In the early spring of the year 33 AD, Jesus and His disciples had gone to Bethany at the call of Martha and Mary of Bethany. Bethany is a village located to the east of Jerusalem on the southeastern slope of the Mount of Olives, about a mile and a half from Jerusalem. Bethany was a place where Galileans stayed on their way to and from Jerusalem. It was also a place where there was a poorhouse, a place where the poor could live. In fact, some lepers even lived there, As Mark tells us, there was a leper named Simon who owned a house there.
In Bethany, Jesus had heard the plea of the two sisters about their dead brother Lazarus, who had died four days earlier. There, Jesus had wept at Lazarus’ tomb. And there, by the power of His Word spoken, Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. Word of this quickly made its way into Jerusalem, which was only about a mile and a half away.
In Jerusalem, the leaders of the Pharisees and the chief priests gathered to discuss the Jesus problem. They gathered together as the Sanhedrin, the great council of seventy elders who ruled the nation of Israel, subject to Roman governor.
John 11:47 “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”
The High Priest Caiaphas had heard of Lazarus being raised from the dead. When Caiaphas heard from his friends and the other leaders, made a comment, a very chilling comment. “You know nothing at all! 50 You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” He was the High Priest, and spoke for God. But like many prophecies throughout time, Caiaphas and the men around him did not realize just how much better off the nation of Israel, indeed the entire earth would be when Jesus died. They did not realize that Jesus’ death was part of God’s miraculous plan. They only knew that He was making them very uncomfortable. He would make them even more uncomfortable in the next few days, and then in the years to come.
Word came back to Bethany that the leaders of Jerusalem were plotting to kill Jesus. And so at that time, Jesus and His disciples went off to spend time in a small village in the wilderness outside of Jerusalem, to the northeast, a place called Ephraim. There, they planned what would happen on the day they entered Jerusalem for the great Passover festival in the spring of AD 33, a festival that was coming up in just a couple of weeks.
And as the people began to filter into Jerusalem for that great festival, an air of expectation was around, for people knew about Jesus of Nazareth, and they knew of the great deeds He had performed. They knew that He had healed the blind, cured the lame, cleaned lepers, and spoken harshly of Herod. They knew that Jesus had walked upon water, and cured paralytics, they had heard that Jesus had chased demons out of people, and now they heard about Lazarus being raised from the dead. And these people, like all people of all times, KNEW that people don’t come back from the dead unless God is involved.
The Saturday before Passover, Jesus and His disciples came back from little Ephraim. They came back into Bethany, to the inn which Martha and Mary operated, and that evening Jesus was the guest of honor at a banquet at the home of Simon the Leper. According to the custom of the day, the dinner was served around a low table and the guests reclined on pillows and low couches. One of the men who ate with Jesus that evening was Lazarus.
Martha scurried and ran around serving everyone. True to form, she found her place in life serving, in cooking and baking, and in preparing the table for her guests. Martha’s hospitality was on all the way, because this time she was serving Jesus, the man who had brought her brother Lazarus back from the dead. You can just imagine the smell of the cous-cous, the stuffed grape leaves, the lamb chops, the barley cakes, and the taste of the candied figs that were served that evening.
Martha was serving, running here and there. And then Mary stepped up. Mary was the younger sister, the sister who had always sat at Jesus’ feet and listened while He taught, making her older sister angry because she had to do all the catering, but Mary was hanging on every word that Jesus spoke. Mary came in that evening, and she had a special present for Jesus. She had purchased a pint of pure nard perfume in an alabaster jar.
Now we’re not sure just what this perfume was, but we’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities. It could have been oil of spikenard, which is a plant that grows in the Himalaya Mountains of India. If so, it would have been very, very expensive, because the perfume would have been carried by horse and camel back clear from India.
