The story of Jesus being anointed appears in all four gospels. The focus is different in each, of course, but the baseline is a woman comes in upset, pours expensive perfume on Jesus' feet and wipes them with her hair. The disciples object that the money could be spent on the poor and Jesus snaps that the poor will always be with them, but he won't, that she is anointing him for burial. Most interpretations make this a detached serene Jesus receiving an honor to himself because he is worthy. But this is out of character for him. And I think it robs the moment and the man of so much of his power.
Strip all the mysticism and theologizing out of this and think about a bunch of humans in a room. Here is a man who sees what he's heading to. He is aware of the plot against him, knows the price of rocking the system and speaking truth to power. As it gets closer he keeps trying to tell his closest people, but they keep dismissing it, blowing him off, looking for the mythical hero, the military messiah, etc. And like always, he keeps propping them up, carrying the weight for them.
He's told them following his way will lead to death. He said, pick up your cross. That image wasn't spiritualized yet. The listeners wouldn't have heard that to mean, "bear your burdens," They heard it like, "Tie the noose around your own neck, and let's go." But still they didn't understand.
He turned the tables in the temple. The text says the crowd and the Jewish leaders thought this was the moment he started the revolution, took the temple by force. But he stopped. Didn't even attack the Romans at all. He declared that this wasn't the way. But they didn't get it. This moment also sealed his fate with the Jews. He didn't have to be divine to see this.
So here in this room, this woman gets it. She sees him. She wordlessly screams, "I see you. I love you. Go be my sacrificial lamb." That's what the anointing was, an image of purification of the sacrifice. And it broke in on him. It hit his heart the way only two suffering souls can see each other, and it cut deep.
So imagine in this moment, someone close to you jumps in with, "What the hell is this!" It shattered the moment and they justify it with moralizations, which like most, are not entirely wrong.
But this cuts like a knife through the shared vulnerability of the woman and Jesus and he barks back, "Poor! I'm about to be tortured and executed, and you want to make this about money!"
How do I arrive at this? He is quoting Deuteronomy. But just before the verse he quotes, it says, "There need be no poor among you." The whole passage is tragically honest, like most of the Jewish law. It is saying in the same breath, "Live generously and you won't have poverty, share, forgive debts, take care of each other...but you'll never do it." And Jesus pulls only that last part. It's a gut punch designed to take the wind out of their self-inflated sails. Like saying, "You're missing the whole point."
Remember, when we read any versions of the Bible, we are reading translations. Many of which insert a theological interpretation. It can't be helped. No one language codes so specifically to another. Translators (I've done it) have to figure out what the writer was trying to say and phrase that in the equivalent of the receiving language. Even an interlinear translation, apart from being nearly unreadable in any coherent fashion, loses all idiom, emotion, etc. My point is, we have to relate what we read. Many won't get what I am saying here. But many will.
I was the scapegoat child, raised to bear the burden of my parents mental illness, the abuse they received, the generational trauma of a family whose past has been systematically erased by the dominant culture. I know what it is to bear burdens you can't contain. I know what it is to be blamed for things I couldn't possibly have done, deep complex, twisted psychological things my child mind couldn't even conceive. And I know what it does to you to be forced to stay silent, to hold the family together by taking it.
So I get THAT Jesus. I see it all the way through. I feel the shaking restraint of the rage when he tosses the coin from his hand and says, "Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's..." I know the wracking sobs of Gethsemane. I even know the zealous agitation of having to get out of a church full of people placidly accepting a culturally accepted placebo sermon over the raw realness of the message in the text. I also know the weight of seeing more than other people want you to, or are able themselves to acknowledge. I know the betrayal of gently trying to let them know and being attacked for it.
So yeah, a Jesus who feels what I feel, knows what I know...this is the Jesus that can look down panting from the cross and gasp through blood spray, "this hurts like hell itself, right...you and me, let's just hang on one more breath...we're about to break this thing."
