Lent 2020 - Mark 14:1-9 - Misjudging Eyes

Liturgical Setting

Misjudging Eyes

Text:

Other Lessons: ; (antiphon: v. 17); ; :(1–6) 16–21 (LSB One-Year Lectionary)

Sermon Goal: That hearers know and believe that Jesus’ death and burial atone for their sins and that He is pleased with the loving service of His followers.

Liturgical Setting

Ash Wednesday begins the forty-day (not counting Sundays) season of Lent. The opening liturgical address says that during Lent, “Our attention is especially directed to the holy sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is “a time of special devotion, self-denial, and humble repentance born of a faithful heart that dwells confidently on His Word and draws from it life and hope” (LSB Altar Book, p. 483). The appointed Propers highlight these themes: In the Collect, we pray for forgiveness of sins and the creation of new and contrite hearts in us. The Hymn of the Day (LSB 607) is Luther’s paraphrase of . The hymn is a prayer for pardon and a confident expression that God will finally free His people “from all their sin and sorrow” (st. 5). The Old Testament Reading is a call from the Lord through the prophet Joel to declare a fast of repentance on the basis of the fact that the Lord is merciful. The Epistle focuses on the fruits of repentance but does not turn us to our own resources; rather, we are empowered for self-denial and virtue by the knowledge of Jesus Christ and our salvation in Him. In the Gospel, Jesus invites those who are righteous by faith in Him to practice righteous deeds in humility, especially almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. In our Passion Reading, Jesus praises the special devotion of the unnamed woman and points forward to His sufferings and death by mention of His burial.

Relevant Context

The Passion Reading is the first nine verses of . The core of Mark’s Gospel can be outlined as follows: Jesus’ Ministry in Galilee (1:14–8:21); Jesus’ Journey to Jerusalem (8:22–10:52); Jesus’ Teaching and Passion at Jerusalem (11:1–16:8). The third section begins with His triumphal entry into Jerusalem followed by the cleansing of the temple and interactions with Jewish leaders that intensify their hatred of Him. The murderous plotting of the chief priests and scribes in 14:1–2 is their desperate response to Jesus’ public popularity, His criticism of their legalism and hypocrisy, His messianic self-identification as David’s Son and David’s Lord, His foretelling of the destruction of the temple, and His stated future mission of incorporating the Gentiles into the people of God. Their successful arrest of Jesus will be the focus of a later sermon in this series. For this sermon, the hostility of the Jews signals that the end of Jesus’ life is drawing near.

Textual Notes

“the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread”—By mentioning these festivals, Mark focuses us on the OT background of Jesus’ last days. He is the Passover “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (). He will replace the Passover meal with the feast of His body and blood, given and shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins.

v. 2: “Not during the feast”—They desired to destroy Jesus by stealth because there were a large number of pilgrims in Jerusalem for the Passover, and the leaders did not want to risk stirring up Jesus’ supporters to rebellion, which would alarm the Romans.

v. 3: “a woman came”—Apparently this unnamed woman was not an invited guest but sought Jesus out and invited herself into the house of Simon the leper. Her piety stands in stark contrast not only to the Jewish leaders plotting to kill Jesus but also to the guests at the meal who criticize her.

“broke the flask”—The common notion that this was the only way to remove the ointment from the flask ignores the need for the ointment to have been put into the flask somehow. Rather, this detail evokes the suddenness of her action.

v. 4: “said to themselves indignantly”—The English idiom “said to oneself” tends to indicate an internalized, nonverbal expression, but the Greek (ἀγανακτοῦντες πρὸς ἑαυτούς) probably conveys the sense of “they expressed their anger to each other.” In verse 5, they scolded her, and Jesus’ response to them in verse 6 suggests that they were even intimidating her.

v. 5: “more than three hundred denarii”—A denarius was one day’s wage for a laborer, so this amount would be roughly a year’s income. In , “two hundred denarii” was suggested as the amount necessary to buy bread for the five thousand.

v. 6: “a beautiful thing”—The Greek (καλὸν ἔργον) is more literally “a beautiful work.” Καλός is the same adjective translated as “good” in “good shepherd” (). It could be translated as “useful,” “excellent,” “noble,” or “praiseworthy.”

v. 7: “you always have the poor with you . . . you will not always have Me.”— says, “For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land[LR1] .’ ” Jesus’ praise of the woman’s deed is not intended to detract from the goodness of caring for the poor; rather, she did just the right thing for this momentous occasion, so normal doing good must give way to working a beautiful work (v. 6).

v. 8: “She has done what she could”—The woman was uniquely positioned to perform this service for Jesus, and she fulfilled her vocation.

