Jesus tells his disciples that the Passover is two days away and that the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified (verse 2). Meanwhile the chief priests and elders plot to arrest him by stealth and kill him, though 5"Not during the feast." Matthew places the anointing at Bethany between two scenes of calculation. The leaders calculate how to remove a threat quietly, and in the very next paragraph Judas goes to them to calculate what betrayal is worth. Between them sits a woman who calculates nothing.
In the house of Simon the leper, 7"a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table." The disciples are indignant: 8"Why this waste?" They say it could have been sold and given to the poor. The objection sounds generous.
Three parties put a price on Jesus in this chapter. The priests price him as a threat. Judas prices him at thirty pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15), the sum the law set as payment for a slave gored by an ox (Exodus 21:32). The woman prices him at everything in the flask, poured out at once with nothing held back.
Jesus calls it a beautiful thing, and he adds 11"you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me." Care for the poor remains a standing task that will still be there tomorrow. What will not be there tomorrow is Jesus himself, reclining at this table. Some moments call for ongoing faithfulness, and this one called for a single, unrepeatable act of worship.
He says 12"she has done it to prepare me for burial." Jesus has told his disciples more than once that he will be crucified (Matthew 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19; 26:2), and they have argued, protested, or failed to take it in. The woman is given no such explanation in the text, and her action fits what is coming better than theirs does. Her gift anticipates the burial he will soon need.
He promises that 13"what she has done will also be told in memory of her." Matthew does not give her name, and the deed outlives it. Judas will also be remembered wherever the gospel is told, for the opposite reason, with his own name attached to a much smaller price.
Two kinds of pouring out happen in this chapter within days of each other. She pours out costly ointment on a body that will soon be broken. Jesus will pour out his life for people who cannot repay him. Her uncalculating gift is a small echo of the larger gift he was already on his way to give for her and for us.
Is there a gift of worship or love you have been auditing instead of giving? Give it today, and let others call it what they will.
Prayer
Father, teach us to recognize the moments that call for extravagant worship instead of careful calculation. Forgive the times we have called someone else's costly devotion a waste. Thank you that Christ poured out his own life for people who could never repay him, including us. Make our love for him as uncalculating as hers, whatever the watching world decides to call it. In Jesus' name, amen.