© 2025 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.
In the hallway just past the bookstore, right across from Sara’s office, there is a curious window. It is one of three painted-glass windows that depict different moments from Jesus’ life. In this particular window, the large, central image is of Joseph teaching his young son Jesus how to be a carpenter. But that’s not the curious part. The part that I find fascinating is in the upper left corner, in which there is a small, easily overlooked depiction of Judas.
Not every artist decides to include an image of Judas among the other disciples. Sometimes they leave him out entirely, and other times they go ahead and put in Matthias, who was eventually chosen to take Judas’ place. Each window in the hallway includes four different disciples surrounding the central image. They don’t have labels, so you can only tell who is who is by interpreting the iconography that accompanies each one.
In Judas’ case, you can see that the halo or nimbus, which surrounds the heads of the other eleven disciples with a golden yellow glow, has faded out completely. There is a sadness in his eyes and slightly downturned mouth. But the most obvious detail that gives Judas away is the artist’s depiction of the money bags. While holding out with his right hand a tray that has two purses on it, Judas the betrayer clutches a third bag close to his chest, partially hidden by his robe.
We can thank the author of the fourth gospel account for that understanding of Judas. John is the only one who mentions that Judas stole money from the common purse. Whoever John was—perhaps the beloved disciple himself—he really had it out for Judas. Over and over in his version of the gospel, he adds editorial comments that leave the reader no doubt how evil and wicked Judas was. When Matthew and Mark recall this same episode of Jesus’ anointing at Bethany, it is not Judas who raises the objection about forgetting the needs of the poor but all of the disciples and some of the other people standing around. John, it seems, goes out of his way to throw shade on Judas.
To be frank, Judas probably deserved everything that John gave him, but I think his contempt for the traitor makes it harder for us to appreciate what really happened in Bethany that night. What if, just for a moment, we leave aside John’s dogged criticism of Judas—the portrayal of him as a thief—and, instead, make some rhetorical space in our minds to hear Judas’ question as if it were asked earnestly? What might we hear Jesus say to us if we were the ones who asked, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold for three hundred denarii—a whole year’s worth of wages—and the money given to the poor?”
It's a difficult question, and churches like ours, which spend lots of money every year on things as impermanent as incense and candles, would do well to consider it. I hope it won’t surprise you to hear that I don’t intend to use this sermon to justify our use of incense, candles, or any part of our congregation’s budget. I think the vestry does an excellent job of being faithful to God with the resources that you entrust to this church. What I want to do with this sermon is to wrestle honestly with the answer Jesus gives—an answer that is as hard to understand as the situation that provoked Judas’s question in the first place: “You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.”
What does that mean? And how is that supposed to help us feel better about the fact that Mary just poured on Jesus’s feet some perfume that was worth enough money to feed a hungry family for a year? Because we’ll always have the poor with us? What sort of convoluted justification is that?
Well, it turns out that Jesus was quoting a passage from Deuteronomy, which, I think, has the potential to change the way we hear his answer. Deuteronomy 15 lays out some of the regulations for what is called the sabbatical year. According to Jewish law, every seventh year is a sabbatical—or sabbath. During that year, farmers are not supposed to plant crops or tend to what grows in their fields in order that the poor might gather whatever the land produces. Similarly, all debts that have been incurred during the previous six years are cancelled, no matter how much is still owed. Deuteronomy 15, which Jesus quotes in his reply to Judas, deals with the cancelation of those debts.
In that chapter of the Bible, God makes it clear that generous lending and the periodic cancellation of debts will ensure that no one in the land is poor. That is part of God’s vision for justice—a balanced economic system that ensures that no one will suffer generational poverty while others become rich at their expense. Although it might not sound fair to our contemporary, capitalist ears, the system was designed so that everyone—both lenders and borrowers—got a fair shake.
But God knows that a system of justice cannot be complete without mercy. That’s why, in Deuteronomy 15, the law states that, even if the year of release is near and you know that you will have to cancel a debt before most of it can be repaid, “you shall not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.” In other words, the merciful response to immediate needs must outweigh a logical or just approach to lending. Mercy outweighs justice.
Taking care of the poor by cancelling debts, the Bible teaches us, is an act of justice. But setting aside the logical implications of that system to be sure that no one goes hungry—even if it means an unfair redistribution of that wealth—is an act of mercy. To get this point across, Deuteronomy 15:11 declares, “There will never cease to be poor in the land; therefore…‘You shall open wide your hand to the poor and your needy neighbor.’” When Jesus says, “You will always have the poor with you,” he is quoting that verse to get across the same point—not to teach us to dismiss the needs of the poor but to recognize that becoming merciful is the only way we will ever be able to care for them fully. Mercy always outweighs justice, and Jesus uses Mary’s anointing of his feet to show it.
According to Jewish custom, even though contact with a corpse makes a person ritually impure, preparing a body for burial is an act of true kindness and mercy—one that can never be repaid. Though the laws of righteousness—of justice— prohibit it, the requirements for loving-kindness—or mercy—compel a person to tend to the needs of the dead. In a spiritual way, therefore, Mary’s act of devotion—of anointing Jesus’ body in preparation for burial—makes her a symbol of true mercy and a reminder to us that, even when it conflicts with our sense of right and wrong, mercy must come before justice.
Perhaps for years, Mary of Bethany had kept that precious ointment for a special purpose. Without even knowing why, she had it tucked away, waiting for the right moment to come along. Not even the death of her brother Lazarus, which we read about in the previous chapter, was reason enough to use the perfumed oil. But there was something about this moment, as Jesus ate at the table in her house and laughed beside her brother, whose four-day journey into death had been miraculously reversed, that told her it was time.
Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. He had not disclosed to Mary and her siblings the fate that awaited him there, but somehow Mary could sense it. Perhaps the grief she experienced over her brother’s death had left a mark on her soul, allowing her to see what remained hidden from others. Like the black-winged Thestral from Harry Potter, which is visible only to those who have witnessed death, Mary is able to see that Jesus’s own death has come near. Although still a week away, it is close enough to stir up within Mary complex emotions of grief and love, compelling her to pour the perfume on Jesus’s feet in an act of pure devotion.
Yes, the needs of the poor are more important than a fancy bottle of perfume or the candles and incense we burn at the altar. But nothing is more important than our devotion to the one whose death is the fulfilment of God’s justice and mercy. In the cross of Christ, we see what Mary saw in Bethany that night—the death of God’s Son offered for the sake of the world. When it comes to pondering the nature of Christ’s death, we could remain comfortably in the realm of justice and ask such academic questions as for whom and under what conditions the death of Jesus is efficacious. But then we would miss the magnitude of God’s love enshrined upon the cross—a love that can only be approached as an act of mercy worthy of our complete devotion.
As followers of Jesus, who have been reconciled to God through the death of God’s Son, we must become like Mary of Bethany. We must leave behind our desire for clarity, fairness, and balance, no matter how appealing God’s justice may seem. Maybe that was Judas’s problem all along. Those who will not allow mercy to triumph even over justice cannot know the saving love of God, whose mercy never fails. Those who behold the magnitude of God’s mercy, revealed in Jesus Christ, are shaped by God’s mercy for a life of mercy, which is an offering that is pleasing to God.