Anointed and Betrayed

Matthew 26:1-30
 

Last time in our study of Matthew we wrapped up the Olivet Discourse with the last parable that Jesus told during his life on earth, the story about the separation of the sheep and the goats, a description of the last judgment. The sheep are welcomed into the kingdom, and the goats are sent away to eternal punishment. People have had questions about the meaning of this story probably ever since it was told, since on its surface it appears to indicate that each person’s eternal destiny is solely dependent on what good deeds they do during their lifetime. However, we have so much other New Testament teaching that confirms that salvation is not through good works, but only by grace, through faith, a gift from God that we receive without deserving it. So we can understand that the good deeds mentioned in the parable – feeding the hungry and being kind to strangers, prisoners, and the poor – are practical actions that spring from true faith and gratefulness to God. In the story they are described as being done unconsciously, a reflection of a sheep’s real identity, not in an effort to earn the favor of the King.
 
You may recall back in chapter 10 where Jesus was talking about salvation and rewards in a similar way, at the end of his second discourse:
 
 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward. – Matthew 10:39-42
 
Finding one’s life in this context implies determining one’s own destiny, being in control and striving for personal benefit. That approach, which rejects God, will end in eternal death. In contrast, losing one’s life – probably not literally, but in submission to God – will result in eternal life with him. Welcoming a disciple of Jesus is the same as welcoming him and his Father, who sent him. Good deeds, even something as simple as giving a cup of refreshing water, will be rewarded, but notice the element of faith here. Welcoming a prophet as a prophet and a righteous person as a righteous person requires acknowledging the source of their truth and righteousness, namely God himself. The reward then is fellowship with the true God, through a revelation of who he is and what he has done for each of us.

So now, in Matthew 26, we come to the period in the life of Jesus that is traditionally called his Passion, from a Latin word referring to his suffering. We know that he had told his disciples that he would suffer “many things,” not just the agony of crucifixion, but the pain of rejection by many people, including his closest friends, and the incomprehensible separation from his Father. Here he is still trying to get his disciples to accept what was about to happen:
 
When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, “As you know, the Passover is two days away—and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.”
Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they schemed to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. “But not during the festival,” they said, “or there may be a riot among the people.” – Matthew 26:1-5
 
Jesus finished saying all these things. He is wrapping up his teaching ministry and is looking toward fulfilling his main purpose for coming to earth. He is making a clear connection between his death and the sacrifice of the Passover lamb. In the Exodus account, the blood of the Passover lamb had stood between the people of Israel and God’s judgment on the sin of the Egyptians. It says that when the Lord went through the land to strike down the Egyptians, if he saw the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe of the houses of the Israelites, he would pass over that doorway and not permit the destroyer to enter those houses and strike down the firstborn of those families. This requirement for blood meant that the lamb had to die, so that God’s people would not. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul explicitly calls Jesus our Passover lamb, who has been sacrificed. This keeps us as believers from being destroyed in God’s judgment of sin.
 
This significance is lost, of course, on the chief priests and elders. They see the Passover as just a festival, a gathering of people who might support Jesus. They wanted to kill Jesus just to get rid of him, to eliminate this threat to their power and security. But in having Jesus executed by the Romans these priests would unwittingly be performing a sacrifice that would render all their rituals obsolete.
 
Caiaphas as the leader of the temple priesthood in Jerusalem would preside over the trial of Jesus in the Sanhedrin, which functioned as the highest Jewish court at the time. Caiaphas is the one who had unknowingly prophesied about the significance of Jesus death, as recorded in John 11:50, that it would be better that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish. He was thinking of the existential threat to the Jewish nation from the Romans, but Jesus would in fact be dying to secure the eternal salvation of God’s people all over the world, covering the sin of everyone who would believe.
 
Let’s carry on in Matthew 26, with a break in this evil plot against Jesus:
 
While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.
When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”
Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” – Matthew 26:6-13
 
This is a beautiful story of a woman’s love that stands in stark contrast to the hatred of the chief priests and elders. The anointing of Jesus by a woman is described in all four gospels, but the accounts are all slightly different in the details. Some people contend that Jesus was anointed twice before his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and once afterward. I’m not going to get into that debate. Matthew and Mark are definitely describing the same incident, the final anointing of Jesus before his death. Jesus and his disciples had been invited to a meal at the home of Simon the Leper in Bethany, not far from Jerusalem. Perhaps Jesus had earlier healed Simon of his leprosy, rendering him ceremonially clean and able to serve guests. His nickname would serve then as a reminder and witness of what God had done for him.
 
