An Extravagant Offering (John 12:1-8)

It’s very important for people living in our time and place to smell good. It’s probably more important that we don’t smell bad, some might even say it’s essential, but smelling good is still a pretty high priority for most people. To achieve this, there is a wide range of personal hygiene products, body sprays, breath fresheners and perfumes we can buy to help take away our bad odours and leave us with a more appealing fragrance.

Of all the parts of the body, sometimes it can seem like our feet are the worst for getting smelly quickly and smelling the worst. We can buy foot powders or innersoles for our shoes to try to take the odour away, but have you ever known someone to perfume their feet so they smell good? People might go for a pedicure so their feet look nice, but could you imagine a line of products designed to make your feet smell nice as well?

If the idea of giving our feet that much care and attention sounds strange, what do you think might have been going through the minds of the people who were are at Mary, Martha and Lazarus’s home for dinner in this week’s Gospel reading? In John 12:1-8 we read that during the meal, Mary approached Jesus with a jar of very expensive ointment or perfume, poured the lot over Jesus’ feet, and then wiped his perfume-soaked feet with her hair. If any of us had friends over for dinner and a similar thing happened, we could be shocked, horrified or stunned. John records this event because it was so out of the ordinary. He also records it because it points us to God’s grace for us in Jesus.

Similar stories are told in Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:1-9 and Luke 7:36-50. Each story has their similarities and differences which has led Bible scholars to ask if all four versions are based on one common story which the four evangelists interpreted to suit the central message of their gospels, or if more than one woman anointed Jesus’ feet at meals during his life on earth. We might need to wait until we can speak with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in eternity to answer that question, but we can still explore some details in John’s version of the story to learn why he tells it the way he does.

One of these details is the perfume which Mary used to anoint Jesus’ feet. John describes it as ‘a pint of pure nard’ (v3 NIV) which Judas estimated was worth ‘300 silver coins’ (v5 CEV) or ‘three hundred denarii’ (ESV). A denarius was a day’s wage for a labourer in first century Judea, so some English translations of the Bible such as the NIV round that out to about a year’s wages. There are problems with directly transferring that value to our time and place, but if we consider that the average Australian weekly wage is about $2,000 according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a bottle of perfume which cost a year’s wages would be worth about $100,000. This was an outrageously expensive bottle of perfume!

It was so expensive because of both its quantity and quality. John tells us it was ‘about a pint’ (v3 NIV) or ‘a twelve-ounce jar’ (NLT) which was between 320 and 350 grams, so we’re talking about a jar about the size of a coffee cup. John tells us that the perfume was ‘pure nard’ (NIV) or ‘essence of nard’ (NLT). Nard was an ointment or perfume made from the spikenard plant which grows in the Himalaya region of India, China and Nepal. The NIV calls it ‘pure nard’ because sometimes plants like lavender could be used to produce a ‘fake nard’ which wasn’t of the same quality. John tells us that this is pure nard because it’s the real deal – this is the good stuff that came all the way from the Himalayan Mountains. It’s no wonder that the fragrance filled the room. This was a substantial amount of top-shelf perfume which Mary had just poured all over Jesus’ feet.

That might help us understand why Judas reacted the way he did. Even though John hints that his plan might have been to sell the nard and keep some of the money for himself, most people would have been shocked at seeing Mary pour the nard over Jesus’ feet. For Mary to then wipe Jesus’ feet with her hair would have only added to their surprise at what they saw. Respectable women did not wear their hair down in public in first century Jewish society. Any way you look at it, Mary’s actions were shameful and scandalous.

We can start to appreciate why Mary did this for Jesus when we read the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in the previous chapter of John’s gospel. Mary could have been so filled with love and gratitude for Jesus raising her brother from the grave and restoring him to their family that she took the most valuable thing she had, something she could have been saving years for, and poured it all out for him. Imagine taking the most precious thing we own and giving it to Jesus out of love and thanks for him. Mary could have made this extravagant offering to Jesus because of what he had done for her in the past. Jesus turned it into a way of pointing to his future by saying that she did it in preparation for his burial (v7 NLT). Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with perfume was an unknowing preparation for Jesus’ great act of saving love in his suffering, crucifixion and resurrection for us.

We can be amazed that Mary would make such an extravagant offering for Jesus by pouring out her most prized possession to make his feet smell nice. Her actions become an illustration of what Jesus did for us. We might use a range of personal hygiene products or perfumes to make ourselves smell nice to others. Only Jesus can make our lives fragrant with the perfume of God’s goodness. While the smell of sin might hang around us in lots of ways, Jesus removes the odour of sin and fills our lives with the sweet smell of God’s grace, love and mercy. He did this by pouring out the most valuable thing he has, his body and blood for us on the cross. Like Mary poured the nard on Jesus’ feet so they would smell good, Jesus poured out his blood over us to wash us clean and purify us, so our lives can smell of God’s goodness. This cost him a lot more than a year’s wages. It cost him his life. It shows us how much he loves us and values us just like Mary’s actions displayed how much she loved and valued Jesus. Like the smell of the perfume filling the house, when we are washed clean in the blood Jesus offered for us, the fragrance fills our lives, so others are blessed by it too.

At this point we could ask what we might be willing to offer because of Jesus’ life-giving love for us, but we’re not going to do that. Instead, as we approach the Easter weekend, maybe we can keep the story of Mary in mind so when we see the extravagant offering Jesus made for us on the cross, we can think about the perfume Mary poured over his feet and see in the cross of Christ the value and love he has for us by giving up everything for us.

More to think about or discuss:

• What is the most valuable thing you own? Do you think you could give that up for Jesus like Mary offered up her perfume for him? Can you explain why…?
• How do you think you would have reacted if you had been a guest at the dinner where this happened? Why do you think you might have reacted that way?
• Why do you think Mary offered the most valuable thing she had to Jesus? How does that illustrate what Jesus has done for us?