“anointed My body”—While the woman had poured the ointment on Jesus’ head, the action applies to His whole body, just as in the OT, anointing the head consecrated the whole priest (). The language of “anointing” draws attention to Jesus’ role as Christ (Messiah), which means “Anointed One.” “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (). Note, however, that Mark uses a different verb (μυρίζω, used only here in the NT) than Acts (χρίω, the normal term for anointing).

“for burial”—It does not matter whether the woman understood that this was the ultimate purpose of Jesus[LR2] being anointed; all that matters is that Jesus knows and says this is why it happened. While no mention is made of the resurrection, the mention of burial will recall the reader/hearer of Mark’s Gospel to Jesus’ previous predictions of not only dying but also rising (8:31; 9:30–31; 10:32–34).

v. 9: “truly, I say to you”—The phrase ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν is frequently spoken by Jesus to draw special attention to what follows.

“the gospel”—It is instructive to examine other instances of “gospel” (εὐαγγέλιον) in Mark. See 1:1, 14, 15; 8:35; 10:29; 13:10; 16:15. This term is more prominent in Mark than in the other evangelists and in Acts. Paul uses it frequently to refer to the message that he preached, which must have had the twofold sense of the Gospel as content (such as “The Gospel according to St. Mark”) and as a Means of Grace (“the power of God for salvation” []).

“in the whole world”—On the night of His betrayal, Jesus predicts that the Gospel will go to “all nations” (; ), even “to the end of the earth” () and “to the whole creation” ().

Sermon Outline

Main Sermon Theme: Contrary to the onlookers who criticized the woman’s anointing of Jesus, He saw it as preparation for His burial and an act of love toward Him.

I. Giving to the poor and other ways of practicing righteousness are good, but sinners misjudge their purpose and value.

II. In Jesus’ eyes, the woman’s anointing was not merely good but beautiful.

III. The Gospel robes us in the beautiful righteousness of Christ and liberates us for a life of good works.

Sermon

Giving to the poor and other ways of practicing righteousness are good, but sinners misjudge their purpose and value.

If you get ashes in your eyes, you can’t see clearly. Our inborn sinfulness is like ashes to our spiritual vision. We look at what is good and distort its purpose, or we look upon what is beautiful and misjudge its value.

Jesus says in the Gospel, “When you give to the needy” (), so He assumes that Christians will do this, and since He would never want us to do something bad, then giving to the needy must be a good thing to do. Jesus also says in the Passion Reading, “You always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them” (). But sinners misjudge the purpose of such good deeds.

Jesus criticized the hypocrites “in the synagogues and in the streets” for conspicuously giving to the needy in order to “be praised by others” (). Likewise, they prayed long-winded prayers and made a show of fasting in order to “be seen by others” (, ). In being praised and seen by others, they received the rewards they were seeking: to be held in high esteem by other people. This is an entirely self-serving and godless approach to good works, because it pays no thought to our Father in heaven.

On the other hand, those who come to the Father through faith in His Son view good works as opportunities to serve the neighbor and please God (). In fact, they aren’t even seeking a reward. Jesus never says that rewards are why Christians do what they do. He promises that the Father will reward the almsgiving, prayer, and fasting of His children, but reward is not their motivation.

But our old Adam misjudges this point. Sin’s deep delusion is that good works must be done in order to be rewarded with eternal life. That is the worst misjudgment we can make. Thanks be to God that on Ash Wednesday, His Word, along with the liturgy and hymns, makes painfully clear our utter wretchedness and desperate need for the forgiveness of our sins. What we need most isn’t to give to the needy or do any other good work. We need the Lamb of God to take away our sins. And St. Mark takes us to Him in our Passion Reading when he begins, “It was now two days before the Passover. . . . And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest Him by stealth and kill Him” ().

The Passover and Passion were just a couple of days away. Jesus knew this and had repeatedly told His disciples that His death was drawing near. But unlike Jesus, the guests at Simon’s dinner party didn’t have their mind on the cross when an uninvited woman barged in, broke open a jar of perfume, and dumped it on Jesus’ head. I think artwork, Passion plays, and popular imagination tend to depict the woman’s act as serene and ceremonious, but the text suggests a suddenness and clumsiness to what she did. Alabaster flasks weren’t cheap and could be reused, but she smashes it open and renders it useless for the future. And I don’t picture her slowly and gently pouring it on Jesus’ head but drenching him, leaving Him blinking to squeeze out the drops falling into His eyes.

Then there’s the value of the ointment. If it really could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, that would be roughly a year’s wages for a day laborer. At the modest wage of $12.50 an hour that you can get at most fast food restaurants, three hundred days’ wages convert to $30,000. Before the feeding of the five thousand, the disciples estimated that two hundred denarii worth of bread would fill the crowd’s bellies (). Just imagine how many people you could feed with three hundred denarii! That’s what the guests at Simon’s dinner were saying among themselves, outraged at the woman’s wastefulness, indignant that so many would go hungry because of her impulsiveness. “What’s wrong with you, woman? Are you out of your mind? You should have sold that perfume and given the money to the poor!” But they had misjudging eyes.