The other possibility is that this perfume was oil of lavender, because the ancient Greeks called lavender oil “nard”. If so, it would still have been expensive, and we see by Judas’ reaction that whichever it was, it cost a year’s wages – 300 denarii. A denarius was what a typical laborer earned in a day. Imagine a pint of perfume that cost $20,000 or more!
Mary takes the perfume, goes to where Jesus is laying on the pillows, pours the perfume on His head and feet and begins to wipe His feet with her hair. And the aroma of the perfume filled the room.
Judas Iscariot is outraged. ““Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” They were eating in a town known for having a poor house, and Mary had “wasted” this perfume instead of selling it and turning it into cash for the poor.
It is clear that John the Gospel writer was not impressed with Judas. John mentions that Judas was concerned about money because Judas was the keeper of the common treasury and that Judas was a thief who used to embezzle money from the moneybag.
"Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. 8 You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”
Jesus references Deuteronomy 15:11: 11 “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.”
Here we see a tension between the teachings of Jesus. On the one hand, we often see Jesus helping the poor, healing them, and chewing out wealthy people for not being more generous and helpful toward the poor. On the other hand, here a woman has just poured $20,000 of perfume on His feet and He says to leave her alone. Hasn’t she just wasted money that could have been given to the poor?
Once again, Jesus reminds us of two facts.
First, there will always be poor in the land. Nothing we can do will ever stop this from happening – but we still work toward helping the poor.
But second, God the Son, Jesus Christ, is more important to have with you than any good deed you can do or anything you can give to the poor. Given a choice between giving the poor a year’s wages and introducing them to Christ, it is better to introduce them to Christ.
Isn’t this awfully egotistical of Jesus? No. Not really, because of a third fact:
When you’re truly the best, it isn’t egotistical to claim that you are the best. And Jesus was and is the Son of God, God Himself walking on the earth. And you can’t get better than that.
So when Jesus says “Leave her alone. You will always have the poor with you, but you won’t always have me.” It should remind us that there is nothing, nothing, nothing you can do to help someone more than to introduce them to Jesus.
- Buy a man a fish – He’ll eat for a day.
- Teach a man to fish – He’ll eat the rest of his life.
- But become a fisher of men, and those men will live forever with God.
You see, two hundred years ago, a man named Friedrich Schleiermacher began teaching his churches that part of our responsibility as Christians was to change the society around us to help the poor. This was the beginning of what we call today “Social Justice”. It was also the beginning of soup kitchens, of clothes closets, urban missions, food pantries and other good works that churches do for the poor.
And as much as it brings our churches into contact with the desperate members of society, this is a good thing. It allows us to share with all people the Gospel – not just those people who are wealthy or middle-class.
But somewhere along the way, these types of missions took a wrong turn.
You see, in the beginning, the goal was to help struggling people come to Christ and thus solve their most basic spiritual need, and the strategy that was used was to provide for their desperate physical needs such as food, clothing, clean water, education, and housing.
But over the years, the goal and the strategy got reversed. Instead, we see many churches today where the goal of their missions is to provide for people’s physical needs. Their very real spiritual need for Christ is often ignored, or limited to handing out a tract, a booklet, or a testament – if that. You see, it is cleaner and not as messy to donate money, to stand on one side of a serving line handing out food or clothing than it is to actually sit down and listen to people, to pray for those people, to treat them as friends and neighbors rather than as people who are of a different group from us. And that’s what our missions often do: We make sure that it is very, very clear who is giving and who is receiving, who is doing good works and who is receiving the benefits of the good works, who is the patron and who is the client, who is the wealthy person serving, and who is the poor person receiving.
And that’s why it’s important that we always remember that whatever good deeds we do are for the purpose of helping someone understand who Jesus Christ is and how much Christ loves them. Our purpose, our goal, our mission is to bring people to Christ. And when we do that, we must end up rubbing elbows with people, we must end up talking and listening with people, we must sit down together, and we must become friends and remember that we aren’t so very different. And then the Spirit has changed us both for the better.
