Big things happen in little Bethany.  Bethany was on the road up to the Mount of Olives.  From the top of the Mount of Olives, you could see Jerusalem spreading out to left and right, the Temple prominent, magnificent in the sunlight.  It seems Jesus had several friends in Bethany, not just Lazarus and his two sisters.  We don’t know much about Simon the Leper except that he lived there in Bethany.  He was known as “the Leper,” which basically means an outcast.  I like to believe that, some time before, Jesus had healed him.  But Simon was still known, in that place, as “the Leper”: sometimes, what we had been remains in the minds of those around us, even long after God has worked change in us.  May our response to God’s grace in the lives of those He changes be to take them for who they have become in Christ, and to know them no longer as they had been, before Christ.

Simon, in gratitude and joy, opens his home to Jesus and his followers.  This was not a small group.  Having twelve or more guests in your home, especially if you haven’t prepared beforehand, can be a bit of a strain upon the pantry and fridge.  But Jesus never demanded the very best food or wine, or the softest cushions.  He just wants a place of welcome, where he can lavish his attention upon us and share his joy and peace with us: encourage, teach, bless.

They’re eating—nothing fancy, I’m sure: flatbread dipped in sour wine would have been typical.  Maybe some olives, some figs or dates.  Simple fare.  Simon would have wanted to do his best for Jesus, give his best.  I suppose he did.  It was simple fare, offered with genuine generosity, and gratitude.  Proverbs mentions something about a simple meal with love being far superior to a sumptuous meal with envy and resentment.  Amen.

We should never undervalue hospitality.  What does genuine, heartfelt hospitality look like?  I hope we know what it feels like!  From the top of our denominational ladder come regular finger waggings to the congregations to practice hospitality: be welcoming!  From that commanding height, the imperative to be welcoming means that we ought to be celebrating every hue of sexual proclivity.  For us on the ground, though, to be welcoming means we make it a conscientious point to let people—all people—know we are truly glad that the Spirit has guided them to this church, to be transformed along with us.  Beloved, when we trust that the Spirit is always at work, maybe especially on Sundays, it helps us to look with renewed eyes when we have guests, visitors, new people.

But we also have to look around.  We need to make it a point to notice, to go and say hello, introduce ourselves, and invite newcomers to sit with us at fellowship events, to join us for mission projects and Bible study.  We need to make it a point to reach out to them, as they will allow us; let us share prayerful concern for them.  This world is quite full enough of those no one ever notices; let’s not be as those who do not notice.

Those gathered there in Bethany that day definitely noticed when a woman—it’s John who tells us, later, that it was Mary, the sister of Lazarus—“came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard.  She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head” (14:3).  Mark, recording Peter’s memories, doesn’t specify who the woman was.  I think the point isn’t so much who the woman was but what she did.  We know there were also many women who followed Jesus as he went from one part of Judea to another.  They followed in awe, gratitude, hope, love, and the humble desire to be of some use, to have some place, some part in the kingdom: to be welcomed and to belong.  Then there were the people who, hearing that Jesus had come, suddenly find themselves making a decision to go, go to Jesus.  We know how Jesus will receive penitent sinners.  How will we receive them?

The perfumed oil the woman pours on the head of Jesus, as we’re told, was “made of pure nard.”  Nard may not sound so nice—I wouldn’t market a fragrance under that name: can you imagine?!  It’s clearly something quite special, though, and costly.  We’re also told it is pure: no mixture or dilution but genuine, 100%.  When I’ve preached on this event as John tells it, I’ve mentioned how exotic this perfume is: from a plant native to the foothills of the Himalayas—a long way from Bethany!—harvested and processed beneath those towering, snow-capped peaks, maybe in Nepal or the northernmost reaches of India, then transported the three thousand seven hundred or so miles to Judea—no wonder it was expensive!

The woman didn’t just pour the oil, she broke the jar to do it.  We might not be too familiar with alabaster, a type of gypsum (oh, yeah, that!).  Alabaster also could be expensive in the ancient world.  This woman was making a statement: never again, once for all—but also that through breaking there will be blessing.  The blessing pours out through the breaking.  We might regard this act of hers as a prophetic sign, similar to what we read in Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel.  In short, if we read this in the right spirit, her act is deeply spiritual, profound, and deeply loving.  She is giving her very best for Jesus, without regard for the cost to her.  Would that I would do the same!

