Scripture: Mark 14:3-9 and John 12:1-8
I have for many years taught a course at the University of Michigan called Law & Theology. In that seminar, we explore some of the things that lawyers, judges, and legal scholars can learn from theologians. One area of shared interest between the fields involves the interpretation of texts. Practitioners in both law and theology engage deeply with the written word and seek out the plain and hidden meanings within language.
In doing so, we often turn to secondary sources to aid in our understanding. If you look on the shelves downstairs, you’ll find thick volumes of The New Interpreter’s Bible, a well-regarded secondary source that casts light on the meaning of scripture. The walls of my law school office are similarly filled with secondary sources, like legal treatises and constitutional commentaries.
I recently had occasion to reflect on the use of secondary sources when I was attempting to get a firmer hold on a concept we all know from our childhood: the triple-dog dare. In seeking a deeper understanding of this phenomenon, I went to the definitive secondary source on the matter—the film A Christmas Story. It contains the world’s leading analysis of the triple-dog dare.
As you may recall, in that film a kid named Schwartz works hard to get a kid named Flick to lick a frozen flagpole in the middle of winter. Schwartz double-dog dares Flick to do it, but Flick resists. Flick surrenders, however, as he must, when Schwartz resorts to the most formidable dare of all, the triple-dog-dare. Poor Flick ends up with his tongue stuck to the icy pole—a dreadful fate, but an unavoidable one given our solemn obligation to accept all triple-dog dares.
Now, I give you this background because in this very church, on Palm Sunday, April 13, 2025, our sainted friend the Rev. Dr. Robin L. Carden sent something of a verbal missile in my direction. Some of you may recall it. But for those of you who weren’t present, or who may have forgotten, here’s what happened.
Pastor Robin was discussing the gospel story where a woman washes Jesus’s feet with a rare and expensive oil. Someone complains that they could have sold the ointment and given the proceeds to the poor. Jesus rebukes the objecting party, saying: “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”
Pastor Robin described this as: “One of the more perplexing passages in the entire New Testament.” And then she added: “It’s easy to fixate on trying to figure out what this means. But we’re just going to leave that for Len to do in one of his upcoming sermons.”
Now, my friends, I know a triple-dog-dare when I hear one. And so I come to you this morning with two tasks before me. First, I have to try to shed some light on this passage which, as Robin wisely observes, is powerfully perplexing. And, second, in the process I have to avoid the preaching equivalent of getting my tongue stuck to a frozen flagpole.
Wish me luck. Here we go.
It’s helpful to start by identifying the two problems that makes this passage so perplexing, if not even alarming.
The first problem is that in making this statement Jesus appears to set himself apart from the poor. It’s as if he says: “I’m over here, and the poor are over there, and you’ll have them with you always, but you’ll only have me for a little while.” The poor go in one box; Jesus goes in another.
If that’s what he’s saying here, then this statement feels strongly at odds with one of the central messages of the gospels. The New Testament repeatedly signals Jesus’s close community—indeed, his identity—with the poor. Think, for example, of what he says in Matthew 25: However you treat the poor, that’s how you treat me. You feed them, you feed me; you shelter them, you shelter me; you clothe them, you clothe me. To give a new twist to an old hymn, we might say that in Christ there is no me and them.
I should note that we find the same sentiment in the Hebrew Bible. Proverbs 19, for example, says: “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord.” This scripture, too, portrays God not just as sympathetic to the poor, but as inseparable from them. Our perplexing passage therefore describes a disconnection between the poor and God that both the Old and New Testament deny.
The second problem with this passage is that Jesus seems here to elevate himself above the poor, to place his concerns above their concerns. It’s as if he says: “Why bother about the poor? Nothing special there. I’m the special one among us.”
Any such sentiment, however, flies in the face of the spiritual hierarchy that Jesus preaches to us throughout the gospels. It makes no sense to say, on the one hand, that the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and that the least in the kingdom are the greatest in the kingdom, but also say, on the other hand, that the poor have only second-class status. You cannot simultaneously put the poor at the forefront of our concerns and at the back of the line.
An important thread of thought within Catholic theology, specifically within Liberation Theology, speaks of “a preferential option for the poor.” The phrase has garnered some controversy, but it really just means giving priority to the well-being of the impoverished and powerless within society. And it simply makes sense that a just and loving God would have a special place in the divine heart and mind for those whose needs are the greatest.
In our perplexing passage, however, Jesus seems to create a preferential option for, well, himself. It’s as if he says: “Sure, selling the oil would have put food in the stomachs of the hungry. But that’s not nearly as important as making me happy.” Read this way, Jesus sounds crassly indifferent to the concerns of the poor.
