Matthew 26: 6-13
The woman who anointed Jesus at Bethany: The First women priests: the seeing seekers

Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, ‘Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.’ But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, ‘Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.’

The first centuries of the Christian church – we’ll call it the Jesus movement to be more accurate – were an exciting time. Many people were excited about Jesus and had plenty of things to say about Jesus, even though none of them had known Jesus and had lived with Jesus. Those who did, some did not survive very long after that, and time soon passed that the others died of natural death. Nonetheless, people still had plenty of things to say about Jesus. It is a phenomenon that we can fully understand. We are now separated from them by two millennia and yet we can’t stop talking about Jesus. Such is the power of the life of Jesus, and his good news is one that we can’t stop talking about.

When the gospel writers painstaking put together the stories of the life of Jesus, they relied heavily on accounts of these people who can’t stop talking about Jesus. They took in material from a variety of sources. Some of these sources lived with Jesus, most of them did not. There were a huge collection of sayings of Jesus that are consistently preserved by many communities. Mark collected many of them and wove them into his story of Jesus’ life. Matthew borrowed from Mark and added his other sources. Luke took in material from Mark and Matthew and added other sources that he collected.. John took a different method in composing his gospel. His was essentially a sermon cast into a narrative form that reflects on the theme of how God came into this world and found people found him a stranger. Similarly the theme develops into a treatment of how the followers of this stranger God found themselves strangers too in this world: “You are not of the world… be of good cheer, I have overcome the world”. I am glad that John’s gospel is included in our Bible because the themes he develops resonate so much with our experiences – so much that we continue telling the same story in different versions again and again. ‘Superman Returns’, after all, is the Gospel of John, according to Clark Kent.

The process of compiling stories from different sources into one narrative meant that the product will be messy. Often there will be contradictions and inconsistency. I am going to propose that in this messiness is found the power and truth of the stories. The story of the woman who anointed Jesus at Bethany is one such story.

There are many problems with Matthew’s version of the story. First, the setting takes place in an all-male environment over dinner, a habura. No proper woman would break into a men’s dinner. If she did, she had no respect for propriety, no honor for taboos: she would therefore be a woman of questionable repute. Secondly, at the beginning of such an all-male dinner, the house slave would wash and anoint the guests but on their hands and feet – to freshen them and to lighten a bit the body odours, but not on the head. Finally, no woman would anoint the head of a man, even more so in public: it would have shamed the man! So how did Matthew’s story happen? Matthew probably combined stories from two different sources.

Women did anoint on the head, but they did so to other women, and in their all-women spaces. It is likely that Matthew took the core part of the story from one of these communities of women. The Jesus Movement had many house churches that we led by women – we have names: Mary, Junia, Rhoda, Pricillia. Some of these women-led group were so prominent that Paul had to send a missive saying that he would rather have women quiet rather than prophesizing. Some of these groups would have gathered together. They would have anointed each others head in welcome. They would discuss the meanings of Jesus’ life, and in particularly why Jesus was the Christ, the anointed one. In time, they wove their understanding of Jesus’ ministry into their rituals and told stories of how Jesus was among them and they anointed his head as one of their own. And they made him the Christ – anointed for his burial.

This interpretation seems likely when we consider how Luke adapted Matthew’s version to iron out the difficulties. In his more familiar version, the woman of Bethany became a sinner to explain her rude intrusion. She anointed Jesus’ feet instead of his head – that would have been more probable. But why did she do that? Luke gave us his reason: Jesus’ host, Simon the Pharisee did not properly welcome Jesus and this sinner would do his dirty job. She loved much and is therefore forgiven. Like Matthew, Luke used the figure of the woman to teach the men a lesson, but however, the woman has become a sinner, and her prophetic act has become an experience of sin forgiven.

Yes, there are inconsistencies, but it is these inconsistencies that allow us to surface the stories of the women gatherings of the women prophets and the women priests. It is important to surface their stories. This is why.

