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John 12: Anointed for Burial

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Mary's offering prepares the body of Life himself to carry the aroma of resurrection down into the tomb.

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Mary's Anointing at Bethany: Preparing the King for His Burial

Show Notes

In this episode of the Spoken Gospel podcast, hosts David and Christine begin their farewell to the Gospel of John, a book they admit they could happily study for a lifetime. Rather than working from a tight outline, they walk verse by verse through the opening scene of John 12—Mary pouring out a pound of costly perfume on Jesus at a dinner in Bethany. Along the way they trace how this single, seemingly small act gathers up nearly everything John has been building toward, revealing Jesus as the Passover lamb, the consecrated priest, the anointed King, and the Bridegroom on his way to the grave.

From the Book of Signs to the Book of Glory

John's Gospel turns on a hinge, and John 12 sits right on it. The first half of the book—often called the "book of signs"—races through roughly three years of Jesus' ministry, showing again and again through miraculous signs that he is the Word made flesh, the Son of God, the Son of Man, God with us who has taken our humanity into himself. But beginning here, the pace slows dramatically. John spends nearly ten chapters on the final week of Jesus' life, ushering in what's often called the "book of glory."

That word "glory" hovers over the whole episode, and the hosts are honest that it resists easy definition. Glory in John seems to include suffering, the cross, and enthronement all at once. Jesus reveals his glory from the very first sign at Cana, and that glory finally crests in his death, resurrection, and ascension—the greatest sign of all. The question John keeps pressing is what Jesus means when he speaks of the Son of Man being glorified, and John 12 is where that question starts to come into focus.

Lazarus and the Resurrection in Person

To understand the anointing, we first have to return to the tomb of Lazarus, the penultimate sign that sets everything in motion. Jesus deliberately arrives at Bethany—a name that carries the sense of a house of affliction, agony, and the poor—only after his dear friend has been dead four days. In the thinking of that time, three days was the outer limit at which a person might still recover; after that, the soul was understood to have departed to Sheol, the realm of the dead. Lazarus was not merely dead but deader than dead.

This matters because Jesus does not simply speak to a body in a tomb. He calls into Sheol itself—"Lazarus, come out"—as casually as if his friend were standing in the next room. In doing so he shows that every soul is present to him, that he holds the power of life in himself, and that he can enter the realm of the dead and summon life out of it. It's a foreshadowing of his own conquest of the Grave. His words to Martha crystallize the whole point: he does not promise that resurrection will happen on some distant last day. He declares, "I am the resurrection." Resurrection is not an event Jesus performs; it is who Jesus is. When the King rides into his Kingdom, everything is subsumed into his rule—including death itself.

With Mary, Jesus takes a different posture. Where Martha meets him with confessional hope, Mary is simply undone, weeping at his feet. Jesus does not answer her with a lecture on the resurrection; he weeps alongside her. That, too, is profound theology: God grieves with the one he loves even as he prepares to raise the one he loves.

Two Passovers, Two Tables

John sets two scenes side by side, and the contrast is deliberate and devastating. As Passover approaches, crowds stream into Jerusalem to purify themselves—cleansing away every defilement, much of it associated with death, so they can rightly celebrate the feast that remembers God freeing his people from a death-dealing empire. Yet at that very moment, the chief priests and Pharisees are plotting to arrest and kill Jesus. They are preparing to celebrate rescue from Death while aligning themselves with Death; consecrating themselves for a feast of life while conspiring toward murder.

Six days before that Passover, a very different gathering is taking place in the slum of Bethany. There is no temple, no priestly pomp, no elaborate show of purity—only a dinner held in Jesus' honor, with the recently resurrected Lazarus reclining at the table, eating real food with a real body. This meal is a kind of proto-Passover. While Jerusalem prepares to commemorate a rescue from Death that happened long ago, Bethany is already celebrating a rescue from Death that happened days ago in Lazarus. The people huddled around the temple are gathered around a system that is passing away; the people gathered in Bethany are gathered around God's new temple in the flesh, the one who is himself purifying the world of Death and the Grave. And Jesus, the true and better Passover lamb, is being made ready for a Passover that will eclipse them all.

The Aroma of Life Poured Out for Burial

Into this scene Mary steps with a pound of pure nard, an extravagantly costly perfume, and pours it over Jesus' feet, wiping them with her hair until the whole house is filled with its fragrance. The image is layered with meaning. Only a chapter earlier, Martha had warned that four-days-dead Lazarus would reek if the stone were rolled away. Now Mary fills the room with a sweet aroma poured over the body of Life himself. The stench of the tomb is being answered by the fragrance of resurrection.

Jesus interprets her act plainly: she has kept this for the day of his burial. The hosts note that the Greek here is spare—it does not tell us where the perfume came from or exactly what Mary intended, only that it was set aside for a purpose and that Jesus declares its purpose fulfilled. Whatever Mary understood, what is actually happening is that Jesus is being embalmed while still alive, prepared to carry the sweet aroma of Life down into the festering pit of the Grave. He is the one being who has life in himself and never needs to die, and yet he takes humanity into himself so that he can go to us in our death and raise it up with him. As all Jerusalem prepares lambs for slaughter, Mary is quietly anointing the ultimate Passover lamb for his sacrifice.

The Extravagant Gift, Judas, and the Poor

Mary's offering is staggering, and not just for its cost. A jar of perfume this valuable would have stood out in impoverished Bethany like a jewel-encrusted treasure dropped into a slum—it simply does not belong there. And yet neither does Jesus. He is the jewel of heaven, and his presence turns a slum into holy ground. When the King is in the room, no gift poured out at his feet is a waste.

This is why Judas' objection—that the perfume could have been sold to feed the poor—rings hollow, and not only because his heart is not truly charitable. Jesus responds, "The poor you will always have with you." Some of the early church fathers heard in this a pointed word to Judas himself: those who pour everything out for Jesus are the truly rich, while those who reject him remain impoverished no matter their wealth. The line also echoes the promise of Deuteronomy that there would be no poor among the people who obeyed God—a promise fulfilled in Acts, where the first believers laid their possessions at the apostles' feet and no one among them was in need.

There is deep encouragement here as well. Jesus teaches that when we serve the poor, we serve him, because human beings bear the image of God, and what is done to the image is done to the God it reflects. In going straight to Jesus, Mary is anointing the very Lord who is served in every act of care for the least. And the crowning irony of Judas' complaint is that Mary's gift does feed the poor—forever. By preparing Jesus for a burial through which he will ransom humanity from Death and reign as King, she is anointing the one who is the bread of life, the one who feeds the world eternally by pouring himself out.

Priest, King, and Bridegroom on the Way to the Grave

The anointing carries at least three more meanings, all crashing together in a single moment. First, oil poured out was how a priest was consecrated to enter the holy place and perform the sacrifices of the feast. Jesus is being consecrated as the priest of the Passover—and remarkably, he is both the priest who officiates the sacrifice and the offering itself. The tragic irony is sharpened by the fact that the priests in Jerusalem are also preparing an offering: they reason that one man should die for the nation, unknowingly serving as priests of Rome, propitiating an empire with the blood of the Lamb of God.

Second, anointing was how a king was enthroned. Jesus is being prepared to ride into Jerusalem as the Son of David, recapitulating Solomon's coronation, entering his city to claim his Kingdom. But he will take his throne through the Grave, seizing even Rome's instrument of death and making it the very means of his conquest, taking the government upon his shoulders exactly as Isaiah promised—conquering Death by going under it.

Finally, there is wedding imagery threaded throughout. John the Baptist calls Jesus the bridegroom; the first sign unfolds at a wedding in Cana; the woman at the well in Samaria is drawn into a covenant with the divine husband. Song of Songs sings of the king reclining at his table while his beloved's perfume spreads its fragrance—and here in John 12, the King reclines at the table while Mary's perfume fills the room, anointing him for a wedding night that is also his burial. The church fathers saw the tomb itself as a kind of bridal chamber, just as the womb was the chamber where God first joined himself to humanity. As the firstborn from the dead, Jesus opens the womb of the tomb; he turns a place of Death into a place of new birth.

All of this converges on the invitation at the heart of the episode. Jesus shows that the way to glory runs through sacrifice, through laying everything down, and Mary sees that way and joins him on it, pouring out all she has at his feet. This is why a version of this story appears in every Gospel and is honored wherever the good news is proclaimed. The Christian life is nothing less than following the Priest-King on his way to the Kingdom—giving him our whole selves as a pleasing aroma. What is astonishing is not the value of the perfume but the tenderness of the God who receives it, the King who thirsted for his people even from the cross, who poured out his own liquid life so that dust like us could become dear to him. Losing something precious to gain something invaluable is the motif Mary embodies, because it is first the story of Jesus, who gave up everything to gain the whole world for his children and to bring us, buried flesh and all, into his resurrected life.

Transcript

David: [upbeat music] Well, welcome everyone to the Spoken Gospel podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. We are in our last few episodes on the Book of John. I think it's because we feel like we could basically spend an eternity in this book. At some sense, we just have to go, "All right. We have to move on." Well, I guess we don't have to. I don't know. We do, in a sense, but we're moving on anyway. And so we are just kind of gonna share, or not even share, we're gonna walk through a few of the passages that we've been camped out in for about a week or so now, and instead of having, like, a very well drawn out outline, which I don't know how often we have those anyway, but we are just going to walk through verse by verse a few of these passages here in John 12 to end. So the idea is that we'll have a couple of episodes on John 12 focusing on two stories. One is Mary anointing Jesus with the rich, expensive perfume of pure nard in verses one through eight, and then Jesus's triumphal entry in John 12:12 through 19-ish, with an eye to some amazing things that happened right after that. So it'll be an interesting way for us to get to say goodbye to John on the podcast by just walking through a few verses here. But as we kind of close out John, Christine, I'm curious for you, like, what has being in John for the last few months meant to you, and what's been unique or interesting or this time around, just camping in John, what stood out to you?

Christine: Well, that's very hard to answer because it's hard to know where to begin, but I really loved tracking the theme of signs through John.

David: Yeah.

Christine: That was really eye-opening for me, and also seeing how many layers of John connects to all the layers of John, and John is just this fountain that keeps on giving, has also been fun to enjoy. You kind of know that, you kind of get that idea, but reading through it just multiple times and studying it and even the sections and with a certain theme highlighted, whether that was signs or water or the I am statements, always unraveled not just John, but the whole Bible in a new way.

David: Mm-hmm.

Christine: And so I felt like I was studying the Bible while studying John because John is always referencing and alluding to different parts of the Bible, so I felt like I got a Bible lesson and a John lesson.

David: Yeah. I would agree with that.

Christine: But I, I wanna continue that.

David: Yeah. We have a, we have a listener who goes to our church, and he stopped me the other day, I don't think I told you this, and he was looking at the Revelation stuff. David, hi, if you're listening. And he was like, "The, the sea that turns to glass as a picture of the waters of chaos that Jesus stills is still just blowing my mind." And he's told me that a couple times now.

Christine: Oh.

David: And I mentioned to him that we've been in John lately, and thinking about John as the author of Revelation, who is then the writer of this gospel, and how layered and symbolic and intentional and well-structured and everything that Revelation is, bringing that over to reading his gospel and being like the same mind that God used to write Revelation wrote this gospel, and we think of it as this simple gospel, this gospel of belief, this gospel that we're like, "Oh, read this one first." You know? Which, great, do that, but man, I'm, I, I agree, just the layers. I, I don't think I've ever seen how complex and beautiful and interconnected, both internally and externally, that John's gospel is. It's made me baffled and befuddled at the genius that John is, the love he had for Jesus, the understanding he had for scripture, the way he processed what the gospel was, who Jesus was, and how deeply he wanted us to know to just believe and trust and be in Christ. You can hear his, like, elder heart just calling out to you from every page. So yeah, it's been really sweet. It's been really sweet. Okay. W- so in the story, we're, we're kind of at the hinge point between... And, you know, these are somewhat late divisions, if you want to call them that, but a hinge point between th- what's called, like, the book of the signs and the book of glory, right?

Christine: Yes. Yes, and that is a helpful way to, like, have some themes that inform both sides, but also just narratively, the switch that happens is that we are now in the last week of Jesus's life, and it's kind of, we're also kind of halfway through the book, sort of. And so-

David: Yeah, it slows down a lot

Christine: ... it slows down, and we spend almost 10 chapters in the last week of Jesus's life, whereas we were covering three years in the first half. So there is something significant that happens in 12 that we would notice just without even the chapter breaks. But yeah, I'm, I'm excited.

David: Yeah. The, to say that the, the division is late doesn't mean it's not intentional. [laughs]

Christine: Yeah, or unhelpful.

David: There is a shift.

Christine: Yeah.

David: Or unhelpful, yeah.

Christine: Yeah.

David: But we had this book of, quote-unquote, signs where Jesus is showing that He is the Word of God in the flesh, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Messiah, God with us, who has taken our humanity into Himself, and He has just shown again and again and again that this is who He is, and He's done it through signs. We had a whole episode on that, trying to show the invisible reality that He, this is the truth of who He is, using visible signs and saying, "If you don't believe my words, if you don't believe me, at least believe the signs." He just wants people to believe in Him so they can join in His work that He's doing for them. And now it turns into the book of glory, where we're going to see Him move from these signs that show that He is the Son of God to the fulfillment of what the Son of God has come on Earth to do, which is to enter into His suffering and then be glorified, which is a huge theme that we won't even have time to touch really [laughs] in this episode.

Christine: Yes. There's so much connected to glory here at the, and we- Won't touch on all of it. My big question is what is glory? I still don't know.

David: [laughs] I know, right.

Christine: I know it's suffering. I know it's the cross. I know it's enthronement. I still don't know what it is.

David: Yeah.

Christine: And so that's something that we're still on the journey on [laughs] and will be forever, I suppose. But still entering into this, well, what is Jesus talking about when he talks about the Son of Man being glorified is kind of what we are beginning to explore-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... here. 'Cause He does reveal His glory from the very beginning. John talks about it in chapter one, and then in chapter two he reveals His glory through the first sign. So the signs are about glory.

David: Mm.

Christine: And then it kind of cumulates into the greatest sign, which will be His death and resurrection, but that also includes His ascension, His incarnation as a whole, like, the whole thing is the glory of God.

David: Yes.

Christine: And so classic John, I'm still just trying to, [laughs] you know-

David: [laughs]

Christine: ... apprehend a footprint of his, and so it's-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... it's, it's a journey and it's fun.

David: It really is. And so it is interesting, then, thinking about that with the, I guess you could call it the penultimate sign. The ultimate sign before the ultimate sign [laughs] was Lazarus's resurrection-

Christine: Yes

David: ... which is the perfect hinge point for everything John is doing. He's trying to show that the, through the signs, that the Messiah, the Son of God, is going to enthrone humanity again with God in heaven by going into our death, into our flesh, into our mortality, and raising it up with Him into glory. And so it makes sense, then, that the way He's manifesting that sign, uh, penultimately and then ultimately, is through death and resurrection. And so He goes to, to Lazarus, a dear friend of His. Lazarus' sisters are also dear friends of Jesus, Mary and Martha. And He goes to Bethany, the house of suffering, the house of affliction. Is that-

Christine: House of, yeah, agony-

David: Agony

Christine: ... the poor.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Yeah, it's a slum.

David: Yeah. That's where Lazarus and Mary and Martha live, and He goes there intentionally late, letting His friend Lazarus die so that this sign might occur for His glory and for the, the glory of the Father, and raises Lazarus from the dead after he's really, really dead, because it's been four days.

Christine: He's deader than dead at that point.

David: Which, uh, was something newer for me to learn, was, you know, the, the four-day significance of a dead person [laughs] in the Jewish thought of that time was it was after day three that the spirit or the soul, it was hovering over the body, but then that's when it departs. Is that the idea?

Christine: Yeah. There's... And I would need to do more research.

David: Yeah.

Christine: But, 'cause there's something about a 40-day period, too.

David: Yes.

Christine: But the three-day period is kind of basically a time period wherein there still might be a chance that a person could recover or be resuscitated or spring back to life 'cause his soul is sort of nearby, like not wanting to leave his body yet. That's sort of an idea. And so sometimes the mourning would last that long, or even the burial wouldn't happen until after that. I'm not sure.

David: Yeah.

Christine: In Lazarus's case, he is buried four days, but, um, there's this whole idea of once a person has been dead for three days, there's no chance of-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... him coming back. Like, his soul has departed into the underworld at some point.

David: Yeah, he's gone to Sheol now.

Christine: Yeah.

David: In, yeah, he's-

Christine: Yeah, he's changed address [laughs] officially.

David: That's right. And so he's not talking to Lazarus just in the tomb.

Christine: No.

David: He's talking to Lazarus in Sheol, in the realm of the dead, and calling him out of there, showing that he has the power of life in himself, and foreshadowing and showing the conquest of Hades, the conquest of Hell, that he's going to do in his own resurrection soon.

Christine: Yeah, and showing that he is God-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... because he doesn't summon the soul of Lazarus from the depths of the underworld, wandering about in murky waters and shadows of gloom. He just says, "Lazarus, come out," like he was in the room, you know, just over there.

David: Yeah.

Christine: And so he's showing he has got to h- He is present to everyone, and every soul is present to him.

David: Mm.

Christine: And so he can just call Lazarus, like, "Hey, Lazarus, come here." [laughs] And if Lazarus happens to be in Sheol, he's gonna, like, "You called?" [laughs] Kind of.

David: Yeah. "If I, if I am in Sheol, there you are."

Christine: Yeah.

David: The psalmist says, yes.

Christine: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

David: Yeah.

Christine: So Jesus is showing his glory in that sense, and we, I think it pertains to this that he says in chapter 10, like, he has authority in himself to lay his life down and to take it up again, and that is showing again that no one can take Jesus' life from him, which he says he has authority to lay his own life down and authority to take it up again, and he can do that with people as well.

David: Yeah, and Lazarus' two sisters play an interesting role in that whole story as well, and we're gonna meet them again in this story, so it, it would probably be good to introduce what we've just seen from them in the previous chapter, that Martha and Mary separately come up to Jesus in two different ways, but they both kind of share a similar lament. "Lord, if you would've been here, our brother wouldn't have died."

Christine: Yes.

David: Like, they knew that he was able to prevent death. [laughs]

Christine: They knew him as a healer.

David: As a healer.

Christine: And Martha confesses to knowing of the resurrection, of l- She has this hope that Lazarus will be raised in the last day.

David: Yeah.

Christine: And then Jesus says that the resurrection is a person. [laughs]

David: Yeah, "I am the resurrection, and since I am here, the last day is here, so get ready-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... 'cause resurrection is in me."

Christine: Yes.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Which is so cool, and I think that was, that was how I would think about it, too.

David: Mm.

Christine: Is like, oh, the l- resurrection is a time in the future. Kinda like, I, I can-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... repeat Martha's words-

David: Yeah, I think-

Christine: ... and be like, yeah

David: ... I think I think that way. Like, I think-

Christine: 'Cause-

David: ... I still kinda think that way-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... in a sense.

Christine: There are people who are dead right now who are not in their bodies and whose bodies have not been resurrected.

David: We believe in a future bodily resurrection as Christians.

Christine: Yeah, we do.

David: Yeah.

Christine: But we also believe that Jesus says, "I am the resurrection." And again, to Him all are present and everything is present at all times-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... 'cause He's outside of time. And so the idea that when you meet resurrection, it's Resurrection Day-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... is-

David: He doesn't say, "I will do resurrection."

Christine: Yeah, he says, "I am the resurrection."

David: I am resurrection.

Christine: Yes, 'cause I am life.

David: Yeah.

Christine: And so-

David: It, it reminds me of 1 John 3:2, when he's revealed, like when we see him, we will become like him because we will see him as he is. When we behold the resurrection life, we become resurrection life. Jesus doesn't do resurrection, he is resurrection.

Christine: Yes.

David: He is life. When he brings his glory, when he brings his life, when he brings his rule, when he brings his kingdom-

Christine: Mm-hmm

David: ... everything is subsumed into it because it's who he is.

Christine: Yes.

David: When the king rides into the kingdom, it's his.

Christine: Yes.

David: And it falls under his reign.

Christine: Yeah.

David: It was just so cool.

Christine: That's really cool.

David: And then Mary comes to Jesus after Martha. She hears that he has come, and so she leaves her house of mourning and, and goes out to meet Jesus, closer to probably where the tomb was, and falls down at his feet.

Christine: Yes, weeping.

David: Yeah, weeping. Says the same thing, "Lord, if you had-

Christine: Mm-hmm

David: ... you, if you would've been here, my brother wouldn't have died." And Jesus has a very different discourse with Mary than he does with Martha.

Christine: Yeah. It's a different one 'cause he sees that Mary's just absolutely undone. She might be even wetting his feet with her tears as she's just weeping and crying there, and all she had was the words that she said, which were the same as her sister's. But Martha still has this faith that Jesus is working with and talking to her about resurrection and all that, and how that's showing up today because resurrection is in town now, and you're not gonna know me as healer, you're gonna know me as resurrection, and you're gonna know me better f- after this experience. Whereas Mary, she's just so undone that Jesus meets her where she's at as well.

David: He does. He, he doesn't come to her... And I don't wanna reduce this. I don't wanna make some kind of weird false dichotomy between Mary and Martha. I'm not trying to do that. But he doesn't meet her with theology or, like, "Let me tell you about the resurrection." You know?

Christine: Mm-hmm.

David: He, he just, he's sad with her. [laughs]

Christine: Which is profound theology.

David: It's a profound theology.

Christine: God weeps with the one he loves, even though he knows he will raise another one he loves.

David: Yeah.

Christine: I can't-

David: It's just too big

Christine: ... put my finger on that.

David: Yeah.

Christine: But it's beautiful.

David: And, you know, he says to, to her, you know, "Where have you laid him? Where has Lazarus been laid?" And they say to Jesus, "Lord, come and see." Which is just such a fun callback, a beautiful callback to John 1, where when Jesus meets his disciples and they say, "Lord, where are you staying?" He says, "Come and see." And they come and remain with him, and then become like him as disciples. Well, now Jesus is going to come and see where the dead lay, enter into that home of the death, and raise people up to become like him.

Christine: Yes.

David: Making disciples of the dead. [laughs] Like, it's just beautiful.

Christine: Yes. I guess if you're dead and you hear Jesus's voice, you, you can get up like Lazarus-

David: [laughs]

Christine: ... and go. Like, death, being dead is not an excuse for disobedience. [laughs]

David: So if you're listening to this and you're dead, listen to the voice of Jesus. [laughs]

Christine: Everyone excuse David talking to the dead listeners of our podcast. [laughs]

David: I was just being silly. Okay, so that's kind of a bit of the background. The, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, and the reaction to this from the community that's, that's around this insane miracle is very polarizing. Right? You've got those who are astonished at it, and they witnessed it, and it's causing them to be like, "This is the Messiah. This is the King. This is w- this is the one we've been waiting for." While a different group, the, the Jewish leaders and those with them, are basically saying that this is the last straw, and they're plotting to kill Jesus because of it.

Christine: Yeah. You can read about that in verses 45 through 47 of chapter 11, where there are people who hear about this resurrection, which again is unprecedented. Even among the resurrections Jesus has done, usually the person has recently died who Jesus raises, which is no less miraculous, but still a four-day dead-

David: Right

Christine: ... corpse is a different-

David: It's a different kind of thing

Christine: ... category.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Yeah, it's a different league. And so this news spreads like-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... wildfire, and people instantly put their faith in Jesus after hearing that. And there are others who decide that they gotta kill him.

David: Yeah. And so that's kind of the separation that we see happening as we enter into 12, because you have one group of people, this starts in 11:55, one group of people go to Jerusalem for the Passover, because the Passover's about a week away now. And they go to get ready for the Passover, to make preparations, to purify themselves, to consecrate themselves, to get everything ready. And they're preparing to have the Passover meal, which is a meal that celebrates freedom from death-bringing regimes and empire that want to squish and crush God's chosen people. And they're purifying themselves for that. They're separating themselves from the defilement of the world and aligning themselves with God's covenant of life to be like, "Let's celebrate this time when God brought us into his life and freed us from the oppressive, death-bringing regime."

Christine: Yeah. Let's celebrate when God saved us from death.

David: Yeah. All the while-

Christine: Like what just happened.

David: Yeah, what would just happen.

Christine: Yeah.

David: What just happened. All the while, and John just abuts these two realities right next to each other. I'm gonna read it real, real quick. Verse 55. "Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. They were looking for Jesus and were asking one another as they stood in the temple, 'What do you think? Surely he will not come to the festival, will he?' Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who knew where Jesus was should let them know so that they might arrest him." And the idea behind that arrest is to then put him to death. So you have a group of people who are saying that they're aligned with the life-bringing covenant of, and rescue from death that God is doing in Passover, while plotting and planning and aligning themselves with a deathly empire.

Christine: Yeah, that's really ironic and really sad.

David: Yeah, it is. And so, and, and I think increasing that irony is then we go away from Jerusalem to the, you know, the slums outside, the house of affliction, the house of pain, the house of the poor in Bethany, and we have a different group of people. And these are not huddling around the temple and the, the Jewish leadership and this kind of show of purity and this show of life while planning death. They are surrounding themselves around God's new temple in the flesh, the one who is bringing life, who is bringing freedom from death, who is purifying the world of death and the grave with his life. And y- you get this tension between these two places of life.

Christine: Yeah. It's interesting that there is a meal here described, and it's six days before the Passover.

David: Mm.

Christine: While there are people going up to get ready for the Passover, there are people who are already having this meal that is celebrating God delivering from death because it's held in Jesus's honor.

David: Mm.

Christine: And, you know, Lazarus is there eating, so another way of saying, like, he's actually alive. This wasn't just an illusion.

David: Right.

Christine: He is eating food-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... with his body. So-

David: Yeah. John shows similarly with Jesus later.

Christine: Yeah, yeah, they have a meal later after his resurrection. Then Martha's serving, which that doesn't surprise anyone.

David: [laughs]

Christine: And then Mary is gonna be at Jesus' feet, which also shouldn't surprise anyone.

David: Yeah.

Christine: But there's this sort of pre-Passover but celebrating a Passover-

David: Mm

Christine: ... 'cause they did have death conquered.

David: Yeah.

Christine: They had someone come out of a death door-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... at God's bidding.

David: Yeah. Let me read this verse. This is really cool. So 12:1, "Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him." Amazing. What we're saying here is there's a bit of a proto-Passover happening here.

Christine: Yeah, but celebrating a true one 'cause Lazarus was raised.

David: What do you mean a true one?

Christine: As in they are celebrating what Passover celebrates, but in Lazarus's life-

David: I see

Christine: ... in a very real kind of way.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Does that-

David: Or, and may- maybe you're saying in contrast to the sham of one that's being prepared in, by some of the people in Jerusalem right now, where they're going to celebrate life while planning death.

Christine: Yes. Well, and the celebration itself is not a sham, but their-

David: Right

Christine: ... approach to it is.

David: Right.

Christine: Because, yeah, they're going to celebrate a very real, like, the foundational celebration of the Israelite people.

David: Yes-

Christine: Um-

David: ... which is a true Passover.

Christine: It's a true Passover.

David: Yeah.

Christine: And in fact, Jesus is getting ready for that Passover too, but one that will eclipse it. He's getting ready for an even better Passover, which might be hinted at with the six days 'cause-

David: Mm

Christine: ... oh, John is a man of sevens. Six days means we might need to start counting and find where the final [laughs] day shows up, by the way. But there is a sort of celebration of, "God saved us from death. God saved Lazarus from death."

David: Mm.

Christine: And that is what Passover remembers, commemorates, participates in, that God delivered us from death, from the hand of slavery.

David: So the meal's doing a lot there. It is-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... it is showing that Lazarus is actually a resurrected human-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... and is eating food. This isn't some ethereal ghost or resuscitated corpse that doesn't need to eat.

Christine: Mm-hmm.

David: It's a, it's, he's a human being.

Christine: Yeah, yeah.

David: But it's also showing that while the people are going to prepare for a meal to celebrate freedom from death and going into life in Jerusalem for the Passover, Jesus is having a meal in his honor because he has brought life to death.

Christine: Yes.

David: And they're... Man, that-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... I've never, I've never seen that there. That's really interesting.

Christine: Well, the tension you bring up is valid because you posed there's a group going up to celebrate Passover, but there's mutiny in their hearts. They're actually siding with death even though they're going to prepare themselves to celebrate life, scare quotes. But then there's this other group that doesn't look like they're preparing for the Passover feast. In fact, they were just around a corpse.

David: Right.

Christine: Um, but they are celebrating deliverance from death, so they're having this true fellowship with God there. And they're celebrating life even though they're not going up to celebrate the Passover and temple in Jerusalem. So, like, the tension you-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... you mention is there. It, and s- it's fascinating.

David: The tension's really cool, and one of my favorite things about this, I'll just mention briefly, uh, that you brought up, is this idea of the tension where you, you have people going to purify themselves for Passover, and there's lots of reasons you would purify yourself from different defilements that you would have throughout the year or through the day or the week or the journey even, or it's what [laughs] time of month it is. You would just need to do certain things. But the first place and, and one of the kind of paradigm-setting places that Israel is told to purify themselves for the Passover is in Numbers 9, and it's because you have this group that had been defiled by a corpse, and they were now unclean, and they couldn't go through the seven-day ritual to get clean in time to take the Passover. And so they bring that to Moses, and Moses, you know, talks to God, and they, and God allows for a, a makeup Passover later anyway. But it's interesting to think about this idea that the people of, of Israel are going to Jerusalem to purify themselves, and some people would have to go purify themselves because they were defiled by death or... And a lot of the things you purify yourself from in the Levitical system is from things associated with death anyway.

