Cote des Neiges Presbyterian Church
Rev. Joel Coppieters, B.Th., M.Div.
Sunday, April 6th, 2014
Text: Matthew 26:1-16
Beauty and Betrayal
When his father died in 1627, Shah Jahan quickly moved to seize power in
Agra, working tirelessly over more than a year, gradually eliminating his rivals to
become emperor.
With his beautiful wife at his side, Jahan consolidated his kingdom. They
ruled together over a court of splendor and grandeur such as had never been seen.
It is said that her collection of jewelry has never been matched either in beauty or
in cost. But she was the perfect emperor’s wife in many other ways, providing
wise advice, accompanying her husband on every one of his military campaigns
and most importantly providing 14 children – including several sons as potential
heirs.
When she gave birth to the last of their sons, near the battlefield during a
military campaign, there were complications and she didn’t survive the ordeal.
Just 38 years old, with seventeen years of the happiest marriage, so stricken with
grief was the emperor that within a few months his hair and beard had turned
completely white.
To express his grief, Shah Jahan commandeered over 1000 elephants to
transport the finest white marble and other precious materials from all over India
to supply the 20,000 workers who would labour for over 22 years to complete the
mausoleum in honour of his dead wife, at a cost of more than 32 million rupees.
While Jahan was working on the staggering tribute to his wife, and during his
illness that followed, he apparently wasn’t paying close enough attention to the
affairs of state. His four sons began to struggle for power, eventually murdering
one another, and then overthrowing their sick father and confining him to jail for
the last eight years of his life.
Ironically, imprisoned in one of the fortresses he had built himself, from
the window of his jail cell he had a splendid view of the tribute he had built to his
wife, Mumtaz Mahal. The building today is known by a shortened version of her
name – the Taj Mahal.
When Jahan died alone in his prison cell on the 22nd of January 1666, there
was no state funeral or formalities and he was quietly entombed without much
ceremony next to his beloved wife in the vault beneath the building he had
constructed in her honour.
It would not be either the first or the last time in history that such great a
great tribute to love would stand in sharp contrast to betrayal and death.
In the text we have read today, Matthew wants to make a powerful point with the
same kind of contrast between the beauty of devotion, and the ugliness of
betrayal.
Mark does the same thing when he recounts the events, splitting up the
details of the betrayal of Jesus with the gripping story of the anointing at Bethany.
In these short sixteen verses, Matthew has drawn together an unlikely cast of
characters, none of whom behave quite the way we expect them to.
The story begins with a jarring announcement from Jesus. In Matthew
17:22 and again in 20:18 Jesus had warned his disciples that the Son of Man –
referring to himself – would soon be delivered up. But here at the beginning of
Matthew 26, in the Greek text, Jesus uses the present tense in verse 2. “You know
that after two days, the Passover is coming and the Son of Man is delivered up to
be crucified.”
It is a strange construction, and one day I think I may include it in a book
I’m working on about intentional typos in the biblical texts. These are moments
when the Scriptures use peculiar grammatical constructions that break a few of
the rules of grammar to make a point. In this text, Jesus speaks of his betrayal and
of his death as having already begun, even though the final events are still two
days away.
But He will not fight, He will not oppose it. He will not call down the
legions of angels in His defense. In spite of all that would be in His power to stop
the flow of events that have begun, it is willingly that Jesus will walk to his death.
Those who believe that the crucifixion of Jesus was the unfortunate unplanned
outcome of the life of a good man who was simply misunderstood have missed
the point.
In John 12, as Jesus is looking ahead to the anguish of the cross, pouring
his heart out in agony before his Father he says “What should I say? Should I ask
to be spared from this difficult hour?” And then he responds to what was in fact a
rhetorical question. “This hour, this moment of suffering, this is why I came.”
In both Mark 10 and Matthew 20 we are told these words of Jesus “that the Son of
Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for
many.”
In these next few weeks, as we work our way through Lent, and as we
accompany Jesus in the painful process, let us be clear, even as we begin, that
Jesus is not simply the passive victim of horrible events that got out of His
control.
Jesus knew the cross was coming. He could have stopped it, but He didn’t,
because this is why He came. We cannot understand who Jesus really was, we
cannot grasp his message or the meaning of His life, without wrestling with the
meaning of His death.
And so as these peculiar events from that first Easter begin to unfold, there
are no surprises for Jesus because he is just seeing the will of his father unfold,
but there are surprises for us. Nobody here behaves the way we would expect
them to.
Our first surprise comes from the behavior of the religious leaders.
We are told that “the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered …
and plotted together to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him.”
