Perfume on a Guy?
Matthew 26:6-13
June 14, 2009
Me: Most of you know that my wife and I lived in Colorado Springs, CO, for two years, just after we got married.
We worked for The Navigators, which is a missions organization that I was involved with while I was in college.
We were part of a training program called The Leadership Development Institute, and along with our studies, we worked for the Navigators in their conference center, Glen Eyrie.
I worked in the bookstore, and because it was such a public spot, I got to meet a lot of people, including some famous authors.
But there was one young lady named Linda who was a friend of my supervisor at the bookstore.
Linda was a very friendly person, and one of those huggers. You know the kind of person I’m talking about, right?
They hug you when they first meet you and they hug you every time they see you after that.
And that’s fine. I’m not one of those, particularly, but Linda was.
The day I met Linda, she hugged me. And when I went home, my wife knows immediately that I had hugged a woman because she could smell Linda’s perfume on me.
I didn’t even know I smelled, but there it was.
Thankfully, my wife liked the perfume, and she contacted this lady to see what it was so she could get some herself.
God: In our passage today, we find Jesus getting perfume poured on Him by a lady who loved and admired Him.
And she did it for a specific purpose that we’re going to talk about as we look at this episode of Jesus’ life just days before He was crucified.
We’re going to work our way through this passage that Matthew puts between two narratives about the final plot to have Jesus arrested and killed.
My plan is to look at those next week, but let me just give you a bit of context for our passage today.
First, the plans of the religious leaders talked about in the first five verses of this chapter take place at the end of the events on Tuesday of what the Christian Church calls Holy Week.
Jesus had just spent the day debating these religious leaders and teaching at the temple.
The religious leaders were fed up with Jesus and as He leaves, decide that He’s got to go. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. He’s toast.
So their question now wasn’t, “What should we do with this guy?” it was, “When do we make our move?”
Then in verses 14-16, we find Judas going to these guys, probably the next day, and offering to betray Jesus.
This passage we’re looking at today, however, actually took place a few days before – on the previous Saturday.
John puts the events in the correct chronological order, but Matthew, following his pattern of sometimes grouping things together based on certain themes he wanted to stress, puts this between the parts about the plot to kill Jesus and Judas’ agreeing to turn Him over to them.
It’s kind of like a sandwich. The first part of the chapter is the first piece of bread – you can decide whether it’s the yummy white bread or the “break your teeth on the seeds” whole grain or whole wheat, or whole whatever.
The Judas part is the other piece of bread, and this section we’re looking at today is the peanut butter.
Some of you are thinking peanut butter and jelly, but we’re only talking about one section here, not two. So it’s peanut butter. You can make it jelly if you want.
My point here is that Matthew has a point in putting this passage between the other two. We’re going to talk about that a little later, but for now, let’s start working our way through the passage.
We’re going to look at a few verses at a time, and I’ll give you some things to keep in mind as we do that, okay?
Matthew 26:6-13 (p. 703) –
6 While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, 7 a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.
This is not the same anointing recorded in Luke. That anointing was done by a woman who had led a sinful life, during a meal at the home of Simon the Pharisee in Galilee.
This one is done by a woman that the gospel of John identifies as Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, in the home of a guy called Simon the Leper, in Bethany.
Apparently this Simon had been cured of leprosy, or he wouldn’t have been able to be around people, much less invite have a home in the city and host banquets.
In fact, all the people there would have been in violation of the Law of Moses.
And so it’s very possible that this Simon was someone Jesus has healed of his leprosy. The passage doesn’t tell us this, but it’s a possibility.
Anyway, sometime during this visit, Mary comes up to Jesus and pours some extremely expensive perfume on His head.
John tells us even more: she also poured it on His feet, and wipes them with her hair, which is where a lot of people get confused in thinking that this episode is the same as the anointing by the sinful woman, because she also wiped His feet with her hair.
And this wasn’t just any perfume. This was expensive stuff. It was, according to John, made from pure nard, which is from India.
John also says that this stuff was worth about a year’s wages.
And even the jar is noteworthy.
It was an alabaster jar, which is a type of stone, and for the perfume to be gotten out, the jar actually had to be broken.
So it wasn’t just something Mary saw on the dresser and thought, “Wow, this would smell good on Jesus!”
Anybody here remember the old “Bob Newhart Show?” It was the series where he was a psychiatrist, not the owner of the inn in New England.
In one episode, Bob’s wife, Emily’s birthday is coming up, and he’s wondering what to get her.
Usually he gets her perfume, so he has his secretary, Carol, get some perfume for him to smell and see if it’s something he would like Emily to have.
The first bottle is called something like, “Absolute Passion,” for $60 an ounce.
The second bottle was called something like, “Loving Destiny,” for $40 an ounce.
Then she handed him a third bottle called “Just Friends” for $7.95 a pint.
Now let me say that I’m thrilled that while my wife likes perfume, and I like it when she wears it, I’m THRILLED that she isn’t so obsessed with perfume that she needs something that would cost me a year’s wages.
And every guy in here said, “Amen,” at least in their heart, right?
You and I would probably look at perfume that expensive and say, “What at waste!”
