There is an account recorded in Matthew 26, which is familiar to Christians today but was scandalous to religious Jews in the first century. The text finds Jesus reclining at a dinner table in the house of Simon the leper. The language is immediately arresting—Jesus in the house of a leper? Lepers were ceremonially unclean and faithful Jews avoided any contact with them.
But then something even more outrageous happens: A woman enters, carrying an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and, without ceremony or explanation, pours the entire thing over Jesus’ head.
The room erupts. “Why this waste?” demand the disciples—not an entirely unreasonable question. The ointment in question was worth a small fortune. As the disciples point out, it could have been liquidated and the proceeds distributed to the poor. There were pressing needs all around them. What possible justification could there be for such extravagance?
But Jesus silences them. “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me.” And then he says something remarkable: “Wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.” Her bold act of devotion became permanently woven into the fabric of the gospel story and, two thousand years later, we are still talking about it.
The question is, what did she see that they didn’t?
She Understood the Moment
In John’s parallel account, the woman is identified as Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus. She was no stranger to extraordinary things. She had stood at the edge of a tomb and watched Jesus call her dead brother back to life. She had seen the word made flesh exercise authority over death itself. She knew, in a way that perhaps few others did, that Jesus was not merely a remarkable teacher or a promising political figure. He was the Lord of life.
And now, reading the signs around her—Jesus’ repeated references to his death, the gathering hostility of the religious leaders, the inexorable momentum of events—she understood something that the Twelve, for all their proximity to Jesus, had somehow failed to grasp: Jesus was moving toward the cross. Deliberately. Willingly.
Jesus himself confirms this interpretation. When he defends her action, he says: “In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial.” This was not sentiment. It was theology enacted. Mary understood that Jesus was not going to establish his kingdom through military conquest or political manoeuvring. He was going to bring heaven to earth through death—by taking upon himself everything that separates sinful humanity from a holy God and bearing it to the cross.
The disciples did not understand this. They were waiting for a revolutionary. Mary was already kneeling before a Redeemer.
She Understood Christ’s Worth
To appreciate the depth of Mary’s sacrifice, it helps to understand what she was responding to—not just emotionally, but theologically.
The human predicament, as Scripture presents it, is not merely that we have made a series of poor choices. It is that we are rebels in the court of a holy king. We have taken everything that belongs to God—the resources, the authority, the image-bearing dignity—and squandered it in the service of our own kingdoms. We have, in our hearts, dethroned him and elected ourselves as rulers of our kingdom. The consequence of such treason is not a slap on the wrist. It is death and, beyond death, eternal judgement in the lake of fire.
No human effort, however sincere or well-intentioned, can solve this problem. We cannot offer good deeds because even those deeds are tainted by sin. The thief cannot claim innocence because he donated a portion of his stolen funds to charity. Sin renders us hopeless before God.
But Mary had seen what God’s answer to this catastrophe looked like. It looked like the Son of God—the eternal Word who had spoken creation into existence—becoming a man, living in perfect righteousness in the place of unrighteous men and women, and going willingly to a Roman cross to absorb the full weight of divine wrath against sin. It looked like Jesus.
And if that is who Jesus is—if that is what he has done—then what, precisely, would constitute an appropriate response? What would not be a waste?
The Extravagance of True Worship
This is what the disciples had miscalculated. They had assessed the ointment against the wrong standard. They were thinking in terms of economic utility—what could this money accomplish? But Mary was thinking in terms of worth. And against the worth of the one who was about to give everything for his people, the most expensive ointment in the world was not extravagant. It was barely sufficient.
There is a confronting implication here for those of us who have sat in church for years, who know the language of faith, and yet who, in practice, treat radical devotion as excessive. We see someone give generously and think it’s a bit much. We see someone prioritise worship above social approval and wonder if they’ve lost perspective. We hear the call to take up a cross and follow Christ—through suffering, sacrifice, and the disrespect of a world that does not understand—and we hesitate.
But this is precisely the disciples’ error. They had been near to Jesus for years and still did not see clearly. They admired him. They followed him. But they had not yet arrived at worship.
Mary had. She had looked at Jesus and understood, at least in part, what it meant that he was the Christ—the one promised from the beginning, the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head, the one born to die so that sinners might live. And her response was not measured or cautious. It was total.
You Will Not Always Have Me
Jesus issues a warning in this passage that deserves to be heard with full seriousness: “You will not always have me.” For those gathered around the table, the urgency was immediate. Within days, he would be crucified, and the opportunity to anoint him, to honour him, to express their devotion in tangible ways, would be gone.
The warning has not lost its edge. Opportunities to hear the gospel, to respond in faith, and to bow before the king who gave everything are not unlimited. They will one day end. The question Good Friday presses upon us is the same one that confronted everyone in that room in Bethany: Do you see who he is?
Mary did. And she did not waste her moment. Neither should we.
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