for you always have the poor with you

Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table. And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.” But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me."

Among churchmen, the favorite use of this passage, particularly the last line, has been in denigrating governmental efforts to eliminate material poverty. Often it is used when responding to non-believers who criticize the building of opulent worship spaces instead of spending every dime to feed people.

The first use is stupid and wrong. The Kingdom of God which we proclaim will have poor people, but it will not have the sort of poor whom our welfare programs are trying to help. There will still be poverty in the Kingdom, but almost all poverty, with one exception, will be and must be eliminated. I will get back to this in a moment.

The second use I’m fine with; I’ll skip a meal for a prettier world.

But the Spirit has held the best wine of the text back until these latter days.

The disciples gave everything to follow a man whom they believed would save the world and lift up all its poor; here, though, this man praises a woman for wasting an ointment which could have fed many. They gave everything to follow the Messiah, the redeemer of Israel, yet he says that he is not planning to stick around, and implies that he will shortly die.

In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial.

It is no surprise that this was the moment when Iscariot decided that the Lord Jesus could not be the Promised One, that his rabbi was a false prophet who deserved to be sold out for silver. It’s easy to betray a betrayer.

He was not meant to see that in this scene, we were shown the path by which material salvation for the poor will come.

Idiots in the Church tsk about their preference that the poor be helped by voluntary ‘charity’ instead of by state efforts and forced taxation. The problem with voluntary ‘charity’ is that people have not proven to be voluntarily ‘charitable’ enough to eliminate destitution, whereas the cold, bureaucratic, freedom-abusing programs of worldly governments, though they do not yet go nearly far enough, have had much more success on that front. What the comfortable Christians call ‘charity’ is, in truth, anti-charity and abandonment. Real charity is what works for the liberation of all.

Of almost all. For in order for the poor to have good news preached to them, some will need to remain poor. In order for liberation to come, some will need to remain slaves.

These perpetual slaves, these poor whom you will always have, will be your political rulers.

The alleviation of the poor will not come primarily through private acts of charity, but through concerted political action. With her rich ointment, the woman anointed the just and poor man who will become King. Through the wisdom and righteousness of his reign, exponentially more people will find succor than if the ointment had simply been sold and the money distributed.

Her act was the anointing of the king, but this anointing is not the one that the Lord chose to mention. It was simultaneously an anointing of another sort: an anointing of a corpse.

Behold, then, the singular and twice-significant path of God’s Messiah. The only Savior of the Poor is, in one fluid act, made a king and prepared for burial. The only way the poor will be saved is if they are ruled by walking dead.

But you will not always have me.

I am not a scholar, but I itch to know: has the Church always appreciated the strangeness of this line? Doesn’t this man later say, “Behold, I am with you always?” Doesn’t this man also have a history of confusing himself with others, saying, “I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink?” What might it mean, to not have and also to have the Lord with us? What might it mean, to be prepared for burial while one lives?

Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.

The Glory of God is forever on this woman, who by her offering anointed the righteous King. May the King reign in his politicians who, as society grows rich and enjoys the wedding feast, will always remain absolutely poor. May the King reign in his politicians, who will drink the cup of Christ’s death, who will themselves wear the lovely fragrance of burial, who will offer their lives up as a wasteful sacrifice so that the Living God might work through them, for the liberation of his poor and of all who cry out to Him.