Do What You Can

Scripture: Mark Chapter 14

Do What You Can

1Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. 2“But not during the festival,” they said, “or the people may riot.”

3While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

4Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5It could have been sold for more than a year’s wagesand the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

6“Leave her alone,”said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.7The poor you will always have with you,and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me.8She did what (she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.9Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

10Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. 11They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

(Mark 14:1-11)

It’s the fourth day of his final week, two days before Passover.  He knows he has only a few days left before the crucifixion.  His heart and mind must be full of all the things he wants yet to say on one hand and the fullness of his purpose weighing on the other.

In this quiet moment before the betrayal, Jesus rests.  He’s finished his public ministry of teaching and healing, and moved into a priestly one.  The anointing by this woman signifies the internal changes happening within him.  A change that goes largely unnoticed by the people around him, and so he gives another clue to what he’s thinking: “She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

It’s interesting to me that this is the trigger point for Judas’s decision for betrayal.  Could it be that Judas finally gets that Jesus isn’t going to be a Roman Conqueror?  Could it be that when he hears the comment Jesus makes, his prediction that he’s going to die, he fears for his own life?  Could it be that he is deluded into thinking that betraying him into arrest might save his life – a desire to control a situation he sees unraveling with dire consequences?  Whatever his motivation, this episode moves him into putting the plans into place that set Jesus up.

I also find it touching that Jesus says of the woman who does this for him “She did what she could”.  Something he rewards her for with in an interesting promise that reaches across time and space and links her story forever with his in the telling of the Gospel.

Here’s what I get from this passage for application: Jesus has to transition from the person we originally thought he was when we first meet him, into the person that intimacy reveals him to be in our lives.  Are we willing to let our lives change, let our own ambitions fall, and truly enter into the life of service and sacrifice he calls us to?

Do we betray him, like Judas, wanting to have control for ourselves; or do we honor him and forever link our story to his like this woman with the alabaster Jar?

If you are like me you’ve have moments of both, constantly picking up and putting down that control. 

Father I pray that you use this moment in devotion to talk to those who are reading.  I ask you to reveal their inner ambitions and to give them the courage to “Do What They Can.”  Amen