John 12:1-8
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
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In a 2013 piece entitled, “Why I make terrible decisions, or, poverty thoughts,” an anonymous young woman reflects on the cycle of poverty and its debilitating effects:
You have to understand that we know that we will never not feel tired. We will never feel hopeful. We will never get a vacation. Ever. We know that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor. It doesn't give us much reason to improve ourselves. We don't apply for jobs because we know we can't afford to look nice enough to hold them...
I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don't pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It's not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn't that I blow five bucks at Wendy's...It is not worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purchase. I will never have large pleasures to hold on to. There's a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there's money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing.
Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain...It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don't plan long-term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken. It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.
Poverty takes on many faces. A single parent trying to raise kids on a single income plus whatever child support might come through. A retiree on a fixed income facing increasing medical expenses. A new college graduate trying to piece together enough part time jobs to pay rent on a first apartment and maintain a car hardly worth the price of the gas in its tank. A family where one parent has lost a job unexpectedly. A farmer whose fields have been destroyed by floods. A person unable to work who is waiting to hear back about unemployment or disability benefits. An immigrant family trying to create a new life from scratch.
Whatever the circumstances, the effect is the same: poverty of any sort robs you of the big picture; it orients your thoughts and habits around the present moment, around the urgency of the day. Poverty makes the future a luxury that you cannot afford. It makes hope a risk too great ever to take. It forces you to stay stuck.
The poor you have with you always, indeed.
When I hear Jesus say this, I hear him grieving this cycle of poverty, and the persistence with which it robs people of the future and turns hope into an unaffordable luxury.
I hear Jesus grieving Judas and all Judases who only care about poverty when it is convenient or profitable to do so; all those who would capitalize on someone else’s misfortune.
The problem with Judas is that he sees this false dichotomy at play - like you can be generous to those in need or you can be generous in your love of Jesus, but you can’t do both. (Never mind that it is his intent to do neither...)
But let’s remember that Jesus has called himself and his ministry “good news for the poor.” And that Jesus tells us that whatever we do for the “least of these” we do to him.
Remember that Jesus isn’t doing anything new in his concern for those who are poor or oppressed or in need - the Hebrew scriptures are filled with concern for the vulnerable within the community, and even concern for the vulnerable stranger. At least half of the work of the prophets was calling out the rich for ignoring the poor, and calling out the powerful for hoarding their privilege. And even before that, we have the law given to Moses, including provisions for caring for widows and travelers and the hungry, and even this thing called the Jubilee year in which land and wealth and freedom are all redistributed and there’s a big communal reset, so no one is simply stuck in poverty or slavery across generations.
Jesus understands himself as the one who can bring fulfillment to all of this, the one who can actually restore the world to God’s original intent; Jesus is the one who brings into the world not only a new way of accessing God’s grace and mercy, but also a whole kingdom, planted among us like seeds waiting to flower, where those who are poor are not just tolerated, but blessed, and where those in poverty will be raised up, even as the rich are pulled down, and the hungry will be filled with good things…a kingdom that, when fulfilled, looks like at a cosmic jubilee.
And the only problem with all of this is that Jesus will die before this kingdom comes to full blossom. He who has begin the work will be the one who will die for it. There is this promise of a world restored, but it hasn’t yet come to fulfillment.
And so when Jesus says “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me,” I also think Jesus grieves for himself. Grieves for the brevity of his own life; the way that there is so much kingdom work to do, but so little time left to do it. Grieves that poverty and human need will outlive him, by thousands of years.
In some ways he is living in his own state of poverty, where he has no future worth planning for, no luxury of long-term planning; all he has are a series of present moments, living whatever bits of life he can, seeking affirmation of his humanity, his worth, his existence, as he is about to lose everything.
Mary recognizes his urgency, his poverty. And does the only thing she can think of: she performs an act of love. Reckless generosity of spirit to match the reckless despair of the moment.
I wonder why Mary had, at some point in the past, decided to save up a years’ wages to purchase that jar of perfume. I wonder what she sacrificed to squirrel away that money. I wonder if she saw that jar as an investment or as a luxury. I wonder about what she was saving it for, if not for this moment.
I wonder what it was like for Mary, to make that expensive decision to anoint Jesus with that perfume, its scent filling the room to overflowing; I wonder if she was thinking about how Jesus at Cana turned water into expensive wine overflowing, a sign of the way that he came to earth to pour out grace upon grace; life abundant.
It is Mary’s act of love that prepares Jesus for his final journey. She anoints him, as if for burial, reassuring him that he is loved, and this love gives him strength to face the days ahead.
Jesus will, in short order, perform a similar act of love, washing his disciples’ feet, and I think that this act of love is meant to give the disciples strength to face their days ahead, too; in fact, Jesus will give them a new command, that they love one another, and he is going to charge them with continuing his work of mercy and justice. He gives his future to the disciples. He hands over the work of the kingdom to us.
As it turns out, the phrase, “you always have the poor with you” can also be translated, “keep the poor always with you.” This means that the life’s work of a Christ-follower is to stick with those who are struggling, to keep the needs of the world in front of our eyes when it would be easier to ignore them, to take responsibility for one another, to build relationships, to show love and to be love, even when the world sees it as totally inefficient or expensive or reckless.
We love Jesus by loving the world, and this means being generous with money and stuff; generous with advocacy and opportunity; generous with compassion and patience and grace and affirmation for those who need to know that they are seen, they matter, and they are loved.
And in the end, it isn’t at all about whether you sell the perfume or dump it all out, because the truth of the matter is that you are the jar of perfume, the sweet fragrance of God’s hope in this world. Christ cracks your heart open that he might pour out through you his extravagant love for all of God’s children and all of God’s creation.
Author Joanna Macy writes, “The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.” This is what Judas couldn’t see. This is what Jesus knew, deeply. That when we break open the perfume, we are making room to take into our embrace the whole world. When Christ’s body is broken, he opens the world to hope, and we are the ones who carry that hope with us, to all of the broken places, to be his hands and feet, to break our hearts so that others can find life.
Blessing of Balm
When we see
the body of Christ
still broken in this world,
may we meet it
with lavish grace
and pour ourselves out
with extravagant love.
—Jan Richardson