The thing about symbols, actions, and intentions, though, is that—like Scripture—they can be read in quite different ways, depending upon who is doing the reading.  “Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, ‘Why this waste of perfume?  It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.’  And they rebuked her harshly” (14:4-5).  Some were saying—so it wasn’t only Judas grumbling, off to the side.  They were saying this “to one another,” so they didn’t quite mean to include Jesus in that conversation.  If your main draw to Jesus is what you take to be his fiery passion for the rights of the poor, his holy condemnation of the injustices society daily doles out to the poor, you’ll feel just as those did who criticized this lavish, wasteful gesture.  Sell everything and give the money to the poor, right?  Well, you first.  It’s easy to feel indignant and offended, especially just now, in our society.  It’s harder to stop and think, to let a voluntary, costly action sink in and make an impression upon our God-enlightened hearts.  That woman was giving her very best for Jesus, making a costly sacrifice for Jesus, gladly.  Well, she shouldn’t have done it that way.  That’s not what she should have done, if she really wanted to do something for Jesus.

Beloved, Christ calls us to have compassion for the poor, and not only those who suffer from a lack of material resources.  The message of Christianity, however, is not Help the Poor; the message of Christianity is confess your need for what God alone can give, and rejoice that He gives is to you, free to you and at unimaginable cost to Him.  That’s also what the woman with the broken jar of fragrant oil was showing: Jesus was anointed for a definite purpose, terrible and triumphant.  She was saying her heartfelt, heartbroken Amen!  Maybe, sometimes, we each need to give until it hurts.

Jesus isn’t happy with the criticizing—the judging!—the posturing and righteous indignation, all the assumed moral superiority: “Leave her alone [. . . .] Why are you bothering her?  She has done a beautiful thing to me” (14:6).  Oh, that we could each do a beautiful thing to Jesus, for Jesus!  But we can, you see: don’t you see?  Live by faith.  Love the Word.  Live your love for him, daily, especially in your interactions with others, even when—God help us!—they happen to be “those people.”  If we considered the love Jesus has for each person, that might just have an effect upon how we interact with each person.  He doesn’t love them because they are so wonderful or funny or trendy or sassy.  He doesn’t love them because they are misunderstood and badly treated by mean, ugly people with unenlightened views.  Jesus loves because it is his nature to love.  He wants that nature to come alive in all of us.  Not blind love or permissive love, which is no love at all, but Christ’s love: righteous love born of Spirit and truth.

“The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want.” (14:7).  If you want to help the poor, do so.  We can always do that, and not just through writing checks or taking donations of food or clothing to local charities—helpful as all that most certainly is.  Help the poor by befriending the poor.  Help the poor by opening your home to the poor, and your heart.  Cultivate a relationship not of pity but of friendship, be open to the idea that maybe a poor person can teach you something, even help you.

There’s not much point in talking about helping the poor but not actually helping the poor.  America has been going round and round about this for the better part of a century and more.  It’s hard being poor in America.  It’s even harder in El Salvador, or Malawi, or India.  Helping the poor can be personally costly: just go and buy a cart full of groceries for the poor even once a month and see.  It’s less, um, burdensome, to criticize those who do not seem by your estimation to care about the poor, and such criticism has the benefit of showing others in your so very enlightened, so very decent set how compassionate you are, and how righteously angry with the ones that intelligent, compassionate people are supposed to be angry with.  It’s always easier to complain than to do something: so much work!  Much easier, and so much more flattering, to pose for and play to the mirror.  We can always complain, and too often do, about what other people ought to be doing.  When we feel that inclination to complain gurgling up inside, let’s resolve to get busy on our own walk.  Let’s redirect that pointer to ourselves.  To turn the pointer isn’t to bless unrighteousness or to turn a blind eye to it.  True prayer, true humility, and God-honoring living rely upon faith.

Complaining is not action; it’s wearing and tearing upon the ties that hold us together.  Let’s each do what we are able, rather than complain about what others are or are not doing.  It seems to me this is what Jesus suggests, with that woman standing there in their midst—feeling how? Ashamed? At peace?—when he reminds them all, “She did what she could.  She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.  Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her” (14:8-9).  We each get the chance, at least once in this life, to do something big for Jesus: let’s do it without concern for the praise or censure of any man or woman but only with an eye and heart to glorifying God, showing and sharing our love for God, whose love for us flows and flows.

“Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them” (14:10).  Betrayal is always a betrayal of trust, a betrayal of love, a betrayal of relationship.  It arises from hurt, resentment, and the other unquiet inner demons we all carry around with us all through this life.  This is why we are now to live a life of penitence and prayer, because the misstep into darkness is never so very far from any of us.  Judas already had it in his heart to find some way to hurt Jesus, to hurt his fellow apostles, get his revenge, show them all.  Now, he had the righteous alibi he needed.  Oh, all the self-righteous alibis.