I am the son of God, I should be honoured and cared for in this way. He does not say, I am called, Teacher and Lord (Jn 13.12) – He says, directly, Don’t trouble her, she has done a good service for me.
I am here now, and will be gone tomorrow. I am here, a weary man, in a dangerous situation, surrounded by friends like you, crypto-enemies, so I am now a candidate for care.
In this dinner party, I am like the man I told a story about who was mugged and left half dead on the road. A priest and a levite had other things on their minds and their agenda, and they hurried by on the other side. Don’t be like that here.
Rather, let the despised feared foreigner, the Samaritan, teach you, to respond with full involvement to the actual person you come across on the road, the person who was never in your plan at the start of the day, the person whose need cries out, the person it is very natural for lazy busy self-important people to ignore.
Today, I am, for you, here in this passing moment, the blind man at the side of the road crying out for the Son of David to have mercy on him, while people around him tell him to shut up, to stop being a nuisance, the Master is too busy and important for you.
Today, this woman is the Samaritan.
Care for the poor in general, by all means, so you should – that is the teaching of all the law and prophets (Isaiah 58). But don’t worry, the great crowd of them will always be there, and you will have the opportunity to help them any time you like. They will need you, make sure you help them. They will be so many, and so perpetual, that you may easily get weary in doing well, and look for respectable excuses, Vance-like, to let your charity start with yourself, and stop soon after. And then, just as you are blocked in your heart against helping me today, you will go on being blocked in heart and hand when all the poor are still with you.
Don’t be deceived by your good show of standing up for the poor in general, as a nice idea, when you turn away from the poor person who is now, this moment,
within your reach.
The call of God comes to you in the person, the people, who are in your reach, here and now….God calls you here and now into living partnership, to share his love in reality in life, starting where you are and never stopping till we come to the ends of the earth.
To turn away from love in action for those who are in your presence, and call wordlessly perhaps for a fit and helpful response, is to walk away from God, even if you go on with your temple duties. (Matthew 25.41-45)
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We can see that all this is implicit in the story, for we have all the teaching and practice of Jesus in the story and the teaching.
Don’t judge the pharisees too harshly. They had clues and hints, but not as clear as we have. They had Jesus before them, and they had the law and the prophets.
And they, like us, have years of human living, paying attention to themselves and how life goes on around them, all chances to learn, to see more clearly, to know what practical generous love is like, in distinction not only from plain hate, but also from hypocritical defensive self-righteousness. Jesus gave people the material, the pointers, the awakening questions, the example, so they could become more sensitive, more courageous, more eager to do good.
We are in the same human situation.
We too in our way can be like the critics of this story, like people who saw and heard Jesus and one way or another, refused to go through the door to life which he pointed out to us, saying, This is the way, walk in it.
We can be like the critics in this story, who saw the woman and what she did, and did not see…
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Jesus does more than defend the woman by shaking up the complacency of her
critics.
That is a negative defence.
Jesus makes a positive defence.
She has done a good work, a good service for him. Its goodness, as he identifies it, is something, I suspect, beyond what the woman imagined.
Jesus sees, and is grateful for a gift much more wonderful and strangely comforting than the woman intended.
And no one around could have thought it.
Some were plotting to kill Jesus, but they didn’t think what it would really be like for the whole thing to be done.
Jesus did. He was aware of the danger he was in, of the plotters and betrayers and deserters, of the vulnerability of his situation – he had lived a life out in the open, generously giving himself to all, not shunning conflict, not afraid to do disturbing things, like riding into Jerusalem on a donkey and upturning tables in the temple, and talking about its being taken down, stone by stone, by its enemies who had their opportunity because Jerusalem refused his care and his peace (Matt 23.37-39) –
People had warned him not to go to Jerusalem because there were plots against his life, but he was determined to do what a prophet of the Lord had to do.
So when the dinner party was seething with politely covered suspicion and dislike of Jesus, his possible, likely, coming death was in his view. It did not divert him from his ministry, of love, truth-speaking, help to all, but he carried it as a burden, so his living involved constant effort and determination to do God’s will, in the spirit of God, and not to be frightened off-course, by what was frightening.
A couple of days later, aware it was his last supper, he gave his friends bread and
win-his body and blood.
Then night came and in Gethsemane, we see how Jesus felt the terrible reality of death as it was coming to him, physically, socially, spiritually.
