You Always Have the Poor - Reflections on John 12:1-8, Lent 5, Year C

by John C. Holbert on Sunday, February 9, 2025

          As usual, when one enters the world of the Gospel of John, one must immediately sharpen the eyes, watching carefully for meanings of the text that move well beyond the expected. All three Synoptic gospels present this scene to us: the anointing of Jesus with ointment and the application of that anointment by means of a woman. Mark 14:3-9 speaks of an unnamed woman who does the anointing act, applying a “jar of very costly ointment of nard” on Jesus’s head. Matthew 26:6-13 also presents an unnamed woman as the chief actor, speaking of a “very costly ointment” applied to Jesus’s head. Both Mark and Matthew also have the element of the anger of the disciples for the waste of money represented, which could have been given to the poor, and Jesus’s rebuke suggests that what she has done is “prepare me for burial.” Luke 7:36-50 paints a different scene, both more detailed and with a more complex cast of characters. For Luke, the woman is now “a sinner of the city,” who apparently slips into the Pharisee’s house uninvited and “stood behind him (Jesus), weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair.” Only then does she employ the ointment, and only after she has “continued kissing” his feet. Luke’s account is much more intimate; an unknown woman, a sinner of the city, weeps and kisses Jesus’s feet, and then rubs the costly ointment on those feet. 

         The Pharisee who had invited Jesus to his house and who witnesses what to him is a most shocking and repulsive scene, “said to himself (does he mutter this phrase or merely think it?) ‘If this man were (really) a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him—she is a sinner!” Luke presents a scene excruciatingly embarrassing to a Pharisaic pillar of the community, and, as he often does, uses the occasion for Jesus to teach Simon, the Pharisee, by means of a parable. It is a story about the level of forgiveness that ought to be provided for two persons deeply in debt, one far more than the other. Which one, asks Jesus, “will love him (the creditor) more?” Well, mutters Simon (no doubt grudgingly), “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” Correct, says Jesus. Now have a look at this woman’s actions. I came to your house, and no one washed my feet; she did. You gave me no kiss (of greeting), but she did. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she did. Because she has “shown great love,” her sins are forgiven. And Jesus pronounces to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” There is no talk of the wasting of ointment here in Luke, no talk of the poor.

         But in John, as is usually the case, the focus moves elsewhere. Right after we have seen the long story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead by the power of Jesus (John 11:38-44), Lazarus is twice mentioned as present at the scene of the anointing. But now it is Mary who is the woman who anoints Jesus, she who in the Lazarus story questioned what Jesus was doing, especially his delay in coming (11:32); but now she is the anointed of his feet, using the very expensive “perfume made of pure nard.” And the odor of the rich perfume fills the house, an echo perhaps of the stench of death that Martha warns Jesus of at Lazarus’s grave (11:39). Now John turns to Judas Iscariot, warning us ahead of the events themselves (“the one who was about to betray him”), and has him say with deep scorn, “Why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor?” (John 12:5). In an aside, John informs his readers that Judas was not at all concerned with the poor, “because he was a thief,” and dipped regularly into the common purse of which he had charge and took some for himself. 

         “Leave her alone,” charges Jesus. “She bought it so that she might keep it for my burial.” In other words, John wants us to know that Mary recognizes the central role that Jesus must play in the act of salvation—his hour has now come, and Mary announces it here. Immediately, Jesus comes to Jerusalem and rides into the city, beginning the end of his earthly life and moving toward his final destiny as Son of God. That is the theological import of John’s reading of the anointing of Jesus by Mary.

         Of course, there is another important element in John’s account. He makes a direct connection between the thievery of Judas and the constant presence of the poor among us. Judas’ selfishness is an unfortunately continuous reality of human society that leads inexorably to the existence of the poor. Those who would employ this verse as some sort of rationale for the unsolvable problem of the poor—“well, they are always here, alas! What are you going to do about it?”— miss the point that John makes. As long as there are Judases among us, there will be poor, since the thievery of the former leads to the certainty of the latter. Far from a claim that the problem of the poor cannot be solved, John makes it plain that the existence of the poor is far from necessary in a society where selfishness does not rule our behaviors.

         Perhaps John’s theological concern to point his story toward the glorification of Jesus in his death and resurrection is directly connected to the relationship between Judas as thief and the presence of the poor. If the former is given its full power and authority, the latter might find its ultimate solution. For John, correct theology leads to a better society where all find their hopeful place. Are our eyes and hearts keen enough to follow this road that John has opened to us?