Christine: Yes. The very first preparation that Israel has to do even in, it's talked about in Exodus, for, uh, seven days you do not eat leavened bread. You just eat unleavened bread. So that is a way of getting rid of something in your diet that is symbolic of something else that you are-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... trying to get rid of.

David: And then a lot of the other ones are, like, losses of bodily fluid, things, yeah, that, that are associated with life going out of you are things that defile. And so it's just, it, the irony is so heavy here, where you have a people who are going and cleansing themselves from death-like things while planning death to partake in a meal that's meant to free them from death. While you have people who are around a resurrected corpse [laughs]

Christine: Which there, there's no protocol in the Torah I recall about-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... what to do with that.

David: You and I were joking about that off-air where there's, like, a f- I don't know if John intended it or not, but just meditating on it is, is funny because it's like, okay, if I've been around a corpse, I have to go through a seven-day ritual in order to get cleansed from death to take the Passover meal. What if the corpse I'm around was resurrected and is now alive? Was I unclean and I, I became clean when he was resurrected? If I saw him after his resurrection, is he still considered a corpse and I'm unclean? And it's just, it's a funny little, like-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... Torah conundrum.

Christine: There aren't enough case studies to have a rule that explains and interprets what to do. There's no rabbi that told you what to do in a case like that, so.

David: Yes. And, yeah.

Christine: But there's a rabbi here. And it could be, again, I'm just, like, entertaining this, it could be that yes, they're holding the dinner in Jesus' honor, but they also might be like, "I mean, we're too late for the Passover, but let's celebrate what we have, which happens to be Jesus, the God of Passover."

David: Yeah. He's here.

Christine: And s- saving our brother from death. Like, there's everything Passover-esque to be celebrated and everyone you need present-

David: Mm

Christine: ... even though they might not go to Jerusalem for the commemoration of a Passover that is in fact passing away, and I think the church fathers do mention that in the Passover cleansing the people are going up to prepare themselves for, there is this transition into this part of John where Jesus is getting ready to accomplish the true Passover. So there is one that is fading out, and a new Passover that is coming.

David: Mm-hmm.

Christine: So even at that rate, it's like there's a change happening even in how Passover is celebrated, accomplished, participated in.

David: And so Martha is serving Jesus, serving the table, and Mary comes and presents a different kind of offering. [laughs] Now, that word offering has a little more weight to it now that we're thinking about this as a proto-Passover in a sense.

Christine: Mm.

David: But I'm using that word, not the text. And so Mary, verse three, Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

Christine: That's beautiful.

David: I'm guessing we're gonna camp out here for just a little while, I bet.

Christine: Yeah. There's a lot going on here.

David: [laughs]

Christine: A lot of contrasts and a lot of parallels. So one parallel, for example, is that Mary is at Jesus' feet, obviously. That is where we are expected to find her, and she is pouring perfume on Jesus' feet, which is having an effect on the room, which is a-

David: An aroma effect

Christine: ... a beautiful fragrance. Yeah, 'cause it's perfume. It's very expensive nard, and it fills the whole room with a sweet smell, which is kind of the opposite of what we saw Martha warn Jesus about, about her brother, who being four days dead would not have such a sweet smell. And so Martha was like, "Are you sure you wanna roll the stone away, Jesus? He kind of stinks at this point." But life says-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... open up the-

David: Yeah. But-

Christine: Open up the stone anyway

David: ... Lazarus' body had already started to smell bad.

Christine: Yeah.

David: But now Mary is making the body of life, Jesus' body, start to smell good.

Christine: Yes.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Yes.

David: It's, yeah-

Christine: The sweet aroma

David: ... it's beautiful.

Christine: Yeah.

David: And so you're getting that [laughs] picture of the stench of death being covered up with the aroma of life with the-

Christine: Yes

David: ... the, the, the tomb being filled with the aroma of Christ and people being drawn into it, and you get so much of that, like, [laughs] connection. What else are, is there, uh, something else you're seeing there with the aromas?

Christine: Well, not so much the aromas, but the fact that we know what Jesus is going towards, and after the people are protesting, Jesus explains, which I know we wanna go into more, but even though Jesus is life himself, resurrection himself, he is being anointed with this fragrant perfume for burial.

David: Yeah. And John actually tells us that, right?

Christine: Yeah. It's right after-

David: Right there

Christine: ... Judas protests about this should've been given to me, I mean poor people, and why wasn't this sold for alms 'cause then he could have helped himself to it. But Jesus says to leave Mary alone, and this was given as a burial gift for Jesus.

David: Yeah, verse seven, Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial." Yeah, and we'll get to, we'll get to Judas soon I'm sure, I'm sure. But yeah, Mary is preparing Jesus for burial. Like, and-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... and apparently she bought the perfume or acquired it for the purpose of his burial.

Christine: I don't know what, what's behind that, the text there if Jesus is explaining what Mary knew herself, that she purchased this for Jesus' burial, or if Jesus is giving his own interpretation on Mary's offering because it is interesting for him to call it anointing for burial because you typically anoint a corpse. You don't anoint the body while it's still alive. So Jesus is definitely very much alive here, but is being treated as a corpse in this loving act of Mary. So what are you seeing? I'm, I'm a little stuck.

David: Yeah. I mean, interestingly, it's, it's important to note that the Greek here actually doesn't have the she bought it or she kept it or she had it or-

Christine: Oh

David: ... it just, it just literally says, "Leave her alone," just like aphis auten, and then you have a so that statement, hina. So that for the day of my burial she has kept it.

Christine: This was David translating Greek in real time, everybody.

David: Oh, sorry. Yeah. [laughs] Did David just have a stroke? No. That was literal wooden Greek translation.

Christine: No, this was really cool translation in real time.

David: The reason the English is smoothing that out is because that's a, that's a strange- Sentence structure for us. Leave her alone. For the reason of my burial, she kept this, which is like, that's fine. I don't know why we need to- Anyway, I'm not gonna question the translators here, but it's not in the text, and so we don't know if she purchased it, acquired it, inherited it, or anything. We don't know where it came from.

Christine: Yeah. The purpose that she chose to use it-

David: Yes

Christine: ... is clear, and that is what Jesus seems to be saying.

David: And we do know that she kept it for a purpose.

Christine: Yeah.

David: It wasn't, uh, she just, she happened to be like, "I'm gonna go grab that thing off my shelf." You know, like there's sometimes I'll invite somebody over to my house, and we'll be in conversation, and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, you, you love that? I have something that is like that. Let me show it to you. I didn't have that prepared for you, but I have it, and here it is, and you can have it." This is very different. This is Mary had this somehow.

Christine: Yeah. She-

David: And she kept it for the purpose of Jesus's burial.

Christine: Yes.

David: I'm gonna venture a little hypothesis here that I want you to react to. One thing I've thought about with this is that she had it for his burial but was thinking about a physical burial because he was the king, the Messiah, and she kept this very precious perfume to embalm a king with after-

Christine: Mm

David: ... his death.

Christine: So you're saying she was anticipating his death, or she understood that he was going to die?

David: Like all humans, this human would one day die.

Christine: Yes.

David: Yes.

Christine: But she assumed that she would be there for his death?

David: Yeah, or maybe she would pass it on to somebody who would be able to give it to him after.

Christine: Wow.

David: But it was, she kept it for the day that the king, the Messiah, died.

Christine: Wow.

David: Um, but then after the Lazarus interaction and after hearing that he is the resurrection, the life, and that day is here and that he will [laughs] end up doing, uh, accomplishing this in some other way, she is preparing his body for burial because he is going to... He, she's seen that he's the one who can enter into Sheol even with a word and call it out. And so she is like, this is not a man that should be embalmed after his death because if he can speak to Sheol and make life, I'm not ever going to be able to use this on him in that way.

Christine: So what you're saying is that she had in mind to keep this for his burial, but then he accomplished such a feat against the grave that she was like, "Never mind his burial. I'm giving this to him now 'cause this is just the biggest, this is the best moment to give this precious thing to him." And then Jesus kind of says that, nevertheless, this is still gonna be for his burial even though it's given to him now?

David: A couple of things to distinguish here, and, uh, w- every, everyone please listen, Christine and I are not trying to understand Mary's intent here 'cause we can't. Uh, the, the Bible doesn't tell us what it is. We're just trying to be like, what's the story John's telling? And so, w- you know, we have options here where M- Jesus is either affirming the faith of Mary in, in her intention to prepare him for burial, or she's doing something a little different, like he's never gonna die 'cause he's the, he, he has power and life in himself. And so she pours it out, and then h- he corrects it in a sense, but without shame and/or, or, you know, any kind of bad connotation of correction and says, "This is actually for my burial." And he adds that layer.

Christine: Yeah.

David: So we don't know if Mary intended the burial or not.

Christine: Yeah.

David: But Jesus says that is what has now occurred.

Christine: Yes.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Yes. And yeah, to your point where earlier disclaimer, we're speculating here without landing on anything affirmative, [laughs] but that is a sweet way of Jesus knowing Mary, if that is the case. And again, this is just hypothetical.

David: That's right.

Christine: But if Mary was like, "I'm keeping this precious thing for when my king dies 'cause that'll be the best gift of love I can give him," and then, "Never mind, I wanna give him my best gift of love right now because he just raised my brother in impossible ways, and I wanna do that now." So for her to put, like, the for his burial in the trash, as it were, and say, "No, this is a new purpose," and then Jesus saying, "No, she prepared this for my burial," would be, like, a way of, you know, nodding to Mary, saying, "I know what you w- have been keeping this for-

David: Mm-hmm

Christine: ... and I will honor that too-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... and thank you for honoring me with that."

David: Yeah, and to think that he, he knew what it was for, he honors it, and then also what John is doing with it and even Jesus' own words is showing that Jesus is being prepared for burial here. Intent aside, that is actually what's occurring in this moment-

Christine: Correct

David: ... is that Jesus is being pre-embalmed. [laughs]

Christine: Yes, because not only are people preparing themselves for the Passover, people are preparing lambs for the Passover.