Well, that’s the reaction of Jesus’ disciples, too. Let’s pick it up in verse 8:
8 When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. "Why this waste?" they asked. 9 "This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor."
John tells us that it’s Judas that said this, but according to Matthew here, this was the attitude of all the disciples. Judas was just the guy who had the guts to say it.
Did you catch this? They were indignant. They were more than just a little miffed – they weren’t just peeved. They were torqued.
Mary’s sacrifice was a waste as far as they were concerned.
But Jesus, far from being upset at the extravagance of Mary’s gift of perfume, jumps to her defense in verses 10-13 –
10 Aware of this, Jesus said to them, "Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 11 The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. 12 When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. 13 I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her."
Jesus takes the words about the poor, and moves on from that to talk about the purpose of what Mary has just done, and then says that what she’s done will be remembered and told when the story of Jesus is told.
By the way, this part of the passage is not a teaching about how to treat the poor.
Jesus is teaching about something much deeper than all that, and it comes to what I mentioned earlier and it’s why Matthew puts this episode here instead of putting it in the chronological order John does.
Remember the two pieces of bread? The religious leaders plotting His death and Judas coming to them offering to help?
Here’s the peanut butter, according to Jesus: Mary was anointing Jesus for His burial. She was preparing His body in advance of His death.
Does that make sense?
By the way, I didn’t get that sandwich analogy from any commentaries or other research I did – I made it up myself, so if you don’t like it, don’t blame the scholars. Just chalk it up to too much sun this last week, okay?
Now think for a minute: did Mary know Jesus was going to die in a few days?
We don’t know. Maybe the Father had told her to anoint Jesus before His death because she would not get the chance after His death, if for no other reason than the fact that according the Law of Moses, people dying the death of a criminal were denied the customary anointing of the body.
Whether or not Mary understood what she was doing, Jesus says that it had a purpose.
The purpose was to prepare Jesus for burial.
It’s profound, especially when you think of this section of Scripture sandwiched between the episodes of the religious leaders plotting and Judas’ offering his services.
Plotting to kill Jesus on the one hand, complicity to hand Him over to the killers on the other hand, and Mary anointing His body in preparation for His death in between.
Isn’t it awesome how God led Matthew to do it this way, I think so.
You: So what do we do with all this?
I think we can find something in the example of Mary here that we can put into our lives that likewise can honor Jesus.
Obviously not in giving Him some sort of anointing like Mary did, but rather in the principle of what she did and the attitude in which she did it.
Mary came to honor Jesus and she did it in a way that no one could mistake, didn’t she?
John tells us that not only did she anoint His head, she also anointed His feet, then dried His feet with her hair, which I think is the source of people’s confusion of this story with the other one with the sinful woman anointing Him.
Her honoring of Jesus cost her something.
It cost her something in terms of money.
Now before you turn your ears off and think, “Oh boy, here he goes – he’s gonna start preaching about tithing and giving, and he’s going to hound us about money.”
That’s not my plan at all. I know this is going to shock some of you, especially those who are guests or relatively new here, but I don’t like to talk about money from the pulpit.
I don’t enjoy preaching about giving or tithing or anything like that.
I do it sometimes because money is mentioned throughout Scripture – in fact, there are over 800 passages of Scripture that deal with money.
In September, we’re going to do a series on money – how the Scripture views it and how to handle it in ways that honor God and pays the bills.
But I’m not going there today.
My point here is that Mary honored Jesus in a tangible way. She gave something that cost her something that she possessed materially.
Secondly, she honored Jesus in a way that cost her something in terms of her reputation.
Aside from Jesus, did anyone praise Jesus for what she did? Nope. All she got was a hard time from the disciples.
And the hair thing.
She was down at His feet, wiping His feet with her hair.
She was putting herself in a position lower than a servant.
And it’s important to understand that she and her sister, Martha, and her brother – a guy named Lazarus – maybe you heard of him – were prominent people.
She could have done all sorts of things that would have kept her from getting down like that and been more in line with her social standing, but you she didn’t.
To her, the idea of honoring Jesus was more important than how others viewed it – or her.
So here’s the question: Is there something you know you can do or should do to honor God, but you haven’t because you think it’ll cost too much?
Whether it’s money, possessions, your reputation or social standing, or whatever, you’re holding back.
Let me encourage you to just go ahead and do whatever it is you feel God leading you to do.
I don’t know what it is for you, but you do.
This may not apply to everyone of you, but for some of you, this is hitting home.
But all of us can learn from Mary – and all of us can get with God right now and ask Him if there is something we can do to honor Jesus with the same spirit of Mary.
We: Folks, let’s end our time today with just a short time in silent prayer.
In that time of prayer, just take a moment and ask God if there is something you can be doing to honor Christ like Mary did.
And if He brings something to mind, ask Him for the courage and the determination to do it – no matter the cost.
Again, I don’t know what it will be for you, and it could be that God has something in mind for me to do as well.
And so I’ll be praying along with you.
After a little while, I’ll end by praying aloud, and Lowell and the rest of the worship team will come back and lead us in our closing song.
Let’s pray.