A woman comes with a jar of expensive perfume, which Mark identifies as pure nard, worth more than a year’s wages, so many thousands of dollars in today’s money. The reason this perfume was so expensive was that it came from the spikenard plant that grows only in the Himalayas, a world away from first century Israel. So this jar was like this woman’s bank account, perhaps her entire inheritance or dowry. She wanted to give Jesus the best of what she had as an expression of her love and devotion.
 
Mark notes that she broke the alabaster jar before pouring the perfume on Jesus’ head. Alabaster was a beautiful white stone, soft enough to be easily carved into a vessel. This was full commitment; by breaking the jar this woman was holding nothing back. The perfume would all pour out at once. She would not be saving anything for herself. Another woman with this level of devotion was the widow of Mark 12 who put her two copper coins into the temple treasury. When Jesus saw her do that, he said that she had put in more than anyone else, since she had put in everything she had to live on. She could have put in just one coin, but she put in both. This is what full surrender to the Lordship of Jesus looks like: holding nothing back. This is a challenge for all of us.
 
The disciples saw this anointing as a waste of money, and they voiced their displeasure, rebuking the woman harshly, according to Mark’s account. But Jesus rebukes them instead, for discounting the beautiful thing that this woman has done. Jesus obviously cares for the poor and wants us to help them, but he does not want our service to get in the way of our devotion to him. If our love for our neighbor is not motivated and controlled by our primary love for God it can easily become selfish or routine. We can only truly love our neighbor if we love God first. Otherwise our motives get corrupted so easily.
 
The disciples would have other opportunities to help the poor. This woman acting in the moment. She was taking seriously what Jesus had just said about his imminent death, and she wanted to show him how much she loved him. Her extravagant love and sacrifice have been an example for believers ever since, wherever in the world the gospel is being preached. Mark includes something else that Jesus said here that has always touched my heart: “She did what she could.” What an amazing affirmation! I hope that someday when I stand before my Lord he will be able to say that about me: “He did what he could.” Are you doing what you can with what Jesus has given you? We need to be like the servant with five talents or the one with three, who invested what they had been given to produce a proportionate return. We shouldn’t look down on others who are starting out with fewer talents than we have. Jesus wants us each to do what we can with what we have.
 
In light of this woman’s sacrifice, it is significant to see what happens next in our passage:
 
Then one of the Twelve—the one called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?” So they counted out for him thirty pieces of silver. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over. – Matthew 26:14-16
 
Judas was the disciple who handled the finances of the group. John 12 tells us that he was the keeper of the money bag and would help himself to what was in it. So witnessing what he considered this enormous waste of money was too much for him. Jesus was pointing out the idolatry in his heart, his greed and self-centeredness, and he resented that. Apparently this was the last straw that convinced him to betray Jesus to the authorities – for financial gain, of course. That is what he valued the most, as do many people today, those who recognize the power, comfort, and security of wealth. What Judas received was worth about 4 months of wages, so about a third of the value of the perfume that had just been poured on Jesus. Judas would now wait for a time when Jesus was away from the crowds and alert the chief priests to arrest him. This would still need to be done quietly to avoid protest.
 
Continuing on in Matthew 26:
 
On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Where do you want us to make preparations for you to eat the Passover?”
He replied, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The Teacher says: My appointed time is near. I am going to celebrate the Passover with my disciples at your house.’” So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and prepared the Passover. – Matthew 26:17-19
 
The Passover meal included quick-cooking bread made without yeast, commemorating the hasty departure of the Israelites from Egypt. Leaven had come to be associated with sin, so the unleavened bread was a symbol of purification, too. Since Jesus did not have a home of his own, he would need to celebrate the Passover in someone else’s. This would have been the expectation of all the roughly three million pilgrims visiting Jerusalem for the festival, and people in the city would have rooms available for this purpose. Jesus sent the disciples on ahead to make the preparations for this special meal. Mark mentions that this was in a large upper room, the guest room of a man that they spotted carrying a jar of water. That was how the disciples identified this “certain man” that Jesus was directing them to. Their assignment would have included preparing all the symbolic foods that were part of ritual and the four cups of wine to recall the promises of Exodus 6: “I will bring you out…, I will free you…, I will redeem you…, I will take you for my own people, and I will be your God.” The disciples went ahead to get all of this ready.
 
