Monday, March 26, 2018
Burial perfume
John 12:5
“Why was this fragrant oil not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”
There is a curious funeral tradition practised by some in Guyana where I live. On the day of the funeral, someone buys and brings a bottle of perfume or cologne which they spray on the body lying in the casket. They leave the bottle in or on the casket and as other mourners come by, they each take up the bottle and spray some of the fragrance on the body. We don’t know how this tradition got started or what is the basis or belief associated with it. Research is ongoing.
Perfuming the body for burial, is, however, not peculiar to Guyana, there are many other traditions and practices around the world and in a variety of cultures and processes. In the time of Jesus, there was a burial tradition where the body was anointed with a fragrant oil as part of the preparation for embalming. Later, when Jesus’ body was taken down from the cross, John 19:39,40, we see Nicodemus, the guy who was on the night move, organised a mixture of fragrant spices and had the body prepared according to the customs of the time.
This, of course, as we now know, was foreshowed by the so-called three wise men from the East who followed the star and came to the house where the young Jesus was with gifts that included myrrh which is used in the anointing for burial, Matthew 2:11.
All of this brings us to the curious case of the anointing of Jesus while he was yet alive, as is recorded in the passage we are looking at today, John 12:1-8. Before we go any further let us note some complications with the narrative. The disciples didn’t keep journals or diaries and so every now and then we get different chronologies in the accounts of Jesus’ activities. And, as in today’s story, we can even get some different people in the story.
John records that this story took place at the house where Lazarus lived in Bethany and that Mary was the one who was at the centre of the anointing of Jesus. Matthew, 26:6-13 and Mark, 14:3-9 puts the anointing at the home of Simon the Leper, also in Bethany, and involved an unnamed woman. Doctor Luke, 7:37-39, puts the incident at the home of a Pharisee named Simon with the involvement of another unnamed woman who is cited as being sinful.
That these are three different incidents seems unlikely, just by the unique nature of the event. It is most likely one story where the recording got mixed up in the oral traditions of the time before writing. The timing of the incident is also a challenge. John, in his account, not only placed the event at the home of Lazarus, he placed it before the entry into Jerusalem. The other accounts placed it after.
As usual, the mix up of some of the attendant details never take away from the importance of the story or the lessons to be learned. We’ll stick primarily with John’s account since in it we get a number of side details to which we will return. For example, we learn in this account that Judas was always a bandit who was stealing from the money box. Judas, with his criminal mind, obviously missed both the devotion and humility of the woman and the deeper spiritual meaning of her actions. All he saw was a missed opportunity for more money to get into the bag where he had his hand.
Jesus, as we established before, was born into a death sentence and events and people, wittingly and unwittingly all kept pointing to His gruesome end. It seems clear that this woman was an unwitting participant in the unfolding spiritual drama with its climax on the cross and in the grave. Her actions were deeply personal, but she was celebrated by Jesus for her humility and her brokenness.
It was her brokenness that pushed her to break the alabaster jar of expensive perfume and anoint the feet of Jesus. Her brokenness before Jesus blinded her to any consciousness of the cost of the thing that she was ‘throwing’ away. The contrast between this woman and Judas was just that. The man Judas, who was still managed by his own sins, saw this perfume and money not to be wasted. The woman, who wanted to be free and forgiven of her sin, saw this perfume as nothing compared to the freedom from sin.
In her own brokenness, she unwittingly prepared the body to be broken for us for the bloody murder for sin that was just around the corner. Jesus declared then that, although we don’t know her name, she would be forever remembered, Matthew 26:13.
For many of us, the hardest thing to get us to do is to part with that which we consider most valuable. This is not an encouragement to take what God has blessed us with and wantonly dispense with it unwisely. God never encourages that. However, there are, almost always, things that stand in the way of us giving ourselves wholly to God.
Our testimonies are different because we are often not yet broken. David, as I quoted recently, said “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart— These, O God, You will not despise. Psalm 51:17.
We each need to pour out our burial perfume, not in a casket of the dead like at the funeral homes, but before a living Jesus who will transform our lives.
Think on these things:
- Do you have anything that you value so much that it stands between you and total surrender to God?
- Have you had an experience that really left you broken before God?
- Is there anything that you sense that the Holy Spirit is urging you to “pour out” before God?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we, where necessary, would come broken before God.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex