Mark 14:3-6
Believe it or not, there are people who devote their entire lives to studying stinky, smelly things. Take Dr. George Preti, for example.
Preti has been studying odors for just under 40 years, primarily at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. Once, he accidentally knocked over a flask filled with concentrated armpit extract, which shattered on the floor of his lab and splattered all over. He cleaned the mess and put his shoes in a plastic bag, thinking he had contained the odor.
“But it’s like when you work in a restaurant where they’re cooking something really pungent,” Preti said. “After you’ve been there for awhile, you don’t smell the odor anymore.”
Preti took the train home, getting more than a few dirty looks from his fellow commuters, and was picked up at the station by his wife. “As soon as I got in the car, my wife said, ‘You smell like a street person!’ She was just overwhelmed with the odor, and I couldn’t smell anything,” he says. Preti later calculated that he had spilled the equivalent of “about 600,000 people’s armpits” onto his sneakers and pants. “I threw the shoes and pants out,” he said. “There’s no way I could’ve neutralized the smell.”
Smells and odors can be overpowering. In fact, the sense of smell is, of the five senses, the one most linked to memory. We remember the experiences of smells much more easily than things we see, touch, taste or hear. Especially if it’s the smell of 600,000 armpits.
On the other end of extreme odors from armpits, would be nard. Nard is the extract from a Spikenard plant grown in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal, China, and India. The underground stems of the flower are crushed and distilled into an intensely aromatically pleasing amber-colored essential oil. Nard oil is used as a perfume, an incense, a sedative, and an herbal medicine said to fight insomnia, birth difficulties, and other minor ailments. When the oil is used as a perfume, it is usually mixed with some kind of ointment.
When the nard oil is mixed with an ointment to make a perfume, a small jar of the ointment—back in the time of Jesus—would cost a person’s entire annual income. Imagine spending your annual income on a small jar of perfume. I wonder how much the concentrated extract of 600,000 armpits cost Dr. Preti when he accidentally spilled it.
There are so many questions surrounding this story of the woman and her nard ointment. Such as, Who was she? We aren’t told her name or given any hint about her identity. She could have been a prostitute, since prostitutes would often carry vials of perfume around their neck on a string. If that’s who this woman was, it might explain some of the outrage of the guests.
It would also be telling concerning spending a years wages of a prostitute to buy the nard and then spill it all out on Jesus’ head. Jesus told the guests the woman had done “something wonderful.” Maybe Jesus wasn't talking about how she poured the ointment on his head. Maybe she turned her life around from the “world’s oldest profession” and was making something new with her life. Maybe hearing the gospel of God’s love from Jesus, she came to a place of significant change where she totally reordered her life. Out of gratitude to Jesus, she symbolically poured out the proceeds of her past life upon Jesus so she could become someone new.
Isn’t that what Jesus is all about? Having our past human failings poured upon him so they become his to carry and not ours anymore? So that we can be free of those failings, free of our past. Even when those pasts have reaped for us what we thought were valuable rewards. Which is why we continue to hold on to them. Only by pouring out all that upon Jesus’ head, all the wages of our failings, all that bottled up stuff, will it be reckoned to us as “something wonderful” by the Lord.
Others identify this mysterious woman as Mary, Lazarus and Martha’s sister. They were close personal friends of Jesus. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. You will remember that when Jesus told Martha to have her brother’s tomb opened she replied there would be an awful stench. It would have been an interesting connection to this story of the woman and her nard—if it was sister Mary.
In the other notable story, Jesus visited the home of Mary and Martha. Martha was in the kitchen banging pots and pans around, preparing a meal, while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet in adoration and attention. Martha, indignant, came out from the kitchen and demanded Jesus tell Mary to get in the kitchen and help. Jesus’ reply to Martha: “Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up over nothing. One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it…” (Luke 10:41)
If this mystery woman is indeed Mary, Martha’s sister, then she continues to choose the essential thing: complete devotion to Jesus. In the first instance, it was her sister Martha who misunderstood her sister’s devotion. Martha thought duty should trump all other activity. Including devotion to Jesus. In this second instance it is those around the table who misunderstand Mary’s devotion, thinking duty to the poor is more important than any other activity. Including devotion to Jesus.
Each time, if this is indeed Mary, her actions are misrepresented. But Jesus comes to her rescue—both with Martha and with those sitting around the table. The word that describes the criticism of the woman by those around the table literally means, “snort with anger.” It’s a funny picture of a bunch of men snorting their disdain of the woman like a sty full of pigs. But Jesus commends her for her courageous devotion. Mary keeps choosing the “good part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42).
