Perspective: Shut Up, Judas

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Shut Up, Judas

Then Mary took an extraordinary amount, almost three-quarters of a pound, of very expensive perfume made of pure nard.  She anointed Jesus' feet with it, then wiped his feet dry with her hair.  The house was filled with the aroma of the perfume.  Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), complained, "This perfume was worth a year's wages!  Why wasn't it sold and the money given to the poor?"

John 12:3-5 (CEB)

You're right, I get it

It all makes sense, you're the perfect person

So right, so wrong

Let's all live in your imaginary life

From "I Get It" by Chevelle

In the Gospels, we read about a certain family from the village of Bethany.  Jesus would occasionally stay with them as He traveled.  In this family were two sisters and a brother.  Martha was hard-working and hospitable; Mary was free-spirited and open-hearted;¹ and Lazarus had health problems.  In the Gospel of John, we read that, after Lazarus became ill and died, Jesus returned to Bethany.  After visiting the grieving sisters, Jesus went to Lazarus's tomb and ordered that the stone be removed from the entrance.  Jesus called out, "Lazarus, come out!" and the formerly dead man stumbled out of the tomb, still wrapped up in grave cloths.²

Not long afterward, when Jesus returned to Bethany on His way to Jerusalem, the family held a banquet in His honor.  During dinner, Mary took a large amount of very costly perfume, poured it all on Jesus' feet, and dried them off with her hair.  As the fragrance of the perfume spread throughout the house, Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus' disciples, became incensed.  He said, "This perfume was worth a year's wages!  Why wasn't it sold and the money given to the poor?"³

The Gospel writer makes no effort to leave Judas's future betrayal of Jesus a surprise to the reader.  Even though Judas was a traitor among the Disciples, what he said about the use of the perfume wasn't totally wrong.  Mary certainly could have used the perfume to honor Jesus by selling it and using the proceeds to help the poor, because, as Jesus said, what we do for the "least of these" we also do for Him.⁴  As someone who was born in a stable and traveled about with "no place to lay his head," He knew a thing or two about being poor.⁵

That said, even though Judas had a point, he was still full of it because he didn't really care about the poor.  He was speaking out of greed.  The writer tells us that Judas, who served as the Disciples' treasurer, would sometimes make what we might call some "unauthorized withdrawals."⁶  Judas would later accept money to betray Jesus into the hands of those who hated Him.⁷

After Judas criticized Mary for her use of the perfume, Jesus said to him, "Leave her alone.  This perfume was to be used in preparation for my burial, and this is how she has used it.  You will always have the poor among you, but you won't always have me."⁸  Writer Kurt Vonnegut once suggested that maybe Jesus was being sarcastic, essentially saying, "Judas, don't worry about it.  There will still be plenty of poor people left long after I'm gone."⁹  In other words, Mary had only one opportunity to anoint Jesus' feet, but Judas would have many opportunities to not help people in need.

Mary could have sold the perfume and used the proceeds to help people in need, but instead she chose to anoint Jesus' feet with it.  Jesus, knowing that He would soon face the cross, acknowledged that Mary had honored Him by anointing Him for burial.  If someone chooses to use her money to serve the poor, she is doing a good thing, because we are called by Christ to help people in need.  If, on the other hand, someone chooses to honor Christ in a way that seems a bit extravagant or even wasteful, as Mary did when she anointed Jesus, she is still doing a good thing, because she is honoring Christ.

Many of us are critical of how churches use their money.  We might hear about something a church is doing and ask how many hungry people could have been fed with the money that was spent.  I've raised questions like this myself.  Such questions might be valid, but I think that maybe we need to put ourselves in Judas's place and ask ourselves whether or not we are putting our money where our mouths are.  Are we doing our part to help reduce poverty?  Do we even care about people in need?  When we make comments like Judas's, we aren't actually doing anything to help the poor; we are simply using the poor rhetorically to judge others.

We should always be concerned about people in need, and our concern should motivate us to act.  Sometimes it is appropriate to question how our religious institutions use their money and to consider whether or not they are doing their part to combat poverty.  That said, it is not appropriate to use people in need to denigrate the devotion of others.  God alone knows our hearts, so ultimately it is not up to us to judge whether or not someone's devotion to God is sincere.


Notes:

1. Luke 10:38-42
2. John 11:1-44 (CEB)
3. John 12:1-5 (CEB)
4. Matthew 25:34-40
5. Luke 2:7 and Luke 9:58 (CEB)
6. John 12:6
7. Matthew 26:14-16
8. John 12:7-8 (CEB)
9. https://sojo.net/articles/ryan-rodrick-beiler-kurt-vonnegut-christ-worshipping-agnostic

The painting featured above was painted by James Tissot in the late 1800s.