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The Woman With the Alabaster Jar:
Change the Paradigm XI
Fifth Sunday in Lent
Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8 (cf Mark 14:1-11)
The story of the woman with the alabaster jar is so powerful that it appears in all the gospels. Therefore, to my mind, the incident may very well have actually happened. The question is when, and under what circumstances. She must have been an important member – even a leader – in Jesus’ entourage, even though she is unnamed in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. John assumes she was Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, close friends of Jesus. Mark, Matthew, and John place the story in Jesus’ last days as he journeys toward Jerusalem, death, and resurrection. In Luke’s version she is a penitent prostitute (by legend, Mary Magdalene), and the story is treated as a scandal. The Elves have selected the version in John’s Gospel for the Fifth Sunday in Lent. Consider along with that the version in Mark 14:1-11, discussed in depth by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in The Last Week (Harper SanFrancisco 2006, pp. 85-107).
As Jesus and the 12 and the rest of the followers journey from Caesarea Philippi to Jerusalem, Jesus tries on three occasions to convince the 12 that to be first in the Kingdom of God means giving personal power away, or using personal power-with and for another as a servant or slave or child, not political or personal power-over others. To follow Jesus’ way means to participate with him in bringing about God’s justice-compassion – the non-violent alternative to Roman imperial violence. He warns constantly that to do that means to follow him into and through death itself. He will be captured, tortured, and killed because his message attracts the people, and offers a direct threat to the authority of the Roman occupiers. Indeed, the writer of John’s Gospel tells us in 12:9 that “. . . the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the [people] were deserting and were believing in Jesus.”
Mark assures his hearers that Jesus will be resurrected on the third day. Much in the same way as we enjoy the story of Romeo and Juliette, Mark’s audience can be assured that the triumph comes, and Jesus wins eternal life in the end. But the disciples don’t believe Jesus. Just as it was unthinkable that God would allow his temple to be destroyed, so it was unthinkable that God would allow his Messiah to be defeated. The disciples ignore the gathering political storm clouds, and imagine themselves sharing the glorious victory. They don’t get the paradigm shift Jesus is insisting on. They can’t see their way out of the prevailing normalcy of imperial, hierarchical rule. Judas makes the ultimate betrayal, literally selling Jesus to the Romans, in John’s version of the story, which makes Judas into an ordinary thief or robber, interested in his own selfish agenda, rather than one who is simply unable to give up his identification with the normalcy of Roman rule, and the paradigm of hierarchy and power-over.
In Mark’s version of the story the unnamed woman is the only one who gets Jesus’ message. She alone hears and believes his certainty that his body will need to be prepared for burial. It is the final service that can be done for anyone; it was the job of women to do it; and she will not have another chance to do so. In a demonstration of the kind of servant-leadership that Jesus kept trying to get the disciples to understand, she takes a jar of perfume – which cost at least a year’s wages – and pours it over Jesus’ head. In John’s version, she washes Jesus’ feet with it, and dries them with her hair – a dramatic and startling act of total submission and hospitality, and John’s Jesus acknowledges this. Mark has Jesus say, “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” These words are similar to the familiar words of institution of the Lord’s Supper in Luke’s later gospel: “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). But by the time Luke was writing, of course, the early church had aligned itself with the normalcy of Roman rule, and the woman with the alabaster jar was reduced from prophetic leader to a common and insignificant sinner.
Paul’s letter to the Philippians claims that Paul himself has given up everything so that he can participate with the risen Christ not with imperial rule: “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.” Then Paul once more waxes passionate: “. . . if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead[,] not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; . . . I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Paul is convinced, he knows that God’s justice-compassion is coming, its institution is inevitable. To think that the Kingdom will not come is impossible for Paul because with Jesus’ death and resurrection, the process had already begun. God was already taking direct action to restore justice-compassion in the world. In Crossan’s words, “God’s great clean-up had begun.”
If the writer of Mark was aware of Paul’s theology, the story of the woman with the alabaster jar becomes profound, as she prepares Jesus’ earthly body in advance for the transformed spiritual body, raised as the first fruits of those martyrs who died in the service of God’s justice-compassion. She is already participating with Jesus in the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth, here and now. Who knows what the circumstances were that produced the original action on the part of that unnamed woman in Jesus’ company? Who knows what the gesture might have meant, if she did it two (Mark) or six (John) days before Passover of the week Jesus died? From the 21st Century point of view, it is a declaration of solidarity, and willingness to see Jesus through whatever the Roman occupiers might like to subject him to. A far cry from the response of the perhaps willfully blind 12, who pay him lip service, then desert him at the first opportunity. And we of course, would never do such a thing . . . . At least Mark’s Judas is honest. He can’t believe Jesus’ way can possibly work, so he abandons the company and turns Jesus in to the authorities.
This interpretation of the story is an indictment of 21st Century “believers” who reduce Jesus’ death and resurrection to payment for individual petty sin. The story is also an indictment of 21st Century “believers” who ignore the injustice inherent in the imperial air we breathe every day. Just like the 12, we cannot see the difference between leadership and tyranny; we cannot see the difference between accountability and retribution; wealth, physical strength, ability to persuade, age, gender, social class, religion, race – all the different expressions of humanity – become hierarchical qualifications that determine access to power and the opportunity to survive.
But we have the power, at any moment, to transform the way we live our lives. We can choose not to participate in the retributive system of imperial war and systemic injustice. We can step into the kind of ongoing parallel universe of God’s justice-compassion at any moment. We can change our consciousness, change the paradigm in which we live, whenever we have the will to do so. And when the rare opportunity presents itself, we can break the alabaster jar in remembrance of her.