The clock is ticking down; six days to Passover. Mary and Martha host a dinner for Jesus to celebrate the resurrection of their brother Lazarus. While Martha is serving the food, Mary brings out a pound of nard and puts it on Jesus feet and wipes his feet with her hair. What is that about? Nard was an expensive ointment comes from distilling the essential oils from Nardostachys jatamansi plant from the honeysuckle family that grows in the Himalayans. If you are familiar with honeysuckle, you know that has a very strong scent. According to the book of John, the fragrance permeated the whole room. 

Judas Iscariot comments that the perfume should have been sold to get money to the poor. The author notes that Judas didn’t really care about the poor, but had been in charge of the money bag for the group and had often dipped in for himself. This story checks out. I had a restaurant manager that used to complain about the workers wasting mustard, but later it turned out that he was embezzling from the company. 

Jesus tells Judas to leave Mary alone, because she is preparing for his funeral. Only he knows that his death is less than a week away. He says, “For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.” 

In modern Christianity, this sentence has been used to downplay the needs of the poor, but Jesus does not intend it that way here. It was and is always our duty to take care of the poor (Mark 10:21) (Luke 14:14) (Matt 19:21).

A crowd started to build in Jerusalem in anticipation of Jesus’s arrival. They waved palm leaves and cried out “Hosanna” which means “Save us” as he rode in on a young donkey. This was similar to a description of the Messiah in Zach 9:9 “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!”

Jesus also told them about his death and resurrection to come. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” As he spoke about his death there was thunder and the people saw it as a sign from God.