Bible Reading: John 12:1-8
Dear Friends
Jesus’ response in this week’s reading John 12: 1-8, to Judas sounds surprisingly gentle, given all the other ways this passage sets up that disciple as the villain. Jesus speaks more to us, to those who wonder if Mary’s apparent recklessness sets a dangerous precedent. When he says, “You always have the poor with you,” he does not diminish the seriousness of poverty and the imperative for charity. Possibly he alludes to Deuteronomy 15:11, which commands generosity toward the poor precisely “since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth.”
As punctuated by the anointing for burial, Jesus looks toward his death, contrasting his impending departure with the perennial opportunity to serve the poor. The spectre of Jesus’ death makes a deed like Mary’s strangely appropriate, because it emanates from love and expresses understanding about Jesus and what he must do.
Somehow, I this passage offers us an opportunity to think about the gospel in ways beyond words, speaking, and reading. Does grace have a scent? It can be worth the effort to reflect on Jesus and his work in terms of meaningful smells and sensations. Rudyard Kipling wrote, “Smells are surer than sounds or sights / To make your heart-strings crack.” Most people have experienced a smell that floods the mind with arresting memories of a person, place, or event. Olfaction, emotion, and memory share closely networked real estate in the brain’s limbic system. Our sense of smell relates closely to how we experience life and process significant memories. Mary’s gift emits an aroma that saturates the house and the minds of everyone in it. How does that passionate aroma persist even today? What real-life experiences does Jesus’ death forever define, like a scent we never forget?
The Sweet Aroma of Jesus’ Death
The pairing of Mary and Judas creates a rhetoric of contrast, notice a variety of oppositions:
- Mary and Judas contrast true and false discipleship, as well as true and false love.
- The fragrance of the perfume strikes a contrast to Jesus’ death and burial. Our interpretation of the scene cannot ignore the gloom. Mary does not anoint Jesus as king or Messiah; she anoints a corpse. If the beautiful scent and ugly crucifixion seem incongruent, then we are onto John’s strange logic whereby Jesus is lifted onto a cross so that he might attract all to himself (12:32).
- Lavish devotion contrasts critical stinginess. This passage gives permission, so to speak, to honour Jesus in extravagant ways, perhaps even by giving a massive donation to the poor. It warns against mistaking discipline for discipleship. It embraces affection as part of a devotion to Jesus that is nothing less than the costly, precious gift of one’s whole self-down to every last strand of hair.