The Grift of Judas

John 12:1-8

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

When I was a kid, I think in middle school, I remember going to a Maundy Thursday service at my church in Salem. I don’t think they actually performed foot-washing at the service, but they did read this passage that Meredith just read for us. I remember, as the budding feminist that I was, really not liking this passage. I felt like it was weird that Mary was anointing Jesus’ feet with her hair—it felt uncomfortable and kind of degrading to me; it felt antithetical to everything they were trying to teach us about Jesus being so humble and kind. I really, really struggled with it. While my motives weren’t malicious like Judas,’ I was still pretty judgmental of Mary and Jesus in this passage; and I was kind of uncomfortable. I related to Judas more than anyone else mentioned in this story, I really felt some righteous anger over this extravagant act. The issue was—I wasn’t looking at the big picture. I was hyper-focused on this solitary act and this stuff that doesn’t really make sense in our modern world’s context; I wasn’t thinking about what it all really, truly meant.

Now first, I want to address the elephant in the room—or at least the elephant in the room for me, a preacher who’s constantly preaching about lifting up the poor and the underprivileged: the final verse from the reading, verse 8: “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” This is not Jesus saying “I’m more important than the poor.” This isn’t Jesus saying that we should focus solely on him and not bother with the poor. First of all, Jesus is borrowing from Deuteronomy 15:11, where it’s written, “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” Jesus, I believe, would be the very last person to every take God’s word or scripture out of context. But even more than this, Jesus, in making this comment, is equating himself with the poor, with his human siblings. As we inch closer and closer to Holy Week, we inch closer and closer to Jesus at his most human; we inch closer and closer to the moments that allows Jesus to always be with us in our darkest moments. Jesus is one of the poor, awaiting his violent and painful death. The poor as a whole, will always be with us, until we make this earth as it is in heaven; but in the moment that we’re thinking about today—poor Jesus would not be around much longer. And this is exactly what the anointing of the feet was foreshadowing. You see in, other stories when Jesus gets anointed, in Matthew and Mark specifically, it’s his head that’s anointed, not his feet—anointing of the head of someone is essentially crowning someone as royalty of sorts; it’s bestowing authority upon someone. But anointing the feet was something you did in preparation for burial. It was something you did to one’s body at the time of death. And burial customs in this day were incredibly important, and they were urgent. While it would be too much suggest that burial and end-of-life customs were more important than giving to the poor, I think it can be said that they were certainly more urgent, they were time-sensitive, and so in the moment, they took precedence over the fact that giving to the poor is something we must and will always do, for as long as there are people in need.

But, as we inch closer and closer to this time of despair and brutality, the time came for the disciples, Mary very much included, to focus on the task at hand—showing their ultimate love, support, gratitude, and humility for their savior Jesus. And remember—inching closer and closer to this time of tragedy and pain means we’re inching closer and closer to the moment that would change the world. We’re inching closer and closer to the ultimate joy, hope, and promise of the resurrection. That’s why this moment is so important; that’s why the focus on this end-of-life ritual is such a big deal. It’s foreshadowing something that is going to change the very fabric and structure of society.

We’ve talked about how the disciples, more often than not, just don’t get it. Sometimes it’s because they actually don’t get it; sometimes they’re in denial; sometimes, like in today’s passage, they’re being willfully ignorant and deceptive. Judas knows, or should know what this act means. But because of his greed and his nefarious motives, he tries to weaponize Jesus’ crucial teachings of giving to the poor for his own benefit. On the surface, we may think, as I did when I was a kid, that Judas has a point. But even if he genuinely believed this, and he was coming from a good place—even if he hadn’t been paying attention to the fact that that nard was worth exactly 300 denarii, he would be missing the whole point; he would be missing the forest for the trees.

You know, it sort of reminds me of that statistic—that 100 companies make up over 70% of global emissions that contribute to this planet’s dire climate change[i]—and yet, we seem to take pleasure in shaming individuals for using plastic straws—as if that plastic straw from Dunks is the reason the world is burning; just like that 300 denarii that Judas is over here making a fuss about—that was not going to make or break society. That 300 denarii was not going to bring oppressive kingdoms to the ground or solve the plights of the poor and the oppressed.  So even if Judas had been genuinely concerned about this nard and this money, he would’ve been missing the point—because Jesus wasn’t trying to give out bits of money here and there. Jesus was trying to make huge changes. Jesus was turning everything upside down, Jesus was preaching and fighting for a world where that 300 denarii no longer mattered at all. So while sure, Jesus’ followers should of course continue to give money to the needy in their time, this was a different situation. Priorities could be changed. Jesus was going to die sooner than later. And preparations had begun.

