Jesus Anointed for Burial: An Exposition of John 12:1-10
The anointing of Jesus by Mary of Bethany for burial is a touching act of piety on her part. This account is in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and here in John. There is a similar story in Luke, but it differs quite a bit on time and circumstance. Together the three gospels supplement each other. Mark and Matthew said what she did for Jesus was to be memorialized.
The general details of the anointing agree to the point that it seems to be the same account. It provides the context to Judas’s betrayal of Jesus. These accounts also are in the context of the desire of the chief priests and leaders of Israel to arrest Him without causing a riot among the people. All mention the precious ointment, and John and Mark say it was spikenard. They all state that the value of this ointment was 300 denarii. They all agree that it was to prepare the body of Jesus for burial. This makes it pretty conclusive that the same event is being spoken of.
But there are some serious differences that have to be reconciled. Matthew and Mark’s context seems to indicate that this occurred on the second day before Passover. John 12:1 says this happened six days before the Passover. So did this happen on Wednesday or did it happen at the very beginning or Palm Sunday if we remember that the Jewish day started at sunset. It is not easy to reconcile this detail, but if we will allow that even though there is a tendency to chronological arrangement that it isn’t the only way material could be arranged. There is a logical arrangement which puts two different events together thematically where the one event interprets the other. To place a close connection between the plot to destroy Jesus which seems to have been hatched on Wednesday is supplemented by the anointing of Jesus for burial. These accounts logically explain each other. The use of logical and chronological arrangements would explain much of the differences of order in the gospels as a whole. So in this desire of logical arrangement, there are displacements of time. One could also see that John has a very interesting use of time. Time in John has a cosmic and theological basis. Even though I would differ with Barth to some degree, his idea of the chronology of “historie” and the chronology of “geschichte” would fit well. I do want to say that the events actually happened in history, but at the same time there is more to history than the recording of facts.
The other conflict is whether Mark anointed Jesus’s feet as John notes or poured the ointment over his head as Mark and Matthew state. The feet would be easy to do, as people reclined at the dinner table. This means the head would be close to the table and the feet away from the table. John shows much emphasis on the feet. Soon He would wash the disciple’s feet. On the other hand, anointing the head was the anointing of a king. The Greek “Christos” which in similar to the Hebrew “Messiach” is roughly translated “Anointed One.” The easiest way to reconcile this is that both the head and feet were anointed, a merism which refers to the entire body of Jesus (from head to foot).
When we look into John’s account, we see that this event happened six days before the Passover. The two questions to answer is what day Passover was and what day “six days before the Passover was.” The reckoning of time is made more difficult by the differences between the Romans, Greeks, and Jews as to when the day actually started. For the Romans, it was midnight, which is the way we reckon time legally. The Greek day started at dawn, which is the practical start of the day. The Hebrew reckoning of the start of the day was sunset because night came first and then the day. John also shows some fluidity to time. But here we will use Hebrew reckoning.
To reckon the day in which the anointing occurred, we must first reckon Passover. Here we have an apparent difference between the three gospels and John. John seems to indicate that the priests did not want to defile themselves in entering the hall of judgment so that they could eat the Passover which seems to indicate that the Passover was future to that point. The other gospels seem to indicate that Jesus ate the Passover meal with His disciples before His arrest. Exodus 12 says that the Passover meal began at sunset. Exodus also say that the meal was to be eaten before the following morning, and that any leftovers were to be burnt. If we see the Last Supper as occurring at the very beginning of Passover, then our Maunday Thursday by our reckoning of time actually occurred on Friday be Hebrew reckoning. Therefore, the three synoptic gospels say that Jesus died on the day of Passover, as He died and was buried before sunset which began the day after Passover.
We might also note that the Priests’ celebration of the Passover might have been interrupted by their plot to arrest Jesus. They would have had to assemble their own Temple guard, make a request at the Fortress of Antonio for Roman troops, and waiting on Judas to guide them. If they turned Jesus over to Pilate before morning light, they could have eaten it. This is speculation of course, and others have offered their harmonization of John’s timing and the synoptic gospels. But it seems compelling, both theologically and chronologically that Jesus’ death is closely tied to the day of Passover. The only question is whether Jesus’s death is before or after the Passover feast. Ray Vanderlaan suggests that Jesus’s death on 3 PM was the time the Passover lambs began to be slaughtered, which would make the Passover feast after His death, using John’s reckoning. This, of course means that the other three gospels indicate that Jesus ate the Passover with his disciples has to be explained. Some have suggested that Galieans and Judeans had a different way of reckoning of the date of Passover much as the controversy in the church whether Good Friday is the 14th or 15th day of the lunar month. Others have suggested that the sheer number of lambs that had to be slaughtered for Passover in Jerusalem was such that they were killed over two days.
The Lord knows the correct understanding of this dilemma. But as Scripture in general, and John in particular understand “witness” in legal terms. God had allowed His story to be communicated by the agency of the Holy Spirit through human hands. What is important about witness is not that the witnesses write verbatim accounts. A jury would have to reckon that the testimony was rehearsed, which means there is really only one witness. But God requires the agreed testimony of two or three witnesses. Agreement of testimony means that on the main points, the testimony is in harmony. There will be some differences in the peripherals, and indeed, valid testimony requires this.
Having fixed the Passover to be Good Friday, going back six days brings us to Sunday. Palm Sunday begins with this passage. Jesus had probably spent the Sabbath with Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and Simon in Bethany. After the sunset, Sabbath restrictions having ended, Martha prepared a meal for them. The fact that Martha prepared the meal is consistent with the portrait of her in the gospels. The text says that Lazarus was at the meal and adds that Jesus had raised him from the dead. It is interesting theat this raising from the dead is the same language used of Jesus being raised from the dead. This does not mean that Lazarus would not die again in contradistinction with Jesus. But the idea of both death and resurrection are injected at this point by John. This sets context for the rest of the passage. This same Lazarus was one of those who reclined at the table with Jesus and His disciples.