I will admit that it is probably a sign of our times that we are not surprised
to see a highly placed religious figure doing something wrong. We have heard too
many scandals involving members of the clergy, and we have seen too many
television evangelists repenting of their sins on national television not to be a little
skeptical and cynical of those who portray themselves as being just a little too
holy.
As God is apparently blessing our ministry here at Cote des Neiges, I can’t
tell you how cautious I am being not only to be doing things right, but also to
avoid any appearance or perception of impropriety. There are such good things
happening here, and I know how quickly they could unravel if rumours or
accusations were ever to start.
So in one sense, I suppose, we’re not entirely surprised that these religious
leaders, reacting out of jealousy because Jesus was attracting the crowds, are
taking steps to preserve their own positions by getting rid of Jesus.
But the deeper irony of the text is that the hope at the heart of Judaism was
the expectation of the coming of Messiah. The prophets spoke of his coming with
miracles and with wisdom and powerful teaching. The religious leaders could not
deny that Jesus had come with all of those, but they were so blinded by their own
ambition, that instead of leading the people in receiving the Messiah, they begin
to plot His murder.
And they must plan all this by stealth, for fear of the people. Many of the
people had begun to look to Jesus with Messianic hope because they had
recognized something supernatural in Him. So, strangely, in this case, the people
seem to have been wiser than their spiritual leaders. And because of the people’s
expectations, not only do the leaders begin to plot murder, but they will need to
use deception and cover ups to make it happen.
And this is what happens when our positions of authority go to our heads
and we begin to misbehave.
Do you remember the story of David’s cover up? It started with his
wandering on the roof of the palace with nothing to do when he should have been
out on the battlefield with his men. The next thing he knew there was another
man’s wife in his bed. Then the pregnancy had to be covered up so he told a few
lies, and used a little deceit. That didn’t work, so he told a few more lies and
arranged a cover up, and before he knew it, he had committed murder and his life
had become a web of deceit that quickly unraveled.
So the chief priests and the elders, in order to get rid of Jesus, are willing
to plot a murder. To pull it off, they will need to lie, to act by stealth in the middle
of the night and finally to misappropriate funds from the Temple treasury to pay
off the betrayer.
I’ve begun to notice lately how infrequently the word “sin” appears in the
singular form in the Bible. It is really hard to commit just the one “sin.”
Especially the big ones. Just as the religious leaders discovered, once you start
plotting a murder, you have to pull out all the stops.
By the way, notice their title; the chief priests. They were priests. They
were involved in the oversight of the sacrificial system in the Temple. Plotting
murder wasn’t there usual course of duties, but planning for the sacrifices of the
Passover lambs was certainly part of their calling. Isn’t it strangely ironic the way
God’s plans worked out? When the Lamb of God, when God’s Passover Lamb
arrived to take away the sins of the world, His death as a ransom for the sins of
the world was planned by the chief priests whose duties it was to arrange for the
Temple sacrifices.
When we read the text a little further, and in the other Gospels, we
discover that even the money which the priests used to pay off Judas, to “buy”
Jesus if you will, that money came from the Temple treasury. That money wasn’t
supposed to be used for all kinds of sundry expenses. It certainly wasn’t meant to
be used to pay bribes. It would normally have been used to purchase animals, like
the Passover lambs, for the sacrifices in the Temple.
We may be surprised to see the religious leaders plot murder and sink to
deception and stealth to accomplish their selfish purposes, but in the end,
according to the foreordained plan of God, the chief priests used the Temple funds
reserved for sacrifices to plan the death of the one who had come as the Lamb of
God, to take away the sins of the world.
We are also a little surprised and intrigued by this man in whose house the
events unfold. He is introduced as Simon the Leper in Bethany.
There is some confusion because the biblical text recounts another similar
story of anointing that apparently also happened in Bethany at the house of Mary
and Martha and their brother Lazarus. We could spend considerable time on this,
but this is a point where there are more church traditions and apocryphal stories
than we have actual solid detail in the biblical text. Here’s what we know.
This man who is called Simon the Leper, if he was still a leper, would not have
been living in the city of Bethany, but on its outskirts. And if he were still a leper,
he would not be hosting dinner parties. While there were a few isolated cases of
individuals who were wealthy enough when they became lepers to maintain their
homes and their lifestyles, this was certainly not the norm. Most of them very
quickly found themselves ostracized, without work, without income, isolated on
the outskirts of the city and quickly sinking into poverty in which begging for
alms would often be the only viable alternative.
The fact that this man lives in a house, in the city, and is hosting a dinner
party is a pretty strong indication that he was no longer a leper. But the fact that
“Simon the Leper” is still his nickname suggests that he had been a leper long
enough for the name to stick, even after he was healed. The early church tradition
suggests that this is one of several individuals that Jesus had healed of leprosy.
