Jesus Anointed by Mary

This last week, I was thinking and meditating about some of the events leading up to Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. When I came to Mary’s anointing of Jesus the day before, I was struck by Jesus’ claim in Matthew and Mark that “wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

As I looked into the passage further, I realized that this Mary who anointed Jesus in this story was the same Mary who washed Jesus’ feet with perfume and with her tears in Luke 7. In Luke’s account of that story, Jesus gave a parable to illustrate the fact that those who have been forgiven the biggest debt are naturally the ones who are most grateful. The parable was directed at Simon the Pharisee who was hosting Jesus and who was offended that Jesus would allow Mary (a known prostitute) to wash his feet.

Which brings us back around again to Mary’s anointing of Jesus, the day before his “triumphal entry into Jerusalem.” Her extravagant display of gratitude and worship didn’t stop at Simon the Pharisee’s home. And it’s no wonder. Just from reading the four Gospels, we can easily observe that prostitutes and tax collectors (who worked for the Roman government) were the worst kinds of sinners, rejects, and failures in society. This was especially true in Roman-occupied Israel, where the Jewish religion played a significant role in the identity of the Israeli people. Those who were most successful in Jewish society were the ones who excelled in meeting the standards of Jewish law.

As the biggest failures in the Jewish nation, the prostitutes and tax collectors had the biggest debt before God. At least, that’s what was communicated to them by the religious establishment. That establishment, the Pharisees and teachers of the law, were the religiously successful and didn’t see much need in themselves for forgiveness, for they were the architects of a man-made religious system. (Granted, the Law of Moses itself was given by God, but the Pharisees had added to it so much that it had become a controllable religious system.)

It’s no wonder then, that we see Jesus constantly surrounded by people in that society, like Mary, who had the greatest need for forgiveness of their sin. The reality was that their need for forgiveness wasn’t any greater than that of the religious authorities. They just didn’t have any religious pretence to hide their sin behind.

Mary’s affectionate outpouring is a glorious story in the run-up to the passion week of Jesus. And one that reminds us of the purpose of Jesus’ death and resurrection. As much as not-yet-Christians need to take in the message of the cross and embrace it in order to be restored to their Creator, Christ-followers must remember the reality of their own debt that was cancelled at the cross. The temptation for Christ-followers to lose sight of their cancelled debt is just as great today as it was for the religious establishment of Jesus’ day. In this way, we have a lot more in common with the homosexuals and the pornographers and the terrorists than we’d like to admit. Without the blood of Jesus, our piety and religious activities wouldn’t put us on any greater spiritual level.

So the questions are before us. Do we hide our sin behind religious pretence, all the while failing to recognize the equality of our debt with the worst of sinners today? Could it be that the measure of our gratitude and worship to God is equal to the measure of our perceived need for forgiveness?

Categories: transformation, God