I’ve used the word ‘priests’ rather naughtily to describe these women. Christian priesthood developed much later to add meanings to the ordained ministry and to make authoritative pastoral roles. However, note that many churches that have priests would not ordain women priests: they say Jesus did not have women as apostles, they say women cannot represent the male Christ in offering the bread and the wine. The text from Matthew challenges these statements. The male disciples were named apostles because their memories are preserved by male-dominant groups. Furthermore, were not ministering to each other and making sense of the meanings of Jesus in their lives priestly roles? God’s greater sense of humour can be seen that in Matthew’s narrative, our passage happens right before another passage that mirrors exactly this story. There is also an all-male dinner at an upper room. Like the woman that broke into the men’s circle, Jesus broke the bread. Like the woman who poured out the ointment, Jesus poured out wine. Jesus said to the women that what she had done would be told in remembrance of her. Later, Jesus said that the bread broken and the wine shared would be done in remembrance of him. What the woman did was just as crucial to the gospel as what Jesus did in the upper room. But how do we handle the fact the one story become absorbed into another, where women’s stories lose their richness and become mere object lessons for the men?

Our Christian hope lies at the end where God’s purpose is fulfilled. We look for the resurrection of the body. It is a resurrection of our bodies of experiences also from the dead histories and the dead histories of other people’s versions of our stories. It is a resurrection where we will finally be known to each other as God knows us, in all its strength and weakness and vulnerability. At this resurrection, because we know each other so much more deeply that we love each other more richly, forgive more intensely because we know we share the same human condition. How this resurrection will take place, and when it will take place is not as important a question as whether we are going to be agents to make that happen. Our Christian duty is therefore, while in this life, to resurface a person’s authentic experiences from other people’s re-telling and revision.

First, we have to accept that our stories do get co-opted by larger forces; for example, the richness of lesbian histories get co-opted by a much more dull male re-telling of gay and lesbian histories. One painful example is what happened to Leslie Lung and his Liberty League. The experiences of ex-gay men, while we may not agree to be healthy development of a personhood, is far richer than the Christian re-tellers of their stories: casting them into their heterosexist framework of denying the existence of the homosexual personhood and seeing it as sin to overcome, something we know that does not reflect the experiences even of ex-gays. If that is not bad enough, the activists on our side co-opt the experiences of ex-gays into our stories of a struggle between the Christian Right and us and therefore ex-gays must be minions used to attack our integrity. Upon reflecting, later, on how Leslie was depressed over the failure of his Liberty League project to take off, I am sorry that he has to be broken by forces co-opting and destroying his stories for different agendas. Can we work to let others be known as they are known by God?

Living in an Asian culture, we tell stories of our families in very fossilized structures. Characters in our families take on very specific roles. Parents are the nurturers and providers. Children obey and then pay back their dues and take on filial roles. Does culture shape our way of seeing our relationship that leaves us less richly authentic? Can we see our parents as also people who grow alongside us, learning from us and sometimes being capable of having doubts, and having their self-esteem shaped by how we respond to them? Is this more authentically our stories?

Lesbian and gay members in your coming out experiences, is your experience shaped by one grand story of achieving personal freedom and integrity, pursuing a place of an open space that you cannot recognize other more down-to-earth aspects of this coming out, in our more complex relationship with those who love us and those who struggle with us?

What about our way of understanding our stories of our own personal spiritual formation, is it shaped and co-opted by larger forces? I remember when I was in a Bible Presbyterian Church preparing for baptism, I had to write a testimony. As I got on editing and re-writing my piece it followed more and more closely to a script of ‘I once was lost but now I see’. It could have been a coming out experience if I had known the words ‘Drama Queen’. Our lives don’t have to be a tool to legitimize a theology that Jesus’ saves – because Jesus saves just as we are. God’s grace is amazing enough – just as I am. When Peter Goh, in his sermon asked us if pornography had not been essential to our understanding of our sexual selves, it struck me in that it is so true that we script our understandings of our lives in such a way that it leaves us less honest. So I ask further, do you think your backslidings and your sometimes distance from God – are they part of your authentic journeys too in understanding yourself and God? Do we divorce ourselves from some parts of our experiences: denying that we are formed of them or removing them totally from our memories to avoid them?

What can we learn from the woman of Bethany? We have to recognize that she is a seeing seeker. While the male disciples were concerned about big ideas of justice and charity for the poor, Matthew recognized that she saw Jesus a man in need, a man about to die. This was a more pertinent issue at hand. That is why Matthew had Jesus praising the woman because while the disciples were thinking about ideals, she saw that Jesus would not always be with them. We need to have the type of vision.

