Commentary

Palm Sunday – B
Mark 14:1 - 15:47

It’s Love That Does It.

There are two meals in the Passion narrative according to Mark.

During the first meal when Jesus is a guest at the house of Simon the leper (14:3-9), a woman comes in and anoints Jesus with a jar of “costly genuine spikenard”. St. Mark makes sure to point out the value of the perfume. It is worth “more than three hundred days' wages.” That’s almost a whole year, 6 days a week, of labor.

According to William Barclay, “It was the custom to pour a few drops of perfume on a guest.”[1] Yet, the woman just breaks the alabaster jar and pours the entire contents on Jesus’ head. 300 days’ wages worth of genuine spikenard, all at once! That kind of generosity, even to the point of recklessness, is only possible when it’s love that does it.

The woman breaks the alabaster jar, an act to indicate that Jesus is special to her. Also according to Barclay, there was a custom of breaking the glass used by a distinguished guest “so that it would never again be touched by the hand of any lesser person.”[2]

With the details from the first meal, St. Mark prepares us to appreciate the action of Jesus in the second meal (14:22-25). Here, Jesus gives the generous gift of his own body and blood to the disciples, the gift that comes from his broken body on the cross.

Peter, James, and John fall asleep while Jesus is in agony... The disciples all leave him and flee... And Peter denies him.

We are anything but distinguished guests. Yet, Jesus breaks his own body to give us the costly perfume of eternal life. It’s eternity, not just 300 days.

What a genuine gift! It is love that does it.

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[1] The Gospel of Mark, Revised edition. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1975; p. 326.
[2] Ibid.