The difficult question before us, then, the triple-dog-dare at the heart of our project this morning, is whether there’s a way we can read this passage that avoids these two very serious problems. I believe that there is. And I think that in order to do so it’s helpful to think about an entirely different passage where we see Jesus do something similar to what I think he’s doing here. Please indulge me, then, as we take our first brief detour.
Think back, for a moment, about a different story—the story of the woman taken in adultery. I’m sure you all remember how it goes, but here’s a quick refresher. A group of men bring a woman before Jesus for judgment. They tell him they have seized her in the act of adultery, an offense punishable by death. Jesus famously says: “Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone.” The men slink off in shame, and Jesus sends the woman on her way.
The story includes an odd little detail: While Jesus talks with the men, he writes something with his finger in the dirt. Biblical interpreters have offered lots of different theories about what he wrote and why. But, as I’ve mentioned in a previous sermon, my favorite theory is that Jesus wasn’t writing anything in particular. He was doodling in the dirt so he didn’t make eye contact with the woman’s accusers, which would have escalated the confrontational nature of his words.
To put it differently, Jesus wrote in the dirt in order to manage a difficult situation—and to deescalate it. He did it in order to change the direction of the events and to give grace room to work. He did it in order to keep the situation from devolving into something dark and destructive.
I could, of course, be wrong—today’s perplexing passage lends itself to more than one interpretation. But I think Jesus was doing something very similar in the story about the expensive oil. Let’s see if I can persuade you.
This story appears in multiple gospels. The versions are remarkably similar in most respects, although John injects a lot of additional detail. He sets the drama in the house of Lazarus, identifies the women in the story as Martha and Mary, and tags Mary as the one anointing Jesus. Furthermore, he attributes the criticism about using the oil instead of selling it to Judas Iscariot, along the way tossing in some color commentary about how Judas didn’t really care about the poor, anyway.
Although John’s version comes chronologically last in the writing of the gospels, I think it’s immensely helpful in understanding this story. Indeed, I think John adds all of this detail here in order to help us grasp the story’s main point. More on that idea in a minute.
Let’s start where the story does in all its gospel versions. Jesus is at someone’s home. A woman brings a jar of very expensive ointment, breaks it open, and begins to wash Jesus with it. It’s at this point that someone objects that the oil should have been sold to help the poor.
Now, the first thing I want you to notice is that the objection comes too late. Our critic waits until the woman has seated Jesus in the best chair, has broken open the ointment, and has poured the oil on his feet before they object. Then our critic interrupts the joyful occasion by lodging his complaint. He transforms a sweet and intimate moment into an occasion for moral posturing. And to what end? The jar of precious ointment has already been opened and dispensed!
We can only imagine how the objection must have made the poor woman feel. Inferior. Embarrassed. Irresponsible. And note that the criticism takes an implicit jab at Jesus as well. After all, Jesus sat there and watched the whole ritual unfold without objecting. If Jesus cares so much about the poor, the critic implies, why didn’t he do something to stop her?
Now, throughout the gospels, Jesus typically doesn’t bother rebuking those who insult him. He willingly takes up every cross. But when Jesus sees or hears someone else attacked, he steps in and intervenes. Jesus models for us an appropriately low tolerance for bullying.
The stakes here obviously are not as high as they are in the story of the woman taken in adultery. But, as in that story, these circumstances also present Jesus with a very difficult situation to manage. Someone has lashed out at the woman who was caring for him, leaving her belittled, disgraced, and embarrassed. Jesus needs to address it. He needs to say something. He can’t just let it sit.
So what does Jesus do? He turns his attention to the objecting party. And we might rewrite what he says to them, using plain English, in these terms: “You say you’re concerned for the poor. But the poor are everywhere, have been with us always, and will be with us forever, and yet what have you done for them? Nothing. Instead, you use the poor to try to make this woman feel ashamed of her act of kindness and to make me feel ashamed about receiving it.”
Jesus understood that the critic wasn’t really talking about the poor. He was just trying to make the woman feel bad. And, in his response, Jesus’s wasn’t really talking about the poor, either. He was talking about hypocrisy. Just as he was talking about hypocrisy when he invited anyone who was sinless to cast the first stone.
As I say, this passage lends itself to many interpretations and I could be wrong. But here’s why I think I’m not. I think that John, the author of the last-written gospel, interpreted this story exactly the same way. I think that’s why John added in all the details we get in his version of the story. He wanted to make sure we got the point the story was trying to make.