Now I say even if Judas has been genuine in his chastising of Mary, but we know he was not. The passage makes that very clear. It makes this whole interaction even more distubring. He’s taking this good thing, giving money the poor, and weaponizing it for his own gain (he wants that 300 denarii for himself, after all), and he’s attempting to shame poor Mary in the process—when all Mary is doing is acting out the humble and selfless capital-L Love that Jesus preaches—she’s showing her grief over and her Love for Jesus at his most poor, at his most human.

It’s no accident that this scenario makes me think of that climate change statistic I read earlier. Because many of those campaigns about being environmentally conscious—a lot of them are just different versions of what Judas is doing here. ExxonMobile, for example, starting back in the 1970s, had been trying to combat the very real science about their fossil fuels and emissions. But by the early 2000s, when it became nearly impossible to deny that climate change was real, they took a different approach— in 2007 they said, “Energy-saving consumers can make a real difference!” There were ideas on how to “Be smart about energy use.” One article points out, “individualizing the responsibility for climate change obfuscates the responsibility of companies like Exxon — one of 20 companies responsible for one-third of energy-related global carbon emissions since 1965 — to extract fewer fossil fuels and shift to cleaner technologies.”[ii] So by taking the spotlight off of their own unethical and dirty work, they are in turn, doing their absolute best to keep the status-quo so they can continue making profits at the expense of God’s planet, all by shaming powerless individuals who don’t have the resources to actually change things in a way that’s really needed to make a significant difference. It’s all one big grift.

I was discussing this passage with my friend Dan and he, who’s Jewish, so naturally not familiar with the New Testament, exclaimed “Huh, I’d never heard this one! Judas being a grifter is pretty funny.” I don’t know if “funny” is the word I’d use, but I do think it’s totally accurate and really helpful to think of Judas this way. Because there was a man claiming to follow the word of Jesus, claiming to uphold these core values that went against everything the oppressive Roman empire stood for, all while trying to satisfy his own greed. And if you’re a greedy person in the Roman empire, the last thing you want is for Jesus to succeed. The last thing you want is an earth as it is in haven, an earth where riches and money status no longer matter. So Judas’ grift, it seems, was to try to mess things from the inside.

But Jesus isn’t fooled. It’s unclear whether or not he know it is Judas who will betray him, but Jesus knows his end is near. He is anxious, he is frightened because he is human. “Leave her alone,” he barks at Judas. Mary is preparing Jesus for the horror that is to come. She is not in denial about what is coming. She is not misunderstanding what is coming. She is not trying to twist the tragedy that’s coming for her own benefit. She knows Jesus’ spirit. She and her sister Martha had, just before this, witnessed Jesus weeping at the death of their brother, of his friend, Lazarus. And they also heard him say “I am the resurrection and the life,” just before he brought their beloved brother back to life. Mary understands, in a way that perhaps no one else does.  She will now allow herself to be shamed or judged by Judas. She has seen was Jesus can do—she has seen him turn death into life, and so she knows that that 300 denarii is meaningless in the long run; she knows that the real results comes from doing the work Jesus calls us to do in order that grifters, whether they be your average low-life like Judas or powerful billion-dollar corporations like Exxon can no longer function. Positive results come from actually working to change the structure and the sinful goals of this broken world, this toxic and oppressive society from the bottom up.

As usual, I’m preaching some pretty overwhelming and lofty advice here. So as usual, I’m going to reiterate that we all after to start small. We’re not going to raise anyone from the dead, and we’re not going to change the oppressive societal structures overnight. And I also want to be clear, I’m not saying, as Jesus wasn’t saying, that we should stop giving to the money to those who need it, or giving to organizations that we care about, that reflect our values or love and peace and hope. But I do think we need to think bigger. We need to look at things from a grassroots level, we need to get down in the dirt, in the soil, and get to the roots of the problems and figure out what this town, this community, this country, this world really needs to make the perfect world Jesus preached about and worked for—the perfect world Jesus lived and died for, possible.

And so this story of Mary anointing the feet of Jesus isn’t degrading or wrong at all. In fact, it shows that Mary really understood what was happening when no one else did. She seemed to understand that what awaited Jesus; she was preparing him for his imminent death and burial. And she also understood that Jesus was doing something so much bigger than giving money to the poor. He was working to completely change the world so that there would no longer be any poor.

So for now, we will do what we can—we will, for example, collect backpacks to give to those recently released from being incarcerated. We will give what we can, money, and time-wise to various local organizations that do the work Jesus does, indeed call us to do in the world; but we will also start to think a little bigger, to think about how we can really change this community and this world for the better. And won’t fall prey to any grifts, and we won’t allow ourselves to be judged or shamed by those who seek to co-opt social justice movements or values taught by Jesus for their own gain. Let’s be like Mary and see beyond our oppressors, and those who are doing everything they can to grift us into keeping the status quo; let’s be like Mary and see the big picture; let’s be like Mary and see the possibility of an earth as it is in heaven. Amen.     

[i] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change

[ii] https://www.vox.com/22429551/climate-change-crisis-exxonmobil-harvard-study