OIA 14.1-11

Observations

• Who: chief priests and scribes, Simon the Leper, the unnamed woman, indignant observers, Jesus, Judas
• When: two days before the Passover
• Where: Simon’s house in Bethany
• What: an extravagant public display by a woman to Jesus; Jesus’ teaches about costly sacrifice; Judas commits himself to betrayal.
• Connections: the plotting of the religious leadership; a unexpected woman with eyes to see; costly sacrifice; disciples misunderstanding what is happening.
• Contrasts: murder conspiracy/sacrificial worship; eyes to see/unaware; extravagant gift/stingy self-serving; worship Jesus/serve the poor.
• Responses to Jesus: murder plot; worship; indignation; intentional betrayal

Interpretation

• The elite of the Jewish religious establishment are conspiring to murder a wandering, poor prophet. By contrast Jesus chooses to spend one of his last evenings with the least, the last, and the lost. What a picture of the difference between religion and the kingdom of God. The supposed alliance between the state and the kingdom could hardly be drawn in starker contrast.
• Simon – where does he come from? Is he the leper healed in 1.40? How does a leper end up owning a house in Bethany? And why does Jesus go here immediately following his climactic confrontation in the temple? What is Jesus doing spending his last hours with an unclean outcast? Jesus’ presence at Simon’s likely shocked those who heard this story.
• The unnamed woman is yet another cameo appearance in Mark’s narrative of an unexpected outsider who has eyes to see Jesus, understand exactly who and what Jesus is, and fully follow his lead. When was the last time we saw someone in Mark do something only to bless Jesus, with no strings or personal agenda? This anonymous woman stands out as a contrast not only to the characters in this pericope, but to virtually everyone so far in this gospel. And again, Mark’s listeners would have been shocked by making an anonymous, emotional, extravagant woman the hero of this story.
• Jesus knows just what will happen in three days: he will do just what the woman does here, pour out his priceless blood in an irrevocable act of obedience and devotion to his father. Yet he calls the woman’s gift a beautiful thing, something so intertwined with his own story that her what she has done will be proclaimed wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world!
• The indignant observers still do not understand what Jesus is about and are offended by costly, wasteful, irrevocable personal sacrifice. Judas is not alone in his rejection of Jesus’ core values of costly sacrifice with the intent to bless the undeserving.
• Judas is propelled by this event into active, intentional betrayal. Perhaps he at last understands from this woman’s sacrifice that Jesus does in fact intend to pour out his own life, and that Jesus really does expect his followers to follow him and lose their lives for his sake and the gospel’s. Judas utterly rejects Jesus’ strategy of redemption and transformation.

Application

• Live large in worship; be extravagant!
• Always focus on costly sacrifice when explaining the gospel.