John records that Martha’s sister, Mary took a liter of pure perfume of nard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus with it and then wiped his feet with her hair. Mark adds that it was contained in an alabaster box. Spikenard had to be imported from India, and Romans used it to anoint the head. Mark, who was half Roman and may have written to the Romans notices this. But John mentions the feet. He also mentions that Mary wiped the feet with her hair. It is important that neither Mark nor John uses the Greek “Xrio” from which we get “Christ” to describe this anointing. What Jesus says about it in Mark is that she “anointed” the body for burial. The verb for anointed here is “murizo” which means to put myrrh which is a burial spice around a dead body. It is interesting that “myrrh” appears in verse 3, literally “myrrh of spikenard. Myrrh does indeed also have a generic meaning of ointment or perfume, but as John is fond of double meanings, there may be more here than just its generic meaning. One could think of spikenard in an alabaster box as the perfume saved up for a well-to-do bride’s wedding day. But here, it is the smell of death. The smell filled the house. Mary’s hair smelled as the bride awaiting her groom. But instead of a wedding, it was the stench of decay. But John uses the metaphor of wedding throughout his gospel. There is not only death, but there is resurrection as well. There will be a wedding. The church on earth, in like matter, has to live among death. It has to carry crosses. It will suffer persecution. But at the end of it all, the final end is that we will be raised from the dead to be the eternal and spotless bride of Christ. The myrrh of death will be replaced by the spikenard of the wedding.
Mark indicates that the disciples were grumbling within themselves that such expensive ointment was wasted. It had a value of 300 denarii, or nearly a year’s wages for the working man of that day. But John records that Judas was especially indignant. John uses the present “he says” which is a dramatic present. John wants to put you on the scene as though you were witnessing this for yourself. A dramatic pause occurs between “he says” and what he actually says. John tells us that Judas was “one of his disciples.” He also says: “The one who is about to betray Him.” This again emphasizes the context of death. It shows the pain Jesus felt in his human nature that “one who ate bread with Him has lifted up his heel against me,” if I can use the words of the psalmist. So Judas indignantly cries out “WHY wasn’t this myrrh sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor!” John instantly reports back that Judas did not care one bit about the poor. Rather, he was an embezzler of the ministries funds. He could not get his hands on the three hundred denarii, but would soon sell Jesus for thirty, quite a discount.
John makes it abundantly clear that Judas was no good from the beginning, and that Jesus knew it. In john 6, Jesus says: “Did I not choose you? Yet one of you is (a or the) Devil. Here it says Judas was a thief. At the Last Supper is says: “After he took the sop, Satan entered into Him. The book of Acts says that Judas went to his own place. Elsewhere he is called the Son of Destruction. It is clear from the testimony of Scripture that Judas’ entire motivation was evil. Jesus would die on a tree as a curse for us all, but Judas would hang (impale?) himself on a tree to be an eternal curse unto himself. It seems that many have undertook to redeem Judas. We see this in the “Passover Plot” or even in the musical “Jesus Christ, Superstar.” Why Jesus chose Judas for the ministry is a mystery, as John clearly shows that Jesus knew Judas’s character? But at the same time, Jesus did not force Judas to do this despicable act.
Jesus simply responds by saying “Permit her to do this.” This indicates the anointing of Jesus was continuing. As the entire body and not just the feet was anointed by myrrh for burial, this further indicates that Jesus was anointed head to foot or foot to head. Jesus adds: “You always will have the poor with you, but you will not always have ME.” Jesus would soon die, be raised from the dead, and then return to the Father to prepare a place for us.
Verse nine says that word got out that Jesus was staying in Bethany and came out to see Him. Jesus had kept a low profile in the eyes of the authorities in Jerusalem and spend the last winter after Lazarus was raised from the dead around Jericho. The problem with this crowd was not that they wanted to see Jesus, but they seem to have been more interested in seeing Lazarus whom Jesus raised. Jesus lived among sign seekers. They were more interested in the signs and wonders than they were in the One who performed them. This crowd of sightseers wanted to see the sign. Here the One who is the Resurrection and the Life was in their midst, but the adversative “alla” but, replaces the idea of “They came to see Jesus” with “They came to see Lazarus.” This crowd would have followed Jesus the next day in the “Triumphal Entry.” Spectators and speculators would get it wrong. They had one idea of Jesus Christ coming to town, Jesus had another.
Then is says that the chief priests took counsel. They implicitly wanted to be rid of Jesus for sure. But what is says is that they also wanted to kill Lazarus explicitly. This is because many in the crowd came to believe in Jesus because He had raised Lazarus. They wanted to kill both the sign as well as the thing signified. They wanted to destroy the evidence. Matthew and Mark also follow this passage with the plot to destroy Jesus. They also add that this anointing of Jesus was the trigger for Judas to go and join the plot.
Only John mentions Lazarus. Here he disappears from history and we hear of him no longer. Neither do we hear any more of Mary and Martha. All that is left behind is the memory of what Mary had done for Jesus in the anointing of Jesus feet. This is her final act in history as we know it. I would hope to ask them some day what happened to them after this day. They become unknown soldiers of the cross. But they are known to God. There are many unknown soldiers of the cross. What is ultimately important is not that we know them now but that God knows them. He knows us too. Let us be remembered before His throne like Mary was and not like Judas.
It was the day the Passover Lamb was to be selected. and the Passover Lamb was coming to town.
