The bridge from the start of holy week to the end reveals the wide difference between the world God dreams for us and the world we insist on perpetuating. Even as the dream comes alive in our midst.
After three days of confronting the Temple authorities and challenging everything they believe about power and influence, Jesus stays away from Jerusalem. He remains in Bethany. Staying in the house of an outsider.
These last three days were full of action and very specific Jesus actions. So Wednesday looks quiet by comparison. But make no mistake. This is a day so full of power, our dulled senses might overlook its reverberations.
Today, let’s not start with Jesus. He’s was at the center of the first three days. This middle day, Holy Week’s hump day, is surprisingly not about him. It’s about the other people.
And this is orchestrated from the opening verses of chapter 14.
The writer of Mark sets up a contrast. In Jerusalem, where the authorities conspire and in Bethany, where the outcasts celebrate.
Our minds go to Bethany.
Of course they do. We’re following Jesus, and that’s where he’s taking us. Back to the home of a man with leprosy with his ragtag band of unqualified disciples.
But they shouldn’t go straight there. If they do, we skip over the contrast the evangelist we call Mark set up. We have to notice these two places and their inhabitants.
In the holy city, the holy men conspire to kill Jesus. Not just kill him, but “arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him.” This is a by-any-means-necessary sort of thing. This is a political assassination they’re planning. These holy men are planning to subvert the rule of law and the honest character of God to murder a man.
This isn’t the plot to assassinate Hitler, this is a lynch mob of the KKK, made up of the country’s holiest of men.
The thing is, they know they’re wrong. They recognize the evil they are conspiring to wage, to hide behind masks and under the cover of darkness. They hide their shame behind their outrage.
This is what transpires in Jerusalem.
But in Bethany, there is a whole other thing happening.
The Gospel is hard to hear
In Bethany, there’s an anointing; a celebration and preparation. It is an incredibly generous offering from a woman who would never be allowed into those secret meetings in Jerusalem.
Hers is an expression of love and support and acknowledgement of who Jesus is. And Jesus declares that this expression is literally the gospel. She is the Word made flesh. And her story is our central story.
But even here, this good news isn’t heard. The disciples are divided and some want to be frugal or show their commitment to the poor.
This is really why we get distracted by this scene in Bethany. Because this is where we are still stuck. So many of us are stuck here, debating what to do with the ointment, this expensive nard which this woman really has no business having and even less business “wasting” on Jesus.
This is where we are.
Or else we’re following Judas. Obsessed with his betrayal and punishing him for it. We leave the side of Jesus to prove Judas unworthy; making his punishment more important than the celebration in the room.
But Jesus’s full-throated and incredible praise of the unnamed woman must be our center here. It proves the ignorance and arrogance of the disciples who think a couple of bucks thrown into a system which impoverishes the weak is the scope of the ballgame. That selling this nard today would have any effect at all on global poverty.
The systems of injustice are way more than even this expensive ointment can change.
What the contrast reveals
Here, we can see the power of the unjust systems and the challenge Jesus lays bare.
The holy men in Jerusalem are conspiring to commit unspeakable evil and a small collective of radicals think handing out some food to a few hungry people is the summation of the gospel—that it is all we can do.
They aren’t listening to Jesus. All that he said along the way to Jerusalem, now revealing the injustice in the system, or claiming true authority for God at the Temple.
But the unnamed woman is.
She doesn’t give in to the false choice of capitulation or nihilism. Giving in or giving up.
Instead, she throws her trust in Jesus.
She gives this incredible gift, worth a year’s livelihood, something so unattainable or replaceable as an offering, a sacrifice to God.
And Jesus says THAT is the gospel.
So as we prepare for the rest of Holy Week, may we see the gospel in contrast to the evil and injustice in our world. May we embody the generous and compassionate love alive in extravagant grace. And may we reject that desire to protect the rules at the expense of our humanity. And our relationship with God.