When Jesus had finished all he had to say, he said to his disciples, ‘You know that in two days’ time it will be Passover, when the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.’
Meanwhile the chief priests and the elders of the people met in the house of the high priest, Caiaphas, and discussed a scheme to seize Jesus and put him to death. ‘It must not be during the festival,’ they said, ‘or there may be rioting among the people.’
Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, when a woman approached him with a bottle of very costly perfume; and she began to pour it over his head as he sat at table. The disciples were indignant when they saw it. ‘Why this waste?’ they said. ‘It could have been sold for a large sum and the money given to the poor.’ Jesus noticed, and said to them, ‘Why make trouble for the woman? It is a fine thing she has done for me. You have the poor among you always, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body it was her way of preparing me for burial. Truly I tell you: wherever this gospel is proclaimed throughout the world, what she has done will be told as her memorial.’
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Through Holy Week I shall be sending round my brief thoughts on the Passion Narrative in Matthew’s Gospel (chapters 26 and 27). Later in the week the readings will be much longer than this one . . . that’s just how the story goes. Our reading begins with a plain statement of Jesus to his disciples, which they will not have understood. It was, after all, unthinkable that God’s Messiah could be crucified. So this “Son of Man” Jesus was talking about must (they would have thought) be someone other than himself.
But Jesus knew very well by this time where the road he had freely chosen to take would bring him. And although we are then given a glimpse of the chief priests and their allies plotting, in truth they were the unconscious agents of what God had already planned. We are just a few days short of the Passover, that great festival that celebrated the people’s liberation from slavery. It was necessary, Caiaphas and the others decided, to deal with this troublesome preacher before then. Time is short, then; the forces of darkness draw ever closer.
Yet the chief priests had not set out to do something evil, just for the sake of it. They were able to persuade each other that this was the only way to keep the peace, the difficult but manageable status quo by which Jerusalem the holy city accommodated itself to the Roman presence at its heart. Many bad things happen in our world not because of evil intent, but because people are short-sighted and self-interested, and don’t look beyond the immediate impact of their actions.
Jesus, meanwhile, is anointed with costly oil. We’re not told who by in this version of the story, but the disciples are appalled at the waste. Jesus rebukes them, telling them - though again they won’t have understood him - that she has anointed him for his burial. The disciples were speaking with the voice of common sense and prudence, but there are times when that is not enough, and this is one of them. Love is not something to be calculated or rationed, and love is what motivated this woman to do what she did. The greatest gifts are those we can barely afford, those that involve sacrifice. And sometimes the only opportunity we have to do something right and good is now: if it isn’t done at the moment we have, it won’t be done at all.
Thank you, Lord, for all whose service and sacrifice is so important to all of us right now.
“We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you,
because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world”
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