David: That's exactly right.

Christine: And so there are lambs all over Jerusalem getting ready for that big day of theirs, which will be not great, but in Jesus' case, he is the ultimate Passover lamb, who is-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... being prepared even in this moment by Mary.

David: He is. Yeah, he's being prepared for a meal in faith. And so this idea, it's fascinating too to think about the prep- the preparation for burial being this embalming, yes, but also this fragrant nard and the counteracting it with the stench from the tomb is that, again, intent aside, Mary is preparing Jesus to take the sweet aroma of life-

Christine: Mm

David: ... into the stench-filled tomb.

Christine: That's cool.

David: That is the picture.

Christine: Yeah.

David: You have this man who just drips with life and the sweet aroma of resurrection, who is entering into the festering, smelly pit of hell, and he's going to bring people out of that festering pit and into his aroma of life, and he's going to do that by going into burial. [laughs]

Christine: Yeah.

David: The one thing that he, as the one who has life in himself, doesn't have to do, [laughs] but does.

Christine: Yeah. Well, 'cause that's how you, that's how you enter the, the grave is by- Being buried

David: He had to take Adam onto himself. He had to take humanity-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... into himself so that he could go to Adam in the grave, to humanity-

Christine: Yes

David: ... in the grave.

Christine: Yes.

David: Yes.

Christine: The only catch is that he kind of Trojan horses his way in. [laughs]

David: [laughs] He really does.

Christine: So he comes as a corpse, but then there's this big reveal that kind of upends the whole thing.

David: Oh, no, I accidentally brought life into the grave. [laughs]

Christine: No, it's alive.

David: It's alive. [laughs]

Christine: [laughs]

David: And so there's so much here to talk about, even just focusing on the burial aspect of this, and maybe we'll circle back to it. But there's a couple other things we wanna turn over in this sweet gift, one of which is the gift itself, which we haven't quite unpacked yet, is this, the weight of this offering, and I'm not just referring to its poundage, but it, the, the weightiness of it.

Christine: Yeah. It's-

David: Like, yeah, how have you reflected on that?

Christine: Well, it reminds me of drink offerings that get poured out, and even Paul talks about his own life being poured out like a drink offering, and that is for the sake of his fellow believers. It's for the sake of Christ. It's a way of just exhausting your whole soul for the sake of Christ, and that is exactly what he does for us. It's in response to what he did for us, and that is what Mary is doing here, too. She's kind of pouring out not a drink offering 'cause it's perfume, but it is an offering that is kind of encompassing all that she wanted to give Jesus, her whole livelihood. And being from Bethany, I, I do not know how she would've procured nard this expensive, but again, the way she uses it is what is being revealed here. And you almost can, sadly, [laughs] I don't know, I can almost relate to Judas and like, "What are you doing?"

David: Yeah.

Christine: There's this shock-

David: It-

Christine: ... which is, you know, you can almost reason that that seems like a waste unless you know who Jesus is, which is like, yeah, pour every perfume in Jerusalem out at his feet [laughs] and-

David: Yeah, it-

Christine: ... yourself as well

David: ... it's interesting to paint the picture and go, okay, where are we? We are in Bethany, like, the house of affliction, the house of the poor, a slum. This is not a place where there are just well-to-do dinners, people's homes that are stocked with alabaster jars full of perfume. Like, this is just not the situation. This would be, think of a slum. Think of a very impoverished town, and then someone pulls out, like, a Fabergé egg. Like, [laughs] have you ever seen those things? They're like these jewel-encrusted eggs that are worth, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Christine: Oh.

David: But they're just the, and, and-

Christine: Yeah, that would stand out

David: ... it would stand out. That's the, that's what I'm trying to get at, is this, the, it doesn't belong there.

Christine: Mm-hmm.

David: It d- it doesn't belong there.

Christine: Yeah. But then y- it kind of contrasts with, well, what is Jesus doing there?

David: Exactly. He-

Christine: He is the great, he's the jewel of heaven. What is he doing in the slum? Well, this is heaven if he's here.

David: That's right.

Christine: Yeah.

David: Yeah. And so she takes this thing that, again, y- we can, and I've heard lots of sermons around this, and there's, I don't think there's anything, quote-unquote, "wrong with it," but Mary could have done anything with this. And, you know, hypotheses abound at what-

Christine: Mm-hmm

David: ... could have been done.

Christine: Well, Judas proposes something.

David: Yes, he does.

Christine: Yeah.

David: "We could have sold it and given the money to the poor. Look all around. Look at all these poor people."

Christine: Yeah, this could-

David: Like, imagine the economic stimulus that this could have o- happened, you know, in, in Bethany.

Christine: Yeah, yeah. Even assuming, which we know it's not the case, but assuming Judas was charitable in that suggestion, he could have been arguing, maybe even validly, that the proceeds from this perfume could have fed every mouth in Bethany.

David: Right.

Christine: And here you are pouring it out.

David: Yeah.

Christine: It's like-

David: And, yeah

Christine: ... okay, fair. Also, you're not going to-

David: Right

Christine: ... actually feed the poor with that. But-

David: Yeah, a- and you can resonate with him until you realize where the perfume is being poured out.

Christine: Yes, yes.

David: And for what purpose.

Christine: Like, no, there's no better place to-

David: Right

Christine: ... use this perfume.

David: Like, if I, if I took a Fabergé egg of great value into a Kenyan slum, and I'm like, "Oh, I could sell this and revolutionize this place," and instead I smash it and b- throw it in the fire right in front of everybody. It's like, yeah, that's messed up. Like, I shouldn't do that. But if Jesus was in the Kenyan slum and I had a Fabergé egg and I brought it to him, no one would balk at it because the king is here.

Christine: No. Or-

David: And you can give him any gift and it's not wasted.

Christine: Yeah. Or to just get fairy tale-like about it 'cause you brought a, an egg into [laughs] a slum and threw it into a fire. Everyone would think that's a waste until that egg hatched in the fire and out came a phoenix-

David: Yep

Christine: ... that fed everyone. Or, you know, it was like if, if pouring out, if destroying that treasure actually yields abundance of wealth for everybody-

David: Yes

Christine: ... then it's, it's worth being poured out, and that's what Jesus does in his whole last week and in his moment of death, burial, and resurrection as he's pouring himself out in a way that might seem like a wasted life. Like, he could have avoided Jerusalem together and lived to a ripe old age, you say, but Jesus precisely for this hour came into the world.

David: Yeah. If, uh, if we wanted to say that taking something so rich and precious and just pouring it out is a waste and robs the poor, you miss the gospel, that Jesus is the richest thing-

Christine: Jesus feeds-

David: ... the richest one

Christine: ... the world with his offering.

David: And he pours out his life and feeds the poor. And so the irony of Judas is, and we'll, we might talk more about it, but the irony of, of, one of the ironies [laughs] of Judas' words here is that, you know, you could have sold that perfume and fed the poor. By anointing Jesus' body and preparing it for burial, whenever he enters the grave, ransoms man from death, and rules and reigns over the world, he feeds the poor forever eternally with the bread of life that people eat and never hunger again-

Christine: Yes

David: ... which John, cool, has said.

Christine: Yes.

David: Another John layer for us.

Christine: Yes.

David: Uh, and so Mary has fed the poor [laughs] by anointing Jesus with this gift.

Christine: Yes. Losing something precious to gain something invaluable is kind of the motif being-

David: That's right

Christine: ... yeah, drawn out here, and we keep harping on it 'cause it's, it is the story and it is good. And later in John 12, John alludes to this passage, but it's Isaiah 53, and there too there's this- It's this whole song about the suffering servant and how he was cut off from the land of the living, and who can name his offspring, and it's like, "Oh my gosh, Je- Jesus died before ever having kids." Well, He just, in dying, gained the whole world for His children [laughs] and the grave is empty now, and He got His kids back. It's giving up something precious for the sake of something even better kind of recapitulated again and again.

David: Yeah, I think He, about Hebrews, for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, and that joy was us, [laughs] His children, H- like, bringing us to Himself.

Christine: Yeah.

David: Uh, it's just incredible. Yeah, and while we're- we've mentioned Judas, I don't know where else we'll go there. I want to come back to some other things that the anointing's doing, but since we've brought up this, this phrase of, you know, w- that could've been sold and given to the poor, well, that's exactly what Mary did. And then Jesus says, "The poor you will always have with you." Lots of ways to go with this as well. The statement is, is very profound, and we can talk about it in some other ways. One of the ways that surprised me that I saw some of the early church fathers writing about was that this was a bit of what we're talking about already, is that Jesus is saying to Judas, "The poor you will always have with you, Judas."

Christine: Hmm.

David: Meaning the riches are those who are aligning themselves with pouring everything out at my feet. They get the richness, and so it's those who pour out the costly thing for me and to me are rich. You who reject me, be you wealthy, you will always have the poor with you. You will always be impoverished.

Christine: Oh, interesting.

David: And there's other ways to read this that Jesus is intending here, I think.

Christine: Mm-hmm.

David: But I saw that brought out by a few of the fathers, and I was like, "Wow, that's a indicting but also, like, consistent way to read the dichotomy that's, that we've been following here between those who are rejecting Jesus versus accepting Jesus."

Christine: Yeah, and it hearkens back to the promises at the end of the Torah in Deuteronomy, I think, where God talks about what will happen when Israel obeys Him and accepts Him and lives like Him. There will be no poor among you-

David: That's right

Christine: ... is one of the promises. And so the fact that Jesus is saying, "The poor you will always have among you," man with a money bag, you have p- [laughs]

David: Yeah.

Christine: I'm, I'm gesturing money bag plus poor surrounding Judas. Like, you could make some changes here if you wanted to.

David: Yes.

Christine: But the fact that you're not obeying me and not receiving me and, in fact, rejecting me, and you will, is, is gonna mean poverty for you-

David: Yeah, that's right

Christine: ... and surrounded by poverty.

