Breaking the cycle…with extravagance
Monday of Holy Week 2026. John 12.1-11
[A huge thank you to Rachel Rose, LLM, for delivering the following whilst I was incapacitated!]
I wonder how this story leaves you feeling.
Perhaps it doesn’t leave you feeling anything: many of us have heard it often enough to let it wash over us as if it were simply a matter-of-fact. Maybe you hear it the same way as you might watch the news, responding by saying to yourself:
“That’s interesting. Moving on”.
As the self-appointed judge of how human beings should react in circumstances, I think that the correct reaction should be bafflement, because, frankly, none of it makes any sense.
For a start, the chapter before has already told us that Jesus has arrived in Bethany and has just made Lazarus, the dead man, live. He arrives where he already is. Then we’re told that there’s a zombie at the table with Jesus. Then, the zombie’s sister suddenly takes a bottle of perfume the size of a modern sports water bottle and, without saying a word to explain what’s going on or to ask for consent, pours it all over the feet of their guest. Then, rather than clean up the mess, which must have been significant, with a towel, she uses her own hair to wipe his feet.
I’m afraid the context doesn’t help make Mary’s choices seem more rational.
As a guest in their house, Jesus’ feet will have been washed when he arrived. She isn’t anointing his feet to clean them: they are already clean! In fact, by anointing with perfume, she is making his feet sticky: his feet are going to be covered in dust and dirt the moment he puts his feet on the ground from reclining at the table.
Jesus’ defence of Mary’s actions does little to help either: if Mary bought the perfume for Jesus’ burial, why has she just wasted it all on his feet while he’s still alive? In the verses before this chapter began, we learn that there are plenty of people plotting to kill Jesus; surely being prepared and well-stocked for his burial is more important now than ever?
If we’re willing to suspend our Western post-modern mindsets for a moment, it is possible to see that Mary actually has a better understanding of what’s going on than anyone else has. Her brother is alive because Jesus has just broken the cycle of death. What’s the point, then, of keeping anointing perfume for someone who has already proven that they possess the power of God to overcome death?
At the same time, Mary appears to know that something is afoot.
It might be helpful here to ‘zoom out’ for a second and look at the bigger picture. There is a belief amongst the Majority of Scholars that the Gospel of John is comprised of two ‘books’, the first half known as the ‘Book of Signs’ and the second, the ‘Book of Glory’. Whilst there is no clear agreement where the split lies, this story sits on the hinge. In a few paragraphs’ time, Jesus will indicate that ‘the hour’ has come, that same hour he told his Mother had not yet come back at the Wedding in Cana.
Mary appears to understand the significance of the moment. Across the earlier Chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus has made it abundantly clear that the hour would come when he would be ‘lifted up’ and return to his ‘Father’s House’. She isn’t anointing his body for burial as a mourner; she’s ritually cleaning his feet as if she were a priest, and he was entering the Holy Temple as one who has already been designated as pure. She is preparing him to enter the holy of holies, not in a frail material imitation on earth, but in heaven itself.
Mary’s act of material and social extravagance breaks the ritual cycle of preparing a body to be preserved for as long as possible, because she has met the resurrection and the life. It also breaks the ritual cycle of determining ritual worthiness to enter God’s presence because the one who will draw all people to himself is about to break down the barrier between the underworld and the eternal presence.
For Mary to act as a cycle-breaking prophet-priest, she has to embrace extravagance and deny her anxiety about how others would judge her. She similarly has to reject Judas’ false binary that wealth redistribution is the only way in which God’s kingdom can be realised on earth. She simply acknowledges the reality she finds herself in, responds with a total commitment, and trusts God to do the rest.
As we reflect on her actions, I want to share this prayer-poem by the late John Gowans:
Lord, let me be extravagant In what I give or do. I want to spend my ‘Everything’ And all my time for You. Not penny-pinching, miserly, Not keeping strict account; Investing all I have and then Forgetting the amount! If, feeling sorry for myself, I start to count the cost, Then I shall be the poorer - What I’ve gained will all be lost! O Lord when I begin to stray from dedication’s track Remind me of the way you gave, And I’ll hold nothing back!