Gospel Worship of the King About to Die

Introduction

Robert Jermain Thomas. Son of a minister. From a young age wanted to be a missionary.

Wife miscarried and died while they were missionaries in Shanghai.

Met some Korean Catholics who didn’t have bibles, and soon learned that Korea, at the time known as the Hermit Kingdom, had outlawed foreigners and bibles on pain of death.

Robert went and on the way, the ship was beached off the coast of Pyongyang. The ship was set on fire and exploded because of gun powder in the cargo hold, but Robert made it ashore with a handful of Chinese bibles. He was promptly killed.

His whole career as a missionary may have seemed like a waste to him in his dying moments, but he spent those moments holding a bible out to a Korean official, who took it home and used the pages as wallpaper in his home.

The first Protestant churches in Korea were started by those who read the Gospel and believed through reading those pages on the wall.

Such an effort cannot make sense to those with a purely practical way of thinking. Why go to a place where you knew you would probably die only to die the second you get there?

However, for those who understand the mystery of the cross, the victory through the suffering an death of Christ, this makes perfect sense. The Gospel is not spread by cleverly devised schemes, nor through the power of human force, charisma, or manipulation. The Kingdom of God comes when disciples, with their minds set on the death of Christ, act out their worship in the world.

The Gathering Clouds

Jesus’ Final Prediction

Our text begins with the fourth and final prediction of the coming death of Christ. Jesus is brief but specific as he gives and exact time, the coming of the Passover after two days, and is exact on the method of his death: crucifixion.

We then get a little look into the plotting of the religious elite as they seek the execution of Jesus. Now that he is in Jerusalem, where their authority is most well established, it is their prime moment for ceasing him.

Interestingly, we find out from verse 5 that the chief priests and elders who were planning Jesus death had decided not to pursue this plot until after the Passover feast, since this might spark an uproar among the people. This is interesting first because the religious leaders, the ones who are supposed to be leading Israel in the traditions and commandments of the Mosaic law, see the feast as an inconvenience which is getting in the way of their plot for murder. They apparently do not have the self-awareness to step back and see how bad this looks as a reflection of their abilities to lead people to God. Second, it is interesting because, as we saw, Jesus has predicted that it is during the Passover that he will be crucified. This tells us that there is a missing element, that something has to happen that will speed up the plot and bring about Jesus’ death even sooner than his enemies intend.

Judas’ Betrayal

This, of course, is the betrayal of one of Jesus’ own, hand-picked Apostles. The infamous Judas, one of the most well-known villains in all of Scripture. His exact motives are never given clearly, although it would seem that a mix of jealousy, disillusionment, and greed all played a part.

The money he is payed for this act of betrayal is small. It is the amount the OT would have someone pay if their animal killed someone else’s slave.

With Judah now on the payroll of the assassins, the Jewish leaders now begin to move the plot forward more quickly than expected.

An Acts of Honour and Preparation

This story takes place in Bethany, a small town where Jesus had been staying close to Jerusalem. We are told that this took place in the house of someone named Simon the Leper, who had likely been healed by Jesus at some point since a leper would not have been allowed to live in town. Mark gives a very similar account in Mark 14:3-9.

Although Luke has a similar story in Luke 7:37-50 it is clearly a different occasion. Although the hosts name there is also Simon, it was a common name and that Simon was a pharisee in Galilee. The woman there also is a sinner who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and hair and anoints his feet. Luke had access to at least the Gospel of Mark when he wrote his account, and so it is not as if Luke is getting the account wrong, but rather he is giving a very different story with some similar elements.

John, however, does give us a bit more detail on the story we read here in John 12:1-8. There we learn that Jesus’ good friends Lazarus, Mary, and Martha were in attendance at this supper as well. In fact, it is Mary that is identified as the woman who takes the nard. There, it says she anointed his feet and wiped them with her hair, so we see that Jesus’ body was anointed both on the head and the feet. Wiping with her hair is a sign of service and great humility and honour before Jesus.

The Action and Disciple’s Response

While Matthew does not tell us what this ointment is, John tells us it is spikenard, perfume made from the root of the nard plant which would have had to be imported all the way from the Himalayan mountains in India. Its alabaster container tells us that this was also of a high quality which, combined with the great difficulty of obtaining it, would have given it its great value. Matthew says it was worth a great amount of money, but again John gives us more detail and tells us it could have been sold for 300 denarii, which amounts to tens of thousands of dollars today. How she came by such an expensive item we can only guess, but it certainly was an item that could have served as financial security if the family ever needed it.

What she found so special about this occasion is unclear. She had seen Jesus several times before, including on the occasion Jesus rose her brother back from the dead. It is unclear whether she, perhaps being present when Jesus spoke of his coming death, intentionally presented this as a burial anointing fit for a King, or whether it was the culmination of intense worship which sporadically came out on this occasion and which providentially served as a preparation for Jesus’ burial.