David: Yeah, in my kingdom, for those who align themselves with me, there's wealth and blessing, even though it might not look like it. It might look like everybody just poured out their alabaster jars of pure nard, and they're poor.

Christine: Yeah, you might be selling all you have.

David: [laughs] Yeah, right? But they have riches because they have me, while those who do not have me are actually poor. But it does remind me of the church in Acts 2 even, that there's no poor among them. There was no one needy among them-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... because they were caring for each other's needs.

Christine: Yeah, they were doing Torah.

David: They were doing Torah, that's right. In the Kingdom of God, there are no poor.

Christine: Yeah.

David: Yeah.

Christine: I will be your God, and you will be my people. They're just, yeah, they're living the, the good life, the Torah life-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... 'cause they're following the way.

David: Yeah, and so there's a couple other things, since we're just on the poor you'll always have with you train here, that I want to point out. One, you, you, you briefly mentioned there, Christine, you will always have the opportunity to sor- serve the poor. Like, that is, that is here, and it, it's for you, and it's something that is actually being perfectly exhibited or exampled here in this story because Jesus talks about when we feed the poor, we are feeding Him. When we attend to the poor, we are attending to Him.

Christine: That was gonna be my question.

David: Yeah.

Christine: I was like, aren't you doing unto Him as you do to the least of these?

David: Yes.

Christine: Like, is that an invitation to, if you want to serve me, go and serve the poor?

David: Yes.

Christine: Okay.

David: And so i- in a sense, Mary is seeing the Lord of the poor and going straight to the source-

Christine: Mm-hmm

David: ... 'cause you will always have them to do this to.

Christine: Mm.

David: You will always have the poor to pour out your gifts onto and anoint my feet again.

Christine: Mm-hmm. Wow.

David: Every time you go to a poor person and pour out yourself unto them, you are anointing my feet. You can do this again, Judas, if you really wanted to. [laughs] Anyone can do this again. You can, you can join Mary in Lazarus' house and anoint his feet by caring for the poor.

Christine: That's cool.

David: And you still have that opportunity today. That still exists.

Christine: Yeah.

David: And Mary is taking that opportunity full on because the, the King who we serve through the poor is in the room with her, and so He's the one who gets the offering. Yes, she could have given it to the poor, but it would have gone to Jesus anyway.

Christine: Mm-hmm.

David: Like [laughs] ins- so, 'cause when we serve the poor, it goes to Jesus.

Christine: Yeah.

David: So I just love that reflection, too.

Christine: Images. [laughs]

David: Images, yeah. Uh, yeah, no, I think that's important. It's... And, and the logic there that Christine is hinting at with those single word images is that we as humans are the images of God in the world, and as you do to the image, you do to the God who it images. And so there's, it's not just, oh, it's for the poor, you know? The-

Christine: Yeah.

David: But it's for, it's for everyone made in the image of God. When we love them-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... treasure them, serve them, die for them, pour out our lives for them, we are doing it unto the Lord.

Christine: Yeah.

David: That's why Paul can say things like, you know, "Do everything to the glory of God." [laughs]

Christine: Yeah, and that's why Jesus could say to Paul, "Why do you persecute me?"

David: That's right.

Christine: You're pers-

David: He's like, "I'm not. I'm persecuting humans." Yeah, made in my image.

Christine: You're persecuting my own body.

David: That's right.

Christine: My body is in prison because you put my Christians there, and it's, yeah, it's one and the same 'cause Christians are the body of Christ, and that's a my- mystery we'll never [laughs] get to the end of. But anyways, I, I went down a little side, [laughs] side trip there with the images and the poor. But yeah, it's a wonderful reminder and invitation to Love Jesus by loving the poor among you. He became poor even though he was rich in order to love us who are poor and without life in us and without goodness, and, you know, He came to draw us into Himself and to give us that anointing [laughs] that-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... He had and that love that He had, and we are drawn into that, so.

David: Yeah, which is why, yes, all humans image God, but the poor do it in a unique way [laughs] because they image the God who came in the flesh and became poor for our sake. And so there's a, there's an image of Jesus that we can see in the poor that we can't see-

Christine: Yes, yes

David: ... everywhere else

Christine: The poor, when you serve the poor, the poor are doing you a favor.

David: That's right.

Christine: Yeah.

David: That's right. Yeah. They can say, "You're welcome," when you give them a gift. [laughs]

Christine: Yes.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Very, in a very real sense. I, I forget, I, I'm sorry I have to plagiarize, but I did not get this from me. I read this somewhere, so I, but I'm forgetting who said it, but it was basically this idea that when a poor beggar extends his hands for alms, he's not begging. He is offering you the kingdom.

David: That's right.

Christine: And so why wouldn't you want to [laughs]

David: Take that gift

Christine: ... receive that invitation and-

David: Yep

Christine: ... love Jesus.

David: Pour out your nard. [laughs]

Christine: Yes.

David: Anyway, I wanna look at some other meanings of this anointing that, that's happening here in the context. So another thing happening here is the idea of a consecrated priest.

Christine: Hmm.

David: That, um, priests would undergo, especially leading up to Passover, a time of purification and consecration, and part of that journey, according to the Torah, is a pouring of oil onto the priest to consecrate them and prepare them to enter the holy place and perform the sacrifices necessary for this feast. And so it's amazing to see that Jesus is also, as He's riding in to be the new Passover lamb, He's not only the one who lays down His life, He's also the priest who officiates it because He has the right to lay down His life, so He is both receiving and performing this sacrifice. He's doing it.

Christine: He is priest and offering at the same time.

David: He is priest and offering, and so He is being consecrated for that task.

Christine: That's cool.

David: He's being prepared to be the priest of the Passover.

Christine: Yeah. Wow.

David: Which, again, just highlights the contrast between the people in Jerusalem who are-

Christine: Hmm

David: ... going to a temple with priests who are planning to kill Jesus.

Christine: Yeah.

David: Right?

Christine: Who are being true priests in this sense 'cause they are going to take the offering, except that this is strangely a, the God man.

David: That's right.

Christine: So it's not a lamb, so what is the... Are they... Yeah.

David: Well, no, you're actually picking up on an irony that's present. That exact-

Christine: Okay

David: ... idea is present in the text because it's right before this.

Christine: Feel like I'm on dangerous waters. [laughs]

David: No, no, no, no, no. This is actually in the text because this is in 11:45 to 54. You have this conversation with the Jewish leaders, and they're talking about one man dying for a whole nation.

Christine: Yes, which is them counting the cost or weighing the cost of, okay, we all hate Rome. We want Rome to die. We don't wanna kill one of our own fellow Jews, but he's creating such a following that he's gonna create an uprising, and we fear that if he does, then Rome will come and kill all of us. So as much as we'd hate to kill our own fellow Jew, it's better that he die instead of all of us die.

David: So the whole nation can be saved from Rome.

Christine: Yes.

David: Yes.

Christine: Crazy.

David: And so you do have these people who are in these seats of authority in Jerusalem deciding to perform a priestly act in a weird way of offering the sacrificial lamb of God. [laughs]

Christine: But they are... But-

David: But

Christine: ... they are acting as priests of Rome-

David: They are

Christine: ... 'cause they're doing this to propitiate Rome.

David: That's exactly right.

Christine: Ouch.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Oh, that's bad.

David: Yeah. And the, the, and that irony gets even more sharp and painful when you, when you read it in context of the fact that all of that discourse finishes... 'Cause, you know, John operates in feasts a lot of times, and this ends the, the, the discourse following the Feast of Dedication, which is... Yeah, oh, Christine just fainted on the table. And then w- right after this, we get the Feast of Passover. At the Feast of Dedication, this is Hanukkah, when you had a foreign nation come and defile the temple of God. They drove it out. The Maccabees drove it out, reconsecrated the temple so that right offerings could be brought. But now ending the Feast of Dedication discourse, you have the leaders of Israel now siding with the foreign powers to desecrate the actual temple of God.

Christine: And using a Judas to do it.

David: And using a Judas instead of Judas Maccabeus. [laughs]

Christine: Stop.

David: Judas Iscariot-

Christine: Oh

David: ... to accomplish it, so.

Christine: Well, and he's from a Zealot town, too, so that all checks out.

David: There you go.

Christine: He, he wasn't... Judas realizes that Jesus isn't the Messiah who's going to kick Rome out, and so he resorts to kick Him out instead.

David: Yep, and then Jesus just capitalizes on all the irony because through His death, through this offering, through being the priest who gives up this offering, He actually enters into his enthronement over all the nations and ends up ruling over them.

Christine: Yeah.

David: And so [laughs]

Christine: I mean, yeah. He takes Rome's instrument.

David: That's right.

Christine: That's Him fulfilling Isaiah 9 of the government being on His shoulders. It's like, okay, they heave the instrument of death, the weapon of Rome, onto His shoulders and give Him a crown, and Jesus ascends.

David: Yep, He's like, "I'll take that."

Christine: He's... Yeah, yeah. He takes the government on His shoulders 'cause every government operates off of death, and He conquers with it-

David: Yes, He does

Christine: ... by going under it.

David: So Jesus is being anointed as priest here.

Christine: Okay. [laughs]

David: Jesus is also being anointed as king here.

Christine: Yeah, 'cause kings and priests both are anointed-

David: That's right

Christine: ... figures.

David: Yeah, and in originally And this is a big biblical theme that we won't get into here, but originally, king and priests were meant to be a singular role.

Christine: Yeah. Think Job, think Melchizedek.

David: Mm-hmm.

Christine: Melchizedek-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... primarily, 'cause he's... Yeah.

David: And Adam-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... uh, originally.

Christine: Yeah.

David: And so Jesus is now bringing those together here as well as being the anointed priest king.

Christine: Mm-hmm.

David: And so we've-

Christine: Which is something the Maccabees tried to do as well, and it was horrible. But yeah, anyway, can't wait for-

David: Yeah, go look at that

Christine: ... him.