Having this vision demand us to look at the way we relate to Jesus. We do tend to look at Jesus as a Saviour, as God, as someone from the Other side. Bryan Singer christianized the figure of the Superman in his latest movie. He had superman pierced at his right side, he had superman lifting up chunks of perverted Kryptonian technology in a way the recalls the ancient hymn ‘Jesus, Lamb of God; Jesus bearer of our sins, have mercy on us’. He had Jesus die and then show us an empty hospital bed. However, despite his heroism he is a vulnerable, lonely and alienated man. It was Lois Lane that recognized that and hence it was Lois Lane that knew they had to go back, to save Superman. The woman of Bethany had this same vision because she recognize in Jesus a man in need. Can we see the same also in Jesus? He may be 100% God, but there’s still a 100% humanity left. Can we love Jesus with a fierce erotic passion for a common man? Can we love Jesus with an intense erotic passion as for a vulnerable woman? Next week, when we come back again to celebrate communion, let Matthew also remind us of the wise act of the woman of Bethany; when we hear Jesus’ words ‘This is my body, my blood’, let us remember the early women disciples who recognized Jesus as one of their own: flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, fruit of my womb.

We have some favourite Jesus-is-my-boyfriend songs. What kind of a lover is Jesus? In many of our imagination, Jesus is that perfect boyfriend – always there for us, never forsaking us, always supporting us. Matthew gives us quite a different picture. We have a woman knowing Jesus is confronting death. Putting ourselves in the shoe of this woman in Matthew’s story, what is the purpose of her confrontation, what does she need from Jesus at this point of time? Jesus, as reported by Matthew, can ‘rebuke the winds and the sea’, forgive sins, raise the dead. Jesus, according to Matthew, gives authority to his followers over unclean spirits. This follower of Jesus must have witnessed the potent divinity in Jesus, or must known witnesses to this power in the man. How does this square with a knowledge of an impending death? This woman’s silence as she anoints Jesus’ head must be louder than any anguished questioning can be. Yet in her silent questing for an answer, an answer from the master himself that can give her some assurance, some explanation, some words of advice, she receives a mere affirmation that what she does is right. Is this the response from a ‘perfect boyfriend’ or a difficult one?

Perfect boyfriends are products of our imaginations, fantasies of our selfishness. Are we disappointed when Jesus don’t always seem loving, don’t always seem close when we need him? Do we love Jesus because he can provide everything we need for life? If your answer is ‘Yes’, then thank God. Thank God because in every journey of love, we begin with selfishness, looking in another for a fulfillment of our own desires. But the mystery of love is this: the more we want our desires fulfilled by our loved ones, the more we are challenged to selflessly give up something on our part: so we lose some bit of ourselves in the process, and gain a deeper understanding of ourselves in relation to another person. Are we willing to embark in this risking, not knowing how we will turn out in the process? Can we also extend this risky love with Jesus to our relationship with people – be they significant others, friends and colleagues – and learn in an evolving process that we are not the centre of a fixed universe, but co-dancers of worlds of multiple possibilities?

The gift of the woman from Bethany is also that she can see beyond the character of a hero to the fullness of a person. The world keeps vigil as Superman lies dying – we are not sure if they recognize the same mortality that their saviour experiences. Lois Lane seeks for a man who needs her presence. The disciples see in Jesus their champion of justice, their hero for the poor. The woman of Bethany seeks for a man who needs her anointing. Do we have heroes too? All of us have heroes in our lives – these figures are needed in our growth towards maturity, the difference is whether we admit to having personal heroes. But can we recognize the person behind the heroic masks we make them wear for us? Our heroes can be anyone, our cell-group leaders, our friends, anyone we may look up to. We set them up on pillars we look up on in our mind, and sometimes we become bitterly resentful when they don’t measure up. The woman of Bethany asks us to look beyond heroes and relate person to person, celebrating all their vulnerabilities, ambiguities and contradictions.

Let us follow in the path that this seeing seeker charted out for us. Despite how our stories will be shaped by forces greater than ourselves, to seek Jesus with a clear vision, a practical vision, an incisive vision, in a path true to our experience. I leave us with a call by W. H. Auden in his Christmas Oratorio to follow our one Master:

He is the Way.
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety.
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.