The other mystery people are those sitting at the table with Jesus. Is it the disciples? Is it some other Jewish religious leaders? We don’t know. The only thing we know about them is that they saw the woman’s actions as a “waste.” What does that tell us? What does that tell us about what these mysterious guests thought about Jesus? What does that tell us about what these men thought of this woman? What does it tell us about what they thought of this woman’s actions? “Why was this waste of the ointment made?” they snorted.
In answer to the first question, the guests statement tells us they didn’t think Jesus was worth it. That Jesus isn’t worth spilling out one of the most expensive perfumes in the known world. That Jesus wasn’t worth being honored in that way. That Jesus wasn’t worthy of such a lavish outpouring of devotion.
We don't know much about the host of this gathering. We know his name is Simon. We know Simon was a leper. Was--past tense. If Simon were still a leper, he wouldn't be in his home. He would be in a colony of other lepers. The fact that he was a leper and is no longer means he had been healed. Which didn't happen. Ever.
Unless Simon had been healed. By Jesus. And maybe that's why Jesus was at Simon's home. Out of gratitude for being healed, Simon invited Jesus to his home for a celebration of that healing, and showing gratitude for Jesus.
So, what is startling is the snorting and comments by the men gathered--including Simon the healed leper host--that Jesus isn't worth the waste of the poured out nard ointment. If we are right here in assuming Simon was healed from a death sentence disease, wouldn't you think he'd think Jesus was worth it!? Evidently not.
With the same snorts the men must not have thought much about the woman either. This stupid woman evidently had no concept of the value of the perfume she just poured out to the last drop on Jesus' head. What was she thinking!? If she was going to get rid of the nard ointment, she could have at least sold it for a boatload of money and use that for the poor! Why waste it in such a stupid action by a stupid woman by pouring it on Jesus? Snort, snort, snort.
But Jesus has to reframe their snorting for them so they can see what's really happening: "Let her alone. Why are you giving her a hard time? She has just done something wonderfully significant for me." Notice Jesus didn't reprimand the other guests for their evaluation that he, Jesus, wasn't worth the sacrificial waste of the perfume. He wasn't worried about what they thought of him. But he was concerned about their snorting disdain of the woman who poured out the ointment of nard.
It made me think of Jesus' parable of the workers in the vineyard. The workers who worked only for an hour got paid the same amount as those who worked all day in the heat of the sun. The workers who worked longer snorted at the vineyard owner for paying everyone the same. The vineyard owner's response: "Do you give me the evil eye because of my generosity?" (Matthew 20:15)
Wouldn't the mystery woman be able to say the same thing to these judgmental and snorting men around the table? Wouldn't she be on the same ground as Jesus to ask, "Are you judging me because I choose to show my generous devotion by pouring this lotion upon Jesus? Is it not mine to do with what I want?"
I don't know if the Gospel writer Mark intended this or not, but this story of the unknown woman showing her fragrant devotion to Jesus, is sandwiched between the stench-filled stories of the Jewish religious leaders plotting to kill Jesus, and then the beginnings of Judas' betrayal of Jesus. What we have is this rose of a woman showing scent-ual devotion to Jesus, surrounded by the thorns of plotting, jealous, and murderous leaders, and the back-stabbing of one of his own disciples.
That is the mix of our world--beautiful, sacrificial acts done in the midst of horrific human atrocities. As I waded through all the articles about the terrorist attacks in Paris, I was looking for something specifically. I was looking for just one story of someone stepping up, in a selfless way, to risk stopping the shooting. Especially in the full house venue of the rock concert or the soccer game. I was expecting to find at least one story of someone, like the marines on the train a month earlier who took that risk and stopped a bomber. But I found none. I found no stories of valor or heroism in the midst of humans being the worst that a human can be. So often, one act of beauty can overpower even the most sneering acts of ugliness. I was looking for at least one story of beauty, but found none.
In the home of Simon that day, there were two scents. The nard lotion, once freed from its alabaster jar would have filled that house with an amazingly beautiful scent. It would have cascaded out the windows into the homes nearby.
But there was another scent being given off by the men around the table. From their snorting they would have created an "air" of resentment and bitterness. And just plain being a small and shriveled human being.
Which scent would be stronger? Which of the two scents would overpower the other? The scent emanating and wafting from the beauty and devotion of the mystery woman's act with the nard lotion flowing down Jesus' head? Or the sneering and snorting stench from the ungracious men around the table?
Which of the two scents do you put off, as you move in and around and through your day? Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthian church:
For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things? (2 Corinthians 2:15-16, NASB)
What is the aroma you put off? The aroma of life? Or the aroma of death? You are adequate to do either. I say, choose the aroma of life and beauty, all wrapped up in your devotion to Christ. Snnnnniiiiiiffffff!
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