1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’s feet, and wiped them[a] with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it[b] so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
John 12:1-8 (NRSVUE)
Around the world, economic anxieties are pervasive. The present US administration’s actions have introduced serious uncertainties among more financially secure people, to say nothing of those whose economic situation was already marked by instability. Considering these widespread anxieties, Christians and congregations must consider again how they are called to bear witness to the gospel through their economic habits. John 12:1–8 invites the reader to reflect on greed, gifts, and providing for the poor.
Greed
The meal at Bethany was given in response to Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It was an act of gratitude for the gift of life. The connection between the raising of Lazarus and the meal in Bethany is made clear by Mary’s gift, a delightfully aromatic anointing that contrasts with the stench of Lazarus’s tomb (11:39). The gift is a kind of double entendre, however: Mary pours out the perfume for Christ’s life-giving miracle, even while the act foreshadows the day of Jesus’s burial.
Gratitude may have motivated Mary’s gift, but the story identifies another, more problematic disposition: greed. After Mary gives the gift, Judas protests about the wastefulness of the gift. He asks why the perfume wasn’t sold so that the proceeds could be shared with the poor. Having already alerted the reader to the untrustworthiness of Judas in 12:4, John clarifies that Judas’s protest was itself a deceitful act of moral pageantry. He veiled his thieving intentions behind a feigned concern for the poor.
Greed has been a besetting sin throughout human history, and it has led not only to an unequal distribution of wealth but also to extreme destruction. In The Burning Earth: A History, Sunil Amrith details the way that world powers have amassed and preserved their wealth by extracting, exploding, exiling, and exterminating: humans and animals, forests and fields, have been condemned to suffering and death for ill-gotten gains. Similarly, theologians, like Jonathan Tran and Malcolm Foley, have diagnosed greed as one of the most significant preconditions for racism and its violence. “Race is not primarily about hate and ignorance,” writes Malcolm Foley. “It’s about greed. It always has been.” Greed distorts us, causing us to misperceive ourselves and our relation to everything else.
Greed is a ruinous disposition, one that is willing to sacrifice and brutalize humans, animals, ecosystems, or whatever else might enable one to acquire or maintain wealth. As the New Testament and other apocalyptic Jewish texts make clear, greed is not a natural individual disposition. Greed is a delusion caused by the spiritual forces of darkness who rule over the present evil age, to borrow language from the Apostle Paul (Galatians 1:4; Ephesians 6:12). Those captive to greed (whether individuals, communities, or societies) are caught in an apocalyptic struggle, whether they know it or not. It is what Foley calls the demonic cycle of self-interest, a cycle that often leads to death. Judas’s greed—and ultimately its connection to Jesus’s death—is a paradigm for the delusion of greed so pervasive in human history.
Gift
If greed is a delusion caused by spiritual forces of darkness, then the Spirit of God renews peoples’ minds, enabling them to adopt a disposition of generosity. To put it differently, the Spirit enables people to live with generosity like that which Jesus enacted in his death, when he became poor that others would be made rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). Because of this, Christian individuals and communities are meant to bear witness to the generosity of Christ in their own economic practices. They are to proclaim in word and deed the “anti-greed gospel,” as Foley has described it.
Within John 12:1–8, Mary provides a paradigm for generosity. Her gift is extravagant. Judas estimated the value of the perfume at 300 denarii. In Mark’s gospel, the disciples suggest that they would need 200 denarii to feed 5,000 people (Mark 6:37). In other words, Mary’s gift was remarkably, almost foolishly generous. Importantly, Mary’s gift is her defining act. As John identified Judas as “the one who was about to betray [Jesus]” (6:71; 12:4), John introduces Mary as “the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair” (11:2). In sharp contrast to Judas, Mary reflects a kind of ideal response to Jesus.
John juxtaposes Judas and Mary according to their economic behavior. One wishes to enrich himself even while feigning care for the poor. The other responds by giving to Jesus what was likely her most valuable possession. One intends to use his power over the purse to steal while the other humbles herself, using her hair as a rag. With whom will the reader choose to identify? Whose economic behavior will they seek to emulate?
Care for the Poor
Mary’s act is a paradigm of generosity, and yet Judas’s question still stands. What about the poor? His question is good and right, even if asked deceptively. Mary’s gift to Jesus was extravagant and wasteful. As an exemplar of the proper response to Jesus, does Mary’s gift only compel us to give gifts directly to Jesus, without concern for the poor? Not at all. John’s gospel is notorious for its lack of explicit ethical exhortations. This does not mean, however, that John’s gospel is barren of ethics. Recently, scholars have started studying the implicit ethics of John’s stories. John 12:1–8 provides an implicit ethic for giving to the poor.
