A Woman Anoints Jesus while Leaders and Judas Plot

A broken flask and a priced betrayal share the same week

After two days was the feast of the passover, and of unleavened bread. The chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft, and put him to death. They said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar of the people. In Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious, and she brake the box and poured it on his head. Some had indignation within themselves and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. They murmured against her.

Jesus says, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. Ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always. She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her. The saying about the poor does not excuse neglect, austerity, or indifference. It defends a unique act of burial love against an accountant's rebuke. Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, goes unto the chief priests to betray him unto them. They are glad, and promise to give him money. He seeks how he might conveniently betray him. Costly honor and convenient treachery are both on the table.