David: And so we've looked a bit at Jesus as priest. Jesus as king, you know, what's happening here is a bit of a recapitulation of Solomon's reign, because we're, we're waiting on the Son of David to come and take the throne again and establish this everlasting kingdom that God has promised and will not lie and He will achieve. And we're gonna get an allusion to that later in the story where Jesus talks about being lifted up on a cross to die, and they're like, "Wait, hold on. We thought the Messiah, the Son of David, was gonna l- be here forever as an eternal king. How can you-

Christine: Oh, yeah

David: ... yeah-

Christine: We're, we're at the end of-

David: How can you die?

Christine: ... 12 right now.

David: Right.

Christine: Yeah.

David: I'm jumping ahead just, just real quick for context. But Jesus is going to be anointed and ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, more on that in the next episode, as a recapitulation of Solomon entering into Jerusalem. He enters in on his father's mule-

Christine: Yep

David: ... and then is anointed.

Christine: Yeah.

David: And so there's this same story happening here showing that He is the king who is riding in to enter into his kingdom, but he's going to do it through the grave so that he can be king above all kings and ransom all humanity, even humanity in the grave, to himself.

Christine: I, I feel like I just went on this rollercoaster, so [laughs] I'm still catching my breath here 'cause king, priest, offering, uniting heaven and Earth, conquering death with life, but death by death, and bringing all people together under himself, conquering Rome is, it's a lot to take in, so [laughs] I'm still like-

David: It is. Well, and it, it... No, it's good

Christine: ... getting my bearings.

David: And it's good to name that, but there's a reason why this story is so crucial in the Gospels and why a version of it is in every single Gospel.

Christine: Jesus is anointed in one form or other, one story or another, in Bethany most of the time in each Gospel.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Yeah.

David: Can't remember which one it is that he says that, you know, wherever the Gospel is proclaimed or, or wherever the king is proclaimed, this story-

Christine: I believe that's Matthew.

David: Oh, okay. Yeah. And so I remember reading that as a young Christian in high school and being so confused [laughs] as to why this story demanded such honor, and feeling a little convicted as I was sharing my faith with my friends and being like, "This is not part of my Gospel presentation." [laughs]

Christine: Oh, interesting.

David: Where I-

Christine: Wow

David: ... where I, where I was just like, "Okay, if I... If this is supposed to be part of how I tell d- people about Jesus, why is it so important, and how do I incorporate [laughs] that into my sharing of the Gospel with my friends and neighbors?" I just remember thinking that as a kid and, and going like-

Christine: Wow

David: ... "Why is this so important?" Well, it's because of everything we've just said. Because everything that Jesus has come to do is just collapsing in on this moment, and we're seeing that He is, He is the one who's going into the grave to be the king, to be the priest. We haven't even talked about husband yet of the bride. And all of this is, is happening to show who Jesus is, and our posture to receive that is by joining Him in that pouring out of all that we have.

Christine: Mm-hmm.

David: Is that Jesus is like, "I'm going to show you the way to glory," [laughs] and it is death. It is sacrifice. It is laying everything down. And Mary's like, "I see the way, [laughs] and I'm going-

Christine: Hmm

David: ... to join you on that way to burial. Here's everything I am and have. I pour it at your feet." And so the life of the Christian who pours themselves out at the feet of Jesus, takes up their cross daily, dies to self, pours everything on His feet, they're just following Him.

Christine: Hmm.

David: They're following the king and the priest on the way to the kingdom of glory.

Christine: That reminds me of two other places in the Bible. One is Acts, where the first, you know, generation of Christians there are doing that to Jesus through the apostles. They bring their possessions and lay it at the apostles' feet-

David: That's right

Christine: ... which is laying it at Jesus' feet. We talked about images, but we also-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... know, like-

David: And then that-

Christine: That-

David: ... those things get distributed to the poor. [laughs]

Christine: Yeah.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Yeah, 'cause that's what Jesus does.

David: Yep.

Christine: He gives gifts to men. But there's just that imagery of like, oh, Christians laying things at the apostles' feet, they're laying themselves, their livelihood, at Jesus' feet, and then that gets distributed and received in dividends. That was one place that my mind went to, and then the other place is in Revelation, where John, this same John who wrote the Gospel, sees the martyr's life, which is another... I mean, that's their blood, liquid life, poured out at the altar, and they are there because they've poured out everything for Jesus. Are you okay? [laughs]

David: No, I'm not okay after that. I, I have to say this, and I just say it with the biggest grain of salt, because I understand that I might be handling a lot of things with impropriety in this statement, but i- it's like just seeing Mary as the proto-martyr here-

Christine: Hmm

David: ... of pouring out everything at Jesus' feet.

Christine: Oh, interesting.

David: You know what? It's just this picture.

Christine: It's a symbol.

David: It's a symbol.

Christine: Yeah, or a picture of-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... what we do with our lives.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Like, yeah. Mm-hmm.

David: And what the martyrs and saints have done.

Christine: Yeah.

David: You know, they've poured it out-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... at His feet, and that's what-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... Revelation shows.

Christine: Yeah.

David: And it's how we conquer. [laughs]

Christine: Yeah.

David: Like, to get to Revelation and John, it's like that's how we conquer.

Christine: Yes.

David: It's how we beat death and how we beat the enemy and how we beat sin, is by pouring it out.

Christine: Yeah. It's what Jesus did. He shed His blood for us, poured His life out for us, and by that liquid life gave us life, and that's what we participate in every time [laughs] we take- The Lord's supper-

David: Yes

Christine: ... Jesus feeding us with himself, with his own resurrection life. But it's also what we get to do for Jesus, and it's what Jesus talks about in, you know, at his Last Supper with the disciples, which is also where he inaugurates the Lord's supper. But in John's case, he talks about, "Greater love has no one than this, than He lay down his life for His friends. You are my friends [laughs] if you do what I command." So there's this beautiful offering of Christ, of His own self, His own life for His friends, demonstrating the greatest love possible, and we have the astonishing privilege of getting to reciprocate that. Like who-

David: Hmm

Christine: ... what can we give to the giver of all things? What can we give to God? We, all we have is ourselves, but Jesus takes that as an offering that is precious and beautiful when we pour it out in obedience to love Him by loving others.

David: Oh, yeah, it's so good. All right, at least one more.

Christine: Okay.

David: [laughs] There is also wedding imagery here.

Christine: Yes. It's all over John.

David: It is.

Christine: He talks about Jesus as the bridegroom.

David: Yeah, real quick, walk us through a little bit of the theme of the women in John, the Marys, the... It may be an- maybe the Marys is the wrong way to talk about it, but d- you have these themes of women in John.

Christine: Okay. I was gonna, I was jumping to John the Baptist, actually, 'cause he's the one who calls-

David: That's right

Christine: ... Jesus the bridegroom-

David: Yeah, totally

Christine: ... and he is, we meet him as a friend of the bridegroom. He's also Jesus' relative, so probably is a older male figure in Jesus' family. He would've played some role-

David: He, he could have actually been-

Christine: Or rather, Jesus should've been-

David: ... the friend of the bridegroom

Christine: ... Yeah.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Or Jesus should've been actually-

David: His bride-

Christine: ... his, his-

David: His bridegroom's friend

Christine: ... groomsman or whatever.

David: Yeah. [laughs]

Christine: Well, we just-

David: His best man

Christine: ... we just talked about friendship here a minute ago. [laughs] But John the Baptist calls Jesus the bridegroom and himself the friend of the bridegroom and says he, as a prime example of pouring himself out for the sake of Jesus and increasing Jesus' glory while decreasing his and yielding to the rising son, [laughs] as it were. John talks about this whole joy that is his by being the friend of the bridegroom and seeing the bride getting prepared for the groom and the groom arriving, and that joy is his. But you mentioned the woman also, and we see at the first sign of Jesus revealing his glory, which is at a wedding in Cana, and his mother is there, and she tells Jesus that they've run out of wine. And Jesus beautifully just hears that and thinks of his own passion, his own death, and he's like, "What is this to you and me? My hour has not yet come."

David: There will be a day where I will provide wedding day wine-

Christine: Yes

David: ... and that will be at-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... my passion.

Christine: Yeah.

David: And he even addresses his mother as woman-

Christine: Mm-hmm

David: ... not out, out of disrespect at all, but as the woman-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... the, the head of the human race who will bear life to all.

Christine: Oh, are you referring to-

David: Like Eve

Christine: ... his passion story in 19, where he says, "Woman, behold-"

David: Yes

Christine: ... "your son-

David: Yeah, yeah

Christine: ... and son, behold your mother"?

David: Yeah, that's where all this ends.

Christine: Yeah.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Yeah. Jesus.

David: But he does say-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... you know, "Woman, what does this have to do with me?"

Christine: Mm-hmm.

David: In chapter two.

Christine: Yeah.

David: And bringing in this idea of the seed of the woman, Eve, like, "That's who I am," and-

Christine: Yeah, well, Mary fulfills that because-

David: That's right

Christine: ... the seed of the woman is, has to be a virgin birth. And so that is s- said to Eve and then is fulfilled in Mary.

David: That's right.

Christine: So.

David: Yeah. And so there's-

Christine: Happy, Merry Christmas, everybody [laughs] apparently.

David: Yeah, Merry Christmas. And so, yeah, and so you have this, this woman figure introduced, this bride figure introduced, and Jesus as the husband-

Christine: Yeah, the, the-

David: ... the bridegroom who will provide the wine for the wedding.

Christine: Yeah, and the unwedded bride, too-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... which is Mary.

David: Which is Mary.

Christine: And so there's, that's a whole other rabbit trail, too, but there's a lot of imagery kind of crashing in. [laughs]

David: Yeah. And then we, we meet another woman in John 4, and we, we talked about the seventh jar briefly-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... there, uh, with the woman at the well in S- Samaria, that he's, he's, he is the king and the husband who is bringing, um, a bride into covenant relationship with himself, even a bride who, whose covenant has been cut off and has been exiled from. He's bringing her in.

