“A tipping point”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Wednesday, August 30, 2023
Mark 14:1-11 (Forward, p. 32) CEV p. 1047
So, all of a sudden, what happened? In verses 10-11 we read of Judas Iscariot going to the Temple authorities with an offer of help—that is, to help them arrest Jesus out of the sight and earshot of the crowds. After all, the authorities were afraid that the crowds might riot if they caught wind of it, so they wanted to do it in secret. So, what happened with Judas, who, up until now, seemed just like ‘one of the Twelve’, solid, reliable, loyal and trustworthy. Nothing stands out marking him as anything different than the others.
Mark doesn’t tell us but John, in the gospel bearing his name, does (see John 12:1-8). Matthew and Mark both mention the seeming waste of this perfume by Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, and also mention the dismay and objections over her action by Jesus’ disciples. John, however, identifies Judas Iscariot as the chief protester, and actually provides a reason for it. He tells us that Judas kept the common purse and would sometimes steal from it. And so, in Mary simply pouring out this perfume on Jesus willy-nilly constituted a sizeable loss of potentially accessible funds for Judas to pilfer. Such, it would seem, was his real motivation, not a supposed concern for the poor! And so, this little incident, this seemingly minor occasion, became the ‘tipping point’ for Judas. However, one really has to wonder whether this was all there was. Surely there must have been other factors, incidents, and grudges that lay behind this act of disloyalty and treachery. Usually, there are a series of things, a series of unhappy experiences and times of disappointment and disillusionment that lead up to such an act. Unfortunately, however, we will never know.
Sadly, history is littered with instances of such disloyalty and treachery: the two bodyguards who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, or the Cambridge dons who handed over British defence secrets to the Communists, the American traitor Benedict Arnold who went over to the side of the British and actually fought for them, the Danish collaborator with the Nazis, Vidkun Quisling, Guy Fawkes, the man who tried to blow up Parliament, Cassius and Brutus, who assassinated Julius Caesar, or Ephialtes of Trachis, who let the Persians in on a secret way to outflank the
Spartan forces at the Battle of Thermopylae. With most of them we will never know their motivations or their thinking.
However, my thinking is that this treachery, this disloyalty, probably began small, with small hurts and grievances, which were just allowed to fester and grow. Or, perhaps, with some ‘presenting sin’, such as the greed that seems to have motivated Judas and Ephialtes. Or, perhaps, with Judas, a fear of being found out or being thwarted in his thievery. Anyway, what this says to me is that we need to monitor and safeguard our thoughts and ambitions and habits, nip any wayward ones in the bud, and deal with resentments, hurts and injuries right away. This applies to us and God, of course, but also to us and the others around us.
Forward notes: ”Why was the ointment wasted in this way?” (verse 4b)
“Many years ago, I went to a fine store to buy a birthday gift for my wife. I had decided to spend $50, but as I toured the store, I could hear the amount growing by the second. When I finally found the perfect gift—a Franz porcelain vase and teacups—the price tag had grown to $300. I knew they were the perfect gift because after I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep, so I got up, went downstairs, and found my wife staring in rapture at the vase!
“The nameless woman who entered the house of Simon the Leper emptied her precious ointment on Jesus’s head. Yes, some moments are meant for caution, but this was not one. Her ointment was not a fungible commodity, liable to being turned into money for the poor. It was her gift, her extravagant offering to Jesus, a foreshadowing of anointing his body for burial.
“this woman’s gift is an example of God’s love, a reminder that extravagance is the mode of our saviour. Way beyond the necessary, Jesus’s love for the world overflows beyond all caution.”
Moving Forward: “What gifts can you offer with extravagance?”
A concluding note or two: I find that I have to beg to differ with our author on a couple of points. The ointment was definitely a saleable commodity, otherwise, the objections of the disciples makes no sense at all. And, as for being a ‘nameless woman’, John’s account of this same incident makes
it quite clear that it was Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, would also explain her otherwise inexplicable extravagance.