So, what did John do? He made Mary the woman pouring the oil on Jesus. Jesus loved Mary, so the instinct to protect her would have been particularly strong. He made Judas Iscariot into the critic. This signals to us that we shouldn’t trust his self-serving characterization of his motives. And then, just to make sure we don’t miss anything, John expressly told us that Judas didn’t care about the poor and, in fact, stole money that was intended for them to use for his own purposes.
In short, I think the meaning of the story we get in Mark becomes crystal clear if we view the version we get in John as being like a commentary on it, as being like one of those helpful secondary sources we turn to for understanding. I suspect that John found the story just as perplexing as we do—but then he solved the puzzle. He figured out that this isn’t a story about the poor; this is a story about hypocrisy. And he wanted to give us some clues so we could solve the puzzle, too.
To be clear, I don’t think that Jesus said these things to Judas simply to confront him with his hypocrisy. I think he did so because he wanted to stop the damage before it went any further. He knew that performative moralism can have a contagious quality, and that in short order Mary would find herself surrounded by critics lecturing her about her lapse in caring for the poor. And he wasn’t about to let that happen.
No, Jesus says. This woman is being kind to me. Making her feel bad about it needs to stop. Right here, right now.
I think it is telling that, in all the versions of the story, the first thing Jesus says to the critic is “leave her alone.”
Like the story of the woman taken in adultery, this is also a story about the importance of deescalating conflict—the importance of turning the temperature of tensions down, rather than up. It is a lesson we human beings have proven very, very slow to learn.
My friends, the kingdom of God holds some wonders that are only occasionally visible to us. I bring one of them to you this morning. I refer, of course, to the quadruple-dog dare.
In this context, a quadruple-dog dare might sound something like this. Okay, we can un-perplex this perplexing story. We can interpret it in a way that saves it from a charge of inconsistency with the rest of the Bible. And we can see that it includes broad and powerful cautionary messages about hypocrisy and escalation.
But can go even further? Can we find something else in this story? Can we find a more personal message that we might put in our pockets and carry home with us and put to work in our own lives?
I believe we can. To do it, we need to take another very quick detour. Bear with me; this won’t take long and I think you’ll find it worthwhile.
Think back on yet another story—a story that we get in both the nineteenth chapter of Matthew and eighteenth chapter of Luke. I’m sure you all know this one, too, but unlike the story of the woman taken in adultery or the story of the woman anointing Jesus, this is an exquisitely simple one. It goes like this: Some people brought their children to Jesus for a blessing. The disciples spoke sternly to them and tried to interfere. But Jesus said: “Let the children come to me, do not stop them.”
I want to suggest to you this morning that this little story has a big moral to it. And I think it happens to be the same big moral that we find in the story about the woman anointing Jesus with the oil. And that big moral is this: Sometimes the most important thing for us to do in life is to know love when we see it and to get out of its way.
We all understand the centrality of love in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Love is the good news. Love conquered the cross. Love never ends. Love is the sacred work of God. Love is our primary job description. Love is our only hope.
But, sometimes, the most important thing we can do in the service of love is to get out of its way. We need to allow people to love each other. Allow others to love us. Allow us to love ourselves. That is the essential message of Jesus when the disciples try to stop the children: “Get out of love’s way.” I think it is similarly the essential message of Jesus when Judas criticizes Mary: “Get out of love’s way.”
I had lived with the gospels for a long time before I had a stunning realization. It’s the kind of thing that makes your head spin. It’s this: Jesus loved Judas Iscariot.
Let me say that again: Jesus loved Judas Iscariot. Despite the betrayal. Despite the deception. Despite the hypocrisy. Jesus loved Judas Iscariot. He must have loved him. Otherwise, Jesus would not have followed his own gospel and his own commandment.
Now, imagine a story in which Judas Iscariot allows Jesus to love him. Imagine a story in which Judas feels the love of Christ and lets it in, past all of his resentments and his ambitions and his corrosive instincts. Imagine a story in which Judas experiences the love of Jesus and gets out of its way.
Perhaps there is some part of your life in which you’re getting in the way of love. Getting in the way of forgiveness. Getting in the way of grace. Getting in the way of empathy. Getting in the way of compassion.
If so, then Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, asks you to think again. To open your heart. To push the obstacles aside. To give love space to do its profound and mysterious work.
It is to that life of unobstructed love that Jesus Christ summons you.
Invites you.
Calls you.
Triple dog dares you.
Ah, praise God that it is so.
And all the people said: Amen.