In Jesus’ eyes, the woman’s anointing was not merely good but beautiful.

Jesus, however, always sees clearly. He comes to the woman’s defense and tells her critics to back off. Jesus recognizes her clumsy, unceremonious, impulsive action as a beautiful work, as preparation for the most beautiful, noble, good deed in human history: His suffering, death, and burial.

It is good to give to the needy, to do good to the poor. But when the incarnate Son of God is sitting at your dinner table preparing to suffer and die for the sin of the world in a couple of days and then be hastily entombed without proper anointing at His burial, then three hundred denarii worth of ointment is no waste but is rightly devoted to His service. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (). What the dinner guests could not see was the sheer uniqueness, the tremendous weight, of the moment they were witnessing. For God’s Anointed One—that’s what Christ and Messiah mean—was soon to give His body and shed His blood, to give His life as a ransom for the masses, to be the once-for-all Passover Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. This moment was not business as usual, even in moral terms. I’m sure that God the Father generously found other ways for the alms necessary to feed the poor of Bethany and Jerusalem on that day, even as He was about to pour out the priceless blood of His beloved Son as a saving, healing ointment for sinners. And the Son of God went to the cross willingly, to offer His life for yours and the lives of all sinners.

What an aroma that perfume must have made in the house! Like the way a dozen Easter lilies in a small room permeates the air with the smell of resurrection. In just a few days, Jesus would be hanging on a cross. As the sweat and blood poured down Jesus’ face, could He still smell the perfume that had prepared Him for burial? It would have been fitting, for, as St. Paul writes, “Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (). The smell of Christ’s holy person and atoning work turned away the wrath of God against sinners once and for all.

The Gospel robes us in the beautiful righteousness of Christ and liberates us for a life of good works.

And, in Holy Baptism, you have been washed in the blood of the Lamb and anointed with the Holy Spirit to sanctify you and make you pleasing to the Father. The beautiful robe of Christ’s righteousness has become yours, so that you need no longer fear eternal damnation in hell. The power of sin, death, and Satan has been shattered like that broken alabaster flask, and you have been liberated from the realm of darkness to live forever in the Kingdom[LR5] of Life, and for the rest of your earthly lives to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself.

That’s what the unnamed woman was doing, and her motivation has to have been faith in Jesus and love for Him, since Jesus solemnly states, “Truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her” (). She was an integral part of the Gospel story being fulfilled, and the Gospel is always about forgiveness of sins being received by faith.

There was another time Jesus was anointed by a woman, earlier in His ministry, at the house of a Pharisee named Simon (). St. Luke reports that that woman was known around town as a sinner, and she anointed and wiped the feet of Jesus with her hair. Jesus concludes the story by saying that her loving action toward Him was evidence that she had been forgiven much, for the one who has been forgiven much, loves much. Surely this was also the case for the unnamed woman in our Passion Reading. And now, wherever the Gospel of forgiveness of sins is proclaimed in all the world, this woman will be remembered for her faith in Jesus, her love for Him, and her preparation for His death and burial.

Why doesn’t St. Mark give us this woman’s name? Because at that moment, she was not the point—Jesus and His saving work were. Her anonymity also teaches us about how to approach good works. “She has done what she could,” Jesus says. That is, she simply lived out her vocation, and on that day, she was called to do the beautiful work of anointing Jesus beforehand for His burial. She did not do it to be praised or seen by others, nor was she seeking a reward, but she had eyes only for Jesus. And now, even though as a sinner she was not worthy of anything from the Father, she has gone on to receive her eternal reward, all for the sake of the Jesus whom she anointed.

You also are called to do what you can in your various vocations, in whatever situation the Lord puts you each day. You are set free from the enslaving misjudgment that you should do good works either to be praised by men or to be justified by God. In Christ, you receive temporal and eternal rewards that you could never earn, by grace alone. That takes all the pressure off and places you under His easy yoke and light burden. So on this Ash Wednesday, and every day, repent and believe the Gospel. And then rejoice that you have been judged forgiven and righteous in the eyes of the One who judges justly! Amen.

[LR2]Proof: it could also be correct to use an apostrophe after Jesus since a gerund follows, but I think the emphasis is better without it in this case.

[LR3]Scot: I made this change to be consistent with all the other sermons. These two were identical, which is why I deleted the second.

[SK4]okay

[LR5]Proof: this is a bit unusual, but I am going to keep it capped.