Pouring It Out

“You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” – John 12:8

These words, from the Gospel reading for Monday in Holy Week, are probably not what those gathered around the dinner table expected to hear in the moments after Mary emptied a very expensive jar of perfumed oil onto Jesus' feet. Judas protests at it, and, like so many of the other people who interact with Jesus and don’t quite comprehend what they're experiencing, has more or less set himself up for the warning. Did its content come as a surprise to those who heard it? Probably. Jesus is foretelling his demise, which will come in a matter of days. It is probably not something anyone at that table thought could possibly happen, much less as soon as it did.

Jesus' response to Judas is not about how Judas is a pretty terrible treasurer – he’d definitely be prosecuted for embezzlement these days – but rather one about stewardship and how we treat one another. Sure, Mary’s action in anointing Jesus’ feet is costly in economic terms. The price tag of 300 denarii that Judas mentions was about a year’s income for most laborers back then. Yes, it's an expensive gift, though in presenting it, she is giving the very best of what she has, both in terms of her material wealth and her very self. This is not just a very deliberately constructed foreshadowing of the events to come later in the week. It’s about the kind of response we are called to make to Jesus’ self-emptying sacrifice – if you want a $10 word for that, it’s kenosis – that is, an emptying of ourselves on someone else’s behalf.

Br. Curtis Almquist of the Society of St. John the Evangelist sums it up this way: “Our life is not about hoarding or about conserving for its own sake but its opposite: about giving. Our life is about willingly giving up our life and our life’s energies as we see in Christ’s own self-emptying.”

- Amy+