Whatever the case, this is how Jesus takes it: as a fitting sign of both his royalty as the Son of David and his death which was soon to come. The action proclaims the Gospel as it shows Jesus as the King who would soon die for his people, and have the death of a criminal which usually meant being excluded from the ritual of anointing before burial.

Jesus’ Defense

The Disciple’s comments seem to have been voiced out loud, as the woman is seemingly troubled as a result.

“You always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.”

Jesus is certainly not setting a norm here. In this special situation, where his physical presence is about to be taken away, such an expensive honouring of his body is completely appropriate.

The primary reason for helping the poor is that it shows honour to the God of love and mercy. Honouring Christ is the primary motivation for helping the poor, which is why this instant it is put off for the sake of honouring Christ’s body while it is still here.

It isn’t a waste to get your friend a present on their birthday, because it only comes once a year. Only once in all history is God present in human flesh, and that time is coming to a close.

Therefore, this text should never be used as an excuse to not help the poor for other reasons which do not come even close to the action of this woman here. As we saw at the end of chapter 25, Christ considers our treatment of the poor and hurting, specifically among God’s church, as a treatment of Christ himself. The reason it is more important here is because it is a direct honouring of Christ in his very incarnate body which is only to be with them for a short time yet. Jesus emphasizes how unique this situation is, and again points us to the motivation for our service and efforts in this world.

As Jesus has been instructing his disciples about his coming death, resurrection, and departure into glory, they fail to recognize it and so fail to see how appropriate this action is. Christ will die a criminal’s death, and will rise before his body can be anointed by the women at the tomb, so here he is treated with this anointed which is fitting for a dead king’s body.

Application and Conclusion

It is not easy to find good application for this text because of how unique the situation is. None of us will ever find ourselves in Mary’s place. It was something that could only happen then and there. While we might rush to conclusions of how we may practice this text, whenever we read the Scriptures it is important that we first see what the writer is trying to say. Here, the primary thing that Jesus is teaching is that her action is appropriate because of his upcoming burial. Again, this makes this story very unique from how we may worship Jesus in our lives. However, there are still things we can rightly draw from this text:

If we do not see things through the eyes of the Gospel, we will not think strait and the right actions will appear foolish to us. Here, the disciples miss the context because of their slowness to believe and understand Jesus’ teachings about his upcoming death. If we miss the context of the Christian life, living under the cross and following our crucified King into a future glorious resurrection, true worship will not make sense.

For example, many Christians in the west spend a lot of time and effort trying to protect Christian freedoms such as freedom of religion in fear that we may lose them. I remember hearing one Christian a couple of years ago saying that if we do not defend our right to free speech and religion, than the spread of the Gospel will be hindered. As much as I commend his desire to help the spread of the Gospel, and as much as I believe in these rights, he seemed to me to have lose where the gospel gets its power. The gospel tends to spread faster in places of persecution, not slower. The Bible calls us to follow Christ into the hatred of the world, even to our own cross if necessary, and that this is how the Kingdom of God is spread. Only a heart maturely centered on the cross will understand this, just as only such a heart will understand the way Mary worships Jesus here.

As Christ is physically not present; let us honour his body the church, especially the needy as this will reveal a true heart of worship.

Christians are called to care for the poor, but our motivation is to honour Christ. We do not care for the poor for their sake, we care for them because it is worship to Christ. This text helps us see this as the priority, since honouring Jesus body for burial was at that moment more important than feeding the poor. So, when we serve and help the needy, especially needy Christians, we do so as worship and honour for Christ. This means it doesn’t matter if that person is only homeless because of their drug addiction and that they got themselves into that mess, their worthiness of our help is not why we help them. It is for Christ, so that we may be conformed into his image as he gives rain on both the just and the unjust.

Let us honour those who seek to honour Christ.

Finally, while we are called to take care to manage the resources God has given us wisely, whether it be our time, money, or effort, let us throw off a strict pragmatism in worship. True worship will often only make sense to the worshiper who is mature in their understanding of the Gospel. What practical purpose does such an act as spending a rare and expensive ointment on the head of Christ to prepare for his burial? After all, he is going to raise anyway. Surely, we can think of 1000 other things that this money could have been used for that would seem to have been more profitable. And yet, Jesus defends this symbolic act of worship and gospel-mindedness.

On November 17th, 2018, a young American missionary named John Allen Chau made it onto an island off the coast of India with the intention of preaching to one of the last unreached people groups on the planet, the vicious Sentinelese people. He was immediately speared to death.

I remember reading in the news people saying how foolish this endeavour was. However, the fruits of Robert Jermain Thomas’s death in Korea didn’t become obvious until decades after his death. Let us never let the world or worldly thinking tell us what is and is not wise; we live life on a different paradigm, the perspective of the cross. As such, his death is not wasted and his effort not in vain, though we do not see its results yet. But we behold such actions with faith as the worship of a crucified King, whose victory is accomplished in the most unexpected ways.