And notice I said “our mission is to bring people to Christ”. Our mission is not to grow this church, it is to bring people to Christ. If you figure out a way to bring fifty people together, have them worship Christ each week, teach them to love each other and God, then I don’t care if those people are sitting here in church every Sunday morning. If some do, that’s great. But that’s a side effect of what happens when we really understand God’s mission for us – people are naturally attracted to a place and people who are filled with the Holy Spirit of God, to a place where people are always praising God, to a place where the people are constantly trying to do God’s will. And it doesn’t matter whether it is a church building or a dumpy bar a few miles from the church. Where the Spirit is, things will happen!
And that is why we encourage people to attend Sunday school and our mid-week studies. It is to learn more about how to listen to God’s Word and God’s Holy Spirit, and to do God’s will. If you’ve attended our Sunday school classes and find them dull or boring, and you have an idea for another class, I’m always looking for teachers who are passionate about the subject. See me – we have room for another class or two before we get cramped. And if you are one of the people who has found those classes interesting and exciting - keep attending and helping each other!
Jesus has pointed out that there are Good Deeds – like giving money to the poor – and there are More Important Things – like being with Him, learning about Him, doing His work, and worshipping Him. You see, Jesus is really the key to everything, and if you want to really help someone, the single best thing you can do for them is to introduce him or her to Jesus, to explain what Jesus did for them, to explain that Jesus died for them because God loves them so much, and then to help your friend choose to follow Jesus.
After the dinner that evening, word got back to the people in Jerusalem that Jesus and Lazarus had been seen at Bethany. And from that time, the Sanhedrin decided that not only Jesus had to die, but also Lazarus. For you see, there is only one person more dangerous than a man who can raise the dead, and that is a man who can tell you he’s been raised from the dead. And so church tradition has it that Lazarus and his sisters soon had to leave Bethany and make their way to the coast, where they caught a boat to the Island of Cyprus and Lazarus later became a bishop there.
Which brings us to the question of death and resurrection. In 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, the Apostle Paul points out “For Christ’s love compels us, since we have reached this conclusion: If One died for all, then all died. And He died for all, so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the One who died for them and was raised.”
At Jerusalem a week after the dinner at Simon the Leper's house, Jesus was executed by crucifixion. Jesus died a real death. He stayed on that cross until He died that day, even though He could have called upon any number of angels to rescue Him, although He could have used His miraculous life-giving power that had fed thousands of people, that had allowed Him to walk on water, that had healed any number of people. Jesus stayed on that cross because He chose to become a sacrifice for each one of us, to pay the fine that cleared the accounting books for each of us, that let us be reconciled with God, that balanced the books with God for each of us. He could have escaped – but He chose to stay and die for us.
And so Paul wrote: “For Christ’s love compels us, since we have reached this conclusion: If One died for all, then all died.”
That day at Golgotha, the place of the skull just outside the walls of Jerusalem, Jesus died for all people. And so, when this happened, by rights, our independent life also died. Our selfish, independent, lonely life was finished, done, completely over. No longer could we simply say, “No one cares for me and so I don’t care for anyone.”
No, as Paul says:
“If One died for all, then all died. And He died for all, so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the One who died for them and was raised.”
It is only right that when we recognize what Jesus did for us, when we understand His sacrifice, when we realize what His love brought forth for us, it is then that we should begin to live eternally, not for ourselves, but for Jesus.
Since Jesus gave us this eternal life, it is only right that we should live that life for Him instead of for ourselves. Our eternal life was given and is sustained by Him. And so what does it mean to live for Jesus?
First, we are to trust that His way is good for us. Surely, the One who sacrificed His own life for us will lead us along a good path.