Christine: Which will remind us of a section in Song of Songs, which is this big wedding song in the middle of the Bible in the wisdom literature that talks about the king being at his table, and this is the woman speaking, "And my perfume spreads its fragrance to him." And what do we see right here in John 12? Jesus is the king who is at the table, and Mary's perfume spreads its fragrance as she anoints him for his wedding night, which is his burial. Are you okay? [laughs]

David: No, I'm crying.

Christine: [laughs]

David: But that's okay. I love that imagery so much. Let me tell why, why I'm crying, and then there's something I want you to unpack. Reading it in Song of Songs just brings it all to life. It's so intimate and so beautiful, and I, I can't believe that we have the privilege of being able to do anything with our lives that smells that good to God.

Christine: Yeah.

David: You know? [laughs] Like, that, that's why I'm crying.

Christine: Okay.

David: Is like-

Christine: Yeah. I'm joining you now. That's-

David: I'm just like, why... [laughs] E- even-

Christine: What is man?

David: E- even Mary's beautiful gift here that, you know, y- you can look back at some of the things that God has said about sacrifice in the Old Testament. He's like, "You know, I don't need your bulls. I don't need your offerings. I don't need..." I- it, but it's the smell of a heart devoted to him that he desires and loves and finds attractive and-

Christine: Yes

David: ... and treasures. And so it's not even the perfume itself, right?

Christine: Yeah.

David: It's the heart behind it. It's the woman giving it-

Christine: Mm-hmm. Yeah

David: ... that He finds so dear. And so just th- this idea that I can set a banquet before God, that I can, I can be a pleasing aroma to Him, and I'm dust. And I [laughs]-

Christine: Yeah

David: It, it just blows my mind that I can be to Jesus, even in a small sense, what my wife is to me.

Christine: Hmm.

David: The, the, the sweet gift of her heart given to me.

Christine: Hmm. Yeah.

David: That I can give my heart to God, and He holds it like I hold my wife's heart?

Christine: Mm-hmm.

David: That He would want me that much, and w-

Christine: That's just... I can't even imagine.

David: No. [laughs]

Christine: I can't even begin to imagine. It's what got me with Jesus saying... We talked about this in the water episode about how Jesus says, "I thirst." He is the fountain of life. He is ever-gushing living water, and He asks this five-times-divorced, six-times-adulteress woman for a drink, "Can you give me yourself? I thirst for you," is just like, I have no category for that.

David: No.

Christine: And then even when He's hanging on the cross being murdered by His beloved, willingly taking all of their hate, and Him giving all of His love, and He even says there, "I thirst," is just, like, unprecedented love for people who-

David: He's still-

Christine: ... aren't even loving Him back

David: ... He's still willing to receive a drink offering from-

Christine: Yeah, and they-

David: ... a, a hateful bride like that. Yeah

Christine: ... they give Him sour vinegar.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Like, they can't... They have no love in them to even show mercy to a dying man.

David: Mm.

Christine: And Jesus is thirsty f- for the love of His people, for the love of the ones He is pouring Himself out to, and there at the foot of the cross is the disciple whom Jesus loved, and which now just makes sense why John just wants to call himself [laughs] that.

David: Yeah.

Christine: And then, of course, Mary is right there, and He provides for them in Himself. He provides them for each other, kind of.

David: Yeah.

Christine: And it's, it's just beautiful. Again, like, that idea of what is it about me that Jesus would want or anyone would want? Like, I'm just a, I'm just a little nobody over here in the-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... corner of the world. I will-

David: It's like-

Christine: ... live a few years and-

David: And-

Christine: ... then die

David: ... yeah, and there's some, there's some-

Christine: And Jesus is like, "I want you." [laughs]

David: Yeah, and there's some sense in which He's put his image in us, right? And there's something-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... that is Himself, Trinitarian-

Christine: Bone of my bone-

David: Right

Christine: ... and flesh of my flesh. Like, even Jesus, the whole idea of, like, the burial being his wedding chamber is-

David: Which, this is what I was gonna ask you to unpack a little bit more.

Christine: Oh, yeah?

David: So go ahead.

Christine: Oh, well, it's, it kind of... I mean, the church fathers say, like, that is actually literally the womb. Like, that is his wedding chamber. Jesus being incarnated as a human being is him joining himself to humanity permanently.

David: Right.

Christine: So even his, I guess, gestational beginning of the one who has no beginning [laughs] is, like, the beginning of him becoming one with humanity and glorifying humanity and being joined to God, 'cause God, the uncreated one, looks like a human because he has become human, and that is the biggest glory any creature could possibly imagine. [laughs] Whatever God incarnates as is the highest, the utmost, the greater than any angel, any cherubim, any seraphim. Like, that's, that's the greatest glory-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... ever possible.

David: God did not become a cherubim.

Christine: He did not. That would've been a humiliation.

David: Mm.

Christine: He became a-

David: A human

Christine: ... human. Go read Psalm 8. It's just-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... it makes, it makes no sense. It's-

David: And so this-

Christine: ... category-defying

David: ... he, he joins himself to humanity in, in a bridal chamber of the womb-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... and becomes human.

Christine: Yeah.

David: And as you would expect out of a bridal chamber, new birth happens, the birth of the Son of God-

Christine: Yes

David: ... and the Son of Man.

Christine: Yes.

David: And then that Son of Man is anointed for burial by a bride who goes into another kind of bridal chamber, the grave itself-

Christine: Yes

David: ... and joins the death of humanity into his body of life so that he might overcome it and bring it into himself. He-

Christine: Yeah, well-

David: He, he brings humanity's buried flesh into his resurrected life body.

Christine: Yeah. Well, and he, as both groom and firstborn, he is the firstborn from the dead. He opens the womb of the tomb.

David: Yes.

Christine: He is the firstborn out of the grave. And so his-

David: Yeah, he turns the tomb into a womb.

Christine: Yes.

David: Yeah.

Christine: Yes, precisely. It's no longer a place of death. It becomes a place of life-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... and new birth, as it were. And so it's just, it's huge. It's mysterious. It's something we can't understand [laughs] thankfully, or it would be too small and unable to save us. But because-

David: Yeah

Christine: ... it's God doing it, it's, it's a beautiful thing to meditate on, and we see just a glimpse of that in John 12 here even before Jesus actually goes to his Passion.

David: Yeah, speaking of, as we close the episode here, talk to me a little bit about, since we're on this theme and we might not be able to pick it up in the next one, we have this theme of the bridegroom going to his bride, going to the wedding chamber. That theme continues as Jesus rides into the town of Jerusalem as a conquering king going into the city.

Christine: Yeah, in a way it is because just as a bridegroom is anointed and is the king of his bride, the imagery that groom and bride relationship are reflecting in shadow, the relationship of king and city is also reflecting, or rather the king and country is, um, also reflecting because when a king is crowned, um, and ascends his throne, he marries his country or he marries his people and that is, um, consummated as it were by him entering hi- the capital city. And so even the king entering the capital city, there's this sort of nuptial language of now the king is one with his country and there's jubilation and, you know, the children of that country are like the king's ch- like he is father to them as well and the city is where they thrive and grow and there's all this familial imagery that is not just solely Jewish and Christian. That's like all throughout the world in all sorts of cultures. But we see that- occur or wanting to occur in Jesus' case here. But we also know that Jerusalem or the heads of Jerusalem representing the city rejects Jesus. And so we're like, wait, this is, this was supposed to be a big celebration. This was supposed to be a wedding moment, a consummation of king and country, and that strangely does not happen. The moment happens in Bethany outside of Jerusalem, and the moment will happen of Jesus' own passion joining himself to his people will happen outside of Jerusalem on a cross, and he will be laid in his bridal chamber outside Jerusalem in a tomb. That is tragic, but there's also this other story happening that is now the, the heavenly Jerusalem is the bride of Christ, and she is our mother, as Paul will say.

David: Mm-hmm.

Christine: And so we have something else going on that is Jesus indeed being crowned, but he's crowned outside of Jerusalem, and he's crowned on an instrument of death, and thereby also is conquering death with his life that he lays down willingly only to take it up again. So there are all these images just collapsing on each other, and I'm, I feel like I'm flailing and trying to hold all the plates up, but that's sort of what I'm seeing.

David: Yeah. No, it's great. It's just like, welcome to John. Welcome to the-

Christine: Yeah

David: ... Gospel. It's just all-

Christine: Everything is happening

David: ... multi-layered and beautiful. Well, this has been really fun to get to look at and to get to sit at Jesus' feet with Mary for a little while. So next week we'll, we'll pick up that thread a little bit of the husband riding into his bride, the king coming into his kingdom. We'll look at the triumphal entry of Jesus. We'll talk about donkeys and vines and Joseph and Ephraim and Judah. It'll be great.

Christine: We say we'll be in John 12, but we're gonna be all over the Bible. [laughs]

David: We're gonna go through the whole Bible in the next episode.

Christine: So.

David: So hold onto your hats. I'm excited. So thank you guys for joining us, and we will see you next time.

Christine: [outro music] Thank you for listening to the Spoken Gospel podcast. Spoken Gospel creates short films, devotionals, and podcasts like this one. Everything we make is free because of generous supporters like you. To see our resources, visit spokengospel.com or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks for listening. See you next time. [outro music]

Related Resources

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Mary's Anointing at Bethany: Preparing the King for His Burial

Show Notes

From the Book of Signs to the Book of Glory

Lazarus and the Resurrection in Person

Two Passovers, Two Tables

The Aroma of Life Poured Out for Burial

The Extravagant Gift, Judas, and the Poor

Priest, King, and Bridegroom on the Way to the Grave

Related Resources

Introduction to John

View our devotional on John 1:1-34

Ready to study a different book?

Listen to the Gospel of John Overview: A Unique Eyewitness podcast

Listen to the John 1: In the Beginning Was the Word podcast

Listen to the John Overview: What is a Sign? podcast

Listen to the John Overview: Water in the Old Testament podcast

Listen to the Joh Overview: Living Water podcast

Listen to the John Overview: Jesus the Bread from Heaven podcast

Listen to the John 12: Anointed for Burial podcast

Listen to the John 12: Donkey and Vine podcast