Lenten Meditation: April 6, 2025
The Fifth Sunday in Lent
Daily Scripture Passage: John 12:1-8
“You always have the poor with you.”
It is one of the most wrenching, the most confusing things that Jesus has to say to us.
Jesus knew his disciples would recognize their Torah, though we may not. “For there will never cease to be poor people in your land,” Moses taught the Israelites, illuminating how they were meant to live together. And as is so often the case when Jesus teaches from the scriptures, what is said implies what is left unsaid. “There shall be no needy among you,” Moses continued, since the Lord your God will bless you in the land, if only you heed him. No one is meant to be poor among God’s people. If the other disciples agree with Judas, that is fair—they have not mistaken the law.
Yet Mary of Bethany has done a good thing. “For there will never cease to be poor people in your land,” Moses taught, “which is why I command you: open your hand to them.” “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me,” Jesus tells them, sitting among his friends the night before he would enter into Jerusalem, the night before there would be no turning back. For all that he has said and done, Jesus alone understands that death is close at hand.
Mary takes a pound of costly perfume, she who once chose the better part. She kneels at her Lord’s feet and opens her hand to one now so needy; she puts her body and her resources and her care to the neglected places so that their holiness might be declared.
The smell of nard would have lingered on Jesus’ body, it clings to the skin for days. And a few days from now the soldiers, too, would smell the rich perfume, when they stripped his clothes, and hung him from the tree.