Next, if we truly trust in Him, we will try to imitate Him, knowing that His path and His commands are good for us. For example, shall we actually turn the other cheek “seven times seventy” times, as He tells us to do? Shall we actually let our personal honor go away and instead forgive people when they insult us repeatedly, when they do harm to us, when they are mean and nasty and spitefully use us? Jesus told us to forgive all – to turn the check “seven times seventy” times. (If you're math-challenged, that is 490 times!) Shall we actually do this – even or especially when it is difficult, when we’ve been insulted for the fifteenth time today, when others have mistreated us, when we are sick and tired of taking it? Well, that’s what Jesus asked us to do!
Third, if we truly trust in Him and try to imitate Him, shall we work to polish off our rough edges, shall we try to understand everything He taught us, shall we attempt to become reflections of our Master, so that when people look at us they see Him? Or will we instead stop, declaring that “that’s just the way I’ve been ever since I was young?” Or will we decide that we want to hold onto certain habits, certain habits that Jesus wants us to break, shall we hold onto those habits just because they’ve been part of us for years and decades? Or shall we shed those habits because we no longer live for ourselves and we want that old self to die dead permanently and instead for us to live in harmony with Jesus eternally?
And finally, if we trust in Him, imitate Him, and polish our rough edges, shall we become people who are so filled with joy and the Holy Spirit that people will come to us and say, “Why are you so happy? How did you get to be so generous? Why do you always talk about Jesus so much?” And then you tell them that the person that once was you was pretty rotten, so you let that person die with Christ, and now a new person lives in your body, a person with an abundant life, a person with a wonderful future, a person who looks forward to a beautiful eternal life with God. Will you become joyful and let that joy show to other people?
When we look at the New Testament, we see a handful of people who clearly died and were brought back to a new life by Jesus. Lazarus, the widow’s son, Jairus’ daughter. Later, Peter resurrected Tabitha, and Paul may have resurrected Eutychus after he fell asleep and fell out of a third story window, the first recorded case of someone falling asleep from a sermon that went on too long.
But here is the truth: All people who believe that Jesus is the Son of God and choose to follow Him experience a death of their old person and their old spirit, and now find themselves as a newly resurrected person, now animated by the Holy Spirit. Their spirit has been killed and they’ve been given a new Spirit, only their bodies remain to die and be resurrected.
And so I say to you: LIVE! Do not walk through this life as though you are a zombie, barely alive, a walking corpse with no spirit. Instead, lift up your heads and understand that Jesus’ Holy Spirit now speaks to you and is ready to lead you into all truth. What a glorious thought!
Mary poured the most costly perfume possible on Jesus’ feet and wiped it with her hair. Mary was anointing her Lord as her king – and she was anointing Jesus as our king. What greater act of worship for God can you imagine? Mary was now committed to Jesus, Mary wasn’t turning back, Mary had taken the final step and moved forward that evening. She would follow Jesus to His death and burial and beyond, because He had shown her kindness, He had brought her loved one back from the grave, He had taught her a completely new way of life. And so she worshiped Him, as millions of others have throughout history. She made her commitment that evening at Simon the Leper’s house. I know many of you have believed in Jesus, I know many of you have been baptized, I know many of you have been confirmed in the faith, but I’m asking you today…have you committed yourself to following Jesus and His teachings NO MATTER WHAT? Mary did that that evening. She made that commitment.
Actions have consequences. After Jesus and Lazarus were seen together that evening, after the annointing by Mary, events began which moved quickly over the next few days. For the next morning, Jesus and His disciples, the friends at the banquet, the thousands of people of Galilee who had traveled a hundred miles, and the men and women of Jerusalem who had come out to Bethany to see Jesus and Lazarus, the man He had resurrected, as well as Martha and Mary and Simon the Leper – All of these people awoke early that morning and began the short walk, the mile-and-a- half in the early morning sun up, up, up the Mount of Olives to where the road crosses the peak at the tiny town of Bethphage, and then down below them, they saw the first rays of sunlight hitting Jerusalem, the Holy City, and they saw the glittering Temple of God in the City of David. And then….
I’ll tell you that part of the story next week.
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