It could be that a similar sense of his immediate future came to mind, when the woman anointed him. He would be killed, and dead. And dead bodies are anointed.
Perhaps Jesus saw all this in foreboding and imagination, but he did not focus on himself, on the sad condition of his being dead and anointed, but rather turns attention to what the woman is doing, and gratefully celebrates it.
And he celebrates it by expanding it, beyond the death, beyond the burial, which shuts him away from humanity and puts human living behind a stone, reaching into life, the life beyond his dying. He does not speak of his personal resurrection, as we tend to do, his being personally exalted on high. He is buried, he empties himself (Phil 2) but that is not the end: there is good news of God which is proclaimed in the whole world. And what the woman did to him will be part of the telling.
So Jesus said. In this way, Jesus valued what she had done.
But as we can see, his expectation was more hopeful than realistic.
He said wherever the Gospel was preached, her story will be told.
I have been listening to the Gospel being preached, in many places, for nearly ninety years, and I have heard no more than a handful of references to this woman’s action. But we can say, At least the story has been all this time in the Gospels and still is there now, so even if the church doesn’t make much of it, it is still with us in the Bible.
The important point, here, in my judgment, is that this saying of Jesus binds the history of his earthly life and ministry into the church’s post-resurrection witness.
Jesus went around doing good to people. He went on doing good right up to the end – hear him on the cross. And Jesus did not simply do good to people, he did good with people, and he engaged and encouraged people to join him in his work. He said to his disciples: You give the people something to eat.
And so, I read this story in this way. Jesus is reclining at the meal, not doing anything, like walking, or talking, or healing. And she comes, and anoints him, loving and caring. And so in this story, the active side of Jesus is in her hands, in her actions. The passive side, the people who lay around Jesus waiting, wanting to be healed, is in this story played by Jesus – he is weak, pressured, shortly to be buried.
And it is the woman who is the active person here, active as Jesus is in so many of the stories about him.
It is a story of a spreading partnership in the Gospel, which is not left to Jesus all on his own to do. He called disciples, and sent them out to preach good news and heal the sick. And in this story, a woman is not called, but somehow is moved by love and care, to do healing, edifying, work on Jesus. And Jesus says, This I am glad to see, this is in accord with the will of the Father, which I am following. She did it without any direction from me, but it is to be gladly owned. Wherever the Gospel is proclaimed, this must be told, for the Gospel is not truly told, is not spread towards the ends of the earth, if it is simply talking about me, as though there is nothing else.
The Gospel is that God sends Jesus, and Jesus serves, in order to draw all men to him, not draw them into a lazy religious consumerism, where God does all the work, and we have all the joy and comfort, but into real partnership, where we accompany Jesus, in doing good, in feeding the hungry, in speaking truth, in sharing the cross.
Mark 9.38
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We should not read this story as though, in 2026, we have Jesus reclining on the couch, physically before us, ready to be anointed. Or to have songs sung to him.
We have to hear it in the reality of our ‘here and now’ and not in some religious make-believe, which is not worthy of Jesus and persuades no honest person.
Do not touch me – John 20.17 – is a word calling for due respect…
You have the poor always with you.
And as much as you do it to one of the least of these my brethren, you do it to
me.
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This hymn, below the surface, is a beautiful commentary on the story of the woman anointing Jesus, highlighting the essentials of the relation between them, and calling us to live in a similar way
- Brother, sister, let me serve you;
let me be as Christ to you;
pray that I may have the grace to
let you be my servant too. - We are pilgrims on a journey,
and companions on the road
we are here to help each other
walk the mile and bear the load. - I will hold the Christlight for you
in the nighttime of your fear;
I will hold my hand out to you,
speak the peace you long to hear. - I will weep when you are weeping;
when you laugh I’ll laugh with you;
I will share your joy and sorrow,
till we’ve seen this journey through. - When we sing to God in heaven,
we shall find such harmony,
born of all we’ve known together
of Christ’s love and agony. - Brother, sister, let me serve you;
let me be as Christ to you;
pray that I may have the grace to
let you be my servant too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohy-vGSbkx8
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And there is resonance with this Gospel story to be heard in Talarico’s response to Trump’s charge that Talarico ‘insults Jesus’
https://www.facebook.com/reel/2099306584199966