A Hot Dog for Jesus?

Mathew 26:10-12
10Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 11The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. 12When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial.

As an advocate for Compassion International I am troubled by Jesus’ statement in Mathew 26:11. I am troubled because many will use it as an excuse to ignore the plight of the poor. Taken at face value this phrase seems to contradict what Jesus’ ministry was about, and stands in direct contradiction to God’s commands in the Old Testament. As we must do with all scripture we have to look at this piece of scripture within context to gain all that we can from this incident in the life of Jesus.

Mathew does not name the woman, but we know from John 12 that it was Mary. She had poured some very expensive perfume on Jesus’ head and the disciples who were eating with Jesus were outraged that Mary had “wasted” the perfume on Jesus. Their argument was that the perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Sensing their anger, Jesus rebuked them and defended Mary’s actions.

So was Jesus saying that there will always be poor people, and because he was going to die it was OK to ignore them and lavish him with the costly perfume?  No, because the key word in that question is “ignore”. 

It was obvious to Jesus that Mary understood that he would soon be killed. What Mary was doing was honoring her lord and savior with the best that she had. Think about it. If you were in a room with Jesus right now what would you do? Wouldn’t you offer him anything and everything you had in a feeble attempt to praise and worship him? Or would you sell your finest china, give the money to charity, and then serve the King of Kings a hot dog on a paper plate?

It is amazing to me that Mary got it and the disciples seemed so clueless. She understood that she was in the presence of the son of God and that this might be the only chance that she would ever have to worship him on earth. What were the disciples thinking? “Hey we better go take care of the poor; worshipping Jesus can wait”. They had it upside down to me. Suppose I was to staff a concert for Compassion International, but I found out that Jesus was coming to my house for dinner. Sorry Compassion but I’ll have to give you a rain check. Does this mean that I am not concerned for the poor? Not at all. It does mean that I put worship and praise for God above everything and everyone, and for that I make no apology.

Does this mean I can ignore the homeless guy that crosses my path? Does this give me an excuse to do nothing for suffering children in Haiti, or Africa, or South America? I’ll take a closer look at that in another post, but let me give you a hint. I know someone who is looking for some good fruit, and I don’t think he is shopping at the grocery store.

[ If you want to know more about the ministry of Compassion International please visit www.Compassion.com ]

[For better blogs than this one on poverty, and children in need check out the official Compassion Blog in the blog roll ]