 When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the Twelve. And while they were eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.”
They were very sad and began to say to him one after the other, “Surely you don’t mean me, Lord?”
Jesus replied, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”
Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, “Surely you don’t mean me, Rabbi?”
Jesus answered, “You have said so.” – Matthew 26:20-25
 
Jesus knew beforehand who would betray him, and this was a grief to him. He had invested the past three years of his life in these men, teaching and caring for them, bringing them to God. And yet one would reject all of that and turn against him. They were a close-knit group of friends, so it was difficult for the disciples to accept that one of them would do this. But somehow they recognized the potential for unfaithfulness in themselves, so they were sad, and each asked if it could be him. Eating together would normally been a sign of close friendship and in that culture a commitment to not harm each other. Therefore, Jesus identifying Judas as they were dipping into the bowl together highlighted just what a betrayal this was. John’s account points out that this was to fulfill Psalm 41:8: “Even my close friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.”
 
Judas leaves the room at this point, and Jesus then adds something to the Passover ceremony, what we call communion or the Lord’s Supper. It is good to remember this context. Each disciple had just been faced with his own sinful disposition, the possibility of grieving and in fact harming their beloved Lord. But the Passover was a reminder of God’s salvation, and now Jesus makes this an even more intimate experience, inviting them in a unique way to become one with him:
 
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”
Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”
When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. – Matthew 26:26-30
 
What does it mean to eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus? This was not the first time that Jesus had spoken this way. In John 6, much earlier in his ministry, Jesus had said,
 
“I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. – John 6:48-59
 
This is the first time that Jesus makes the connection between bread and his own body. These statements come right after he feeds the five thousand, so the people are focused on their need for physical bread to sustain themselves. Jesus begins to blur the distinction between the physical and the spiritual. He refers to himself as the bread of life, inviting people to eat his flesh and drink his blood to be able to live forever. Consuming food means taking it into ourselves, so that it becomes part of who we are. Eating the body and blood of Jesus means that we will be able to remain in him and he in us, as it says here in verse 56.
 
Jesus had said earlier in John 6, “Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” So he is making a connection with receiving him by faith. The bread and the body and blood of his sacrifice and the coming to him and receiving grace by faith become wrapped up in physical elements and spiritual realities. There is a mystery that we cannot completely comprehend. Some people took offense at what Jesus was saying, and it says that from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. We would recoil also at anything that sounds like cannibalism, but the offense to Jews was much deeper. Eating the blood of an animal was strictly prohibited in Leviticus, with the penalty of being cut off from one’s people. Blood was only ever to be offered to God as part of a sacrifice, since the life of the animal was in its blood. Jesus was offering eternal life in his blood, but many people were not willing to make this connection.
 
Some of those who did stay with him though were there in the upper room when he took the bread and said, “Take and eat; this is my body.” How could that piece of bread be the body of someone physically present with them? People have puzzled over this statement ever since. There was actually more ambiguity in the original Aramaic than there is in English. The verb is not a necessary part of the statement. Jesus was in effect saying, “This – my body.” He was not trying to define how the bread was in fact his body, so we don’t need to get wrapped up in the particulars of transubstantiation as the Catholic Church has. We can accept the spiritual reality of receiving his grace and forgiveness on a continual basis.
 
We are not told what the disciples understood at that point. If they had been paying attention earlier they would have recognized that this was an invitation to receive Jesus spiritually by faith, to experience true communion with him. With the cup he said, “This is my blood of the covenant.” Jesus was referring to the new covenant, sealed by the blood of his sacrifice that would allow sins to be forgiven once and for all. The regular sacrifices of the old covenant, as described in the Old Testament, would no longer be required. They had merely been signposts pointing ahead to the ultimate sacrifice on the cross. Jesus wanted his disciples to know what his death would mean before it happened. This was his last chance, his last drink with them before his death, resurrection, and ascension to glory. They would not really understand it of course until the Holy Spirit gave them insight and assurance at Pentecost.
 
As the main takeaway from this message, I would like us to return in our thinking to the woman who anointed Jesus, making a huge sacrifice to show her love and devotion to him. “She did what she could,” Jesus said. And that was enough. This past week I watched the testimony of Elinor Young, a crippled woman from Washington state who felt that God wanted her to be an overseas missionary. She had almost died of polio as a five-year-old and would never be able to walk normally. How would she ever be able to serve in a remote place like Irian Jaya, now known as Papua? But as a teenager she wanted somehow to respond to the call of God on her life. I’ll play just a few minutes of her testimony. You are welcome to watch the whole thing at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuRvXePv_wA