Judas’s question introduces the poor into the story by accusing Mary of depriving the poor of potential economic help. Jesus defends Mary’s gift as one fitting for the occasion, since Jesus’s death is imminent. In his defense of Mary, Jesus says, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” This response contains within it a scriptural allusion that anchors the implicit ethic we might discover in the passage. Jesus’s claim that “you always have the poor with you” echoes Deuteronomy 15:11: “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land’” (NRSVUE). The allusion to Deuteronomy makes clear that Jesus’s comment about the persistence of the poor was far more than a pessimistic social observation. Jesus’s comment implies an economic behavior: opening one’s hand to the poor and needy neighbor. It is left unstated yet, once the reader recognizes the allusion, the ethical exhortation is clear.
Jesus connects Mary’s gift to him with the gifts he implicitly exhorts readers to give to the poor. In a sense, Jesus affirms Judas’s idea that the wildly expensive perfume should be sold, and the proceeds given to the poor. This aligns with Jesus’s teaching elsewhere and the practice of the church in Acts. It aligns with Paul’s concern for economic solidarity among Christians (2 Corinthians 8:13–15). Mary’s gift, then, is a paradigmatic response to Jesus during his earthly visitation; but Mary’s gift also acts as a foreshadowing of the generosity that those who follow Christ should share with the impoverished.
In this regard, I should point out that Mary’s gift is deeply relational. It is given within the context of friendship and mutual care. Jesus and Mary both offer gifts to one another in keeping with what they have to offer. This feature of the story should not be lost. Judas’s greed distanced him from both Jesus and the poor, as both became means to an end. Indeed, Christians have historically believed that Jesus abides with the poor so that we meet Jesus when we commune with the impoverished. The ideal mode of economic generosity for Christian individuals and congregations is a mode that nurtures a community in which “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little” (Exodus 16:18, quoted in 2 Corinthians 8:15). Indeed, the Christian propensity to establish communities of economic solidarity and support was one of its defining features in the earliest centuries.
Mary also challenges our tendency toward utilitarian gift giving. Judas’s critique of Mary’s gift underscores the perceived foolishness of the gift. The gift was an economic waste. Profit was poured on the ground. What analogue does this have with how individuals or communities might give to the poor and needy neighbors among us? Mary’s wasteful gift invites those who give to worry less about what the money might accomplish. It is an invitation to loosen our grip on the ends, focusing instead of the simpler act of grateful generosity. What if we gave generously, trusting the recipient to use the gift according to their needs?
In fact, some who study philanthropy argue that the most effective approach to alleviating poverty is to provide cash directly to the communities in need. In one of his talks, Rutger Bregman puts it this way:
When it comes to poverty, we the rich should stop pretending we know best. We should stop sending shoes and teddy bears to people we’ve never met. And we should get rid of the vast industry of paternalistic bureaucrats when we could simply hand over their salaries to the poor we’re supposed to help. Because, I mean, the great thing about money is that people can use it to buy things they need, instead of things that self-appointed experts think they need.
It is common for financially secure people to be suspicious of those experiencing poverty, as if they are flawed morally or intellectually or whatever. But Bregman and others compel us to remember that poverty is, ultimately, a lack of resources. It is typically perpetuated by the greed of those who hold resources, as discussed above. Poor people are very often poor because resources have been greedily withheld. Some research, at least, suggests that giving cash directly to impoverished communities is the best use of resources, because the communities responsibly use the funds to provide for their specific needs in fitting ways.
Mary’s own gift may invite us to wonder how Christian individuals and congregations might practice more extravagant gift giving to the poor and needy neighbor in a way that respects them enough to trust that they will use it as they need it. Granted, some will not do so—greed and other powers delude the rich and the poor alike. Ideally, care for the poor will take place within the context of meaningful relationships, especially friendship. These relationships are not only sites of giving and receiving material resources, but also collective wisdom that can lead to communal uplift.
John 12:1–8 invites us to reflect on greed, gifts, and caring for the poor. The passage offers no easy solution to pervasive economic anxieties nor to the economic actions of global powers, whose actions compromise the most vulnerable among us. The story of Mary’s gift does, however, provide an implicit ethic for bearing witness to the gospel through our own economic behaviors. She gives a gift out of her gratitude. She gives within the context of friendship and mutual care. She gives a lavish gift, but without anxiety about the end it may achieve. These are marks of Christian care for the poor, confirmed not only elsewhere in the New Testament but in church tradition.
What if Christian individuals and congregations adopted these today? Many congregations have vast sums of money stored up in bank accounts, some of which is clearly designated to help poor and needy neighbors. How often do those funds remain ungifted, waiting for some committee to finally agree on how exactly they might be used? Or, worse, how often do funds given for the poor get reallocated for some other “urgent need”? Or, for individuals, how often are gifts given without ever having met those who will receive them? How often are these gifts given begrudgingly as if they are a waste? Mary’s example invites Christian individuals and communities to give differently.
In a time of intense economic anxiety, Christian individuals and congregations need to reclaim their heritage as a people who shun greed, resisting it with a seemingly foolish kind of generosity that parallels Jesus’s becoming poor for the sake of others.