That after being healed, he had been able to resume a normal life and was now
doing well enough to be back at home and hosting a fairly sizable crowd at this
meal. There is speculation that this may have been a kind of thank you banquet
given in honour of Jesus and His disciples.
While Simon is to be affirmed for his hospitality, considering how much
Jesus had apparently done for him, I am surprised and disappointed that he was
not the one to initiate the outlandish gesture of worship with the expensive
ointment.
Like me, you might well be surprised at the reaction of the disciples.
I will at least give them the credit for their apparent desire to help the poor,
though I confess that I’m a little cynical. One of the other gospel writers adds the
comment that this objection was largely encouraged by Judas who wasn’t as
concerned about the poor as he was about himself. Apparently he was the one
who held the common purse, who acted as the treasurer for the group, and it was
his habit to dip into the till. So he would have preferred to see this expensive
ointment sold and the money placed in the common purse.
The other disciples might not have been stealing from the common purse,
but they would have been just as anxious to see the funds kept on hand for more
pressing needs. For almost three years now, they had left their occupations as
fishermen, they had been doing missionary work together with Jesus, essentially
depending on the gifts and generosity of others. Some of the narratives suggest
that it was a pretty meager existence. At one point we are even told that the
situation was desperate enough that the hungry disciples had to pluck raw grains
of wheat from the stalks in the fields to chew on as they went.
As the opposition to Jesus had grown, particularly from the religious
leaders, things got very dangerous for them politically and it would have become
increasingly difficult to find the funds needed for their daily needs.
So a part of me understands the disciples’ very cautious concern about
wasting money on such a lavish display of emotion, when there were pressing
daily needs to be taken care of. And I admit that it is a regular question for me in
my own relationship with financial resources and worship.
As a husband and a father, I have financial responsibilities. There are
groceries to buy, payments to be met, teeth to be fixed, prescriptions to be filled,
tuition to be paid and things to be repaired. But I have to confess that in spite of
these responsibilities, there are still moments where I find myself blowing the
budget on something outlandish for me. Maybe that new car, the nicer vacation,
the larger television.
The question isn’t throwing the whole budget out the window, the issue is
that there are moments, there are chosen moments when the priority of honouring
Christ for who He is and responding to His goodness in our lives takes precedence
over our normal every day caution. There are moments when the only appropriate
response to the goodness of God is doing something foolish.
Almost 15 years ago, we got the news that the last of the good Christian
bookstores on the South Shore of Montreal was going to close. I was working in
publishing, had been in the secular book business for some time, and so a number
of the churches and pastors approached me to ask whether I would consider
stepping in to keep it open.
I was able to cobble something together with a little bit of financing, I
bought the leftover inventory and quickly found a store front on Cousineau
boulevard near the Costco in St Hubert and close to the house.
It was a reckless business decision. The store was meeting a lot of needs, it
was an important Christian presence in the community, but it wasn’t making any
money. I didn’t feel called to run a Christian bookstore on top of the ministry and
my day job, but I felt that saving this presence was important.
Through a personal line of credit, I secured some more financing and told
the Lord that I thought I could keep the thing open for two years until I found a
real buyer who could run it properly. The Lord answered my prayer, and almost
day for day, two years later, a business partner came forward. I continued to
finance it for several years while he ran it.
We were eventually bought out by a chain of Christian bookstores in the
city who have now kept the Christian presence alive on the South Shore.
Personally, from a financial perspective, it was a fiasco. In fact I’m still paying
off the debt and will be doing so for another three or four years. But during the six
or seven years that we operated it, we were able to distribute over 2 million
dollars’ worth of Bibles and Christian literature in the community.
From a business perspective, it’s probably one of the stupidest decisions I
ever made, but from a spiritual dimension, for me, it was my alabaster flask of
very expensive ointment. It was a costly act of worship that I’m still paying for
over a decade later, but I know the impact that it had for the cause of Christ.
I would like to tell you that my entire life is filled with stellar examples of
costly worship like that, but the reality is that on most days, I behave a little more
like Judas.
Matthew wants to be sure that we don’t miss the surprise of Judas’ actions.
If I were writing the story, when I got to the part about Judas betraying
Jesus, I would include some explanation to be sure that people understood that
this guy was hanging around with the group, but that he wasn’t really a regular
member. But the Bible doesn’t skirt around the awkward truths. In verse 14, as
Matthew begins to lay out what Judas did, he refers to the betrayer as “One of the
twelve …” Considering who Jesus was and all the good that He had done, Judas’
actions would have been surprising even if had just been a member of the crowd.
But he was one of the twelve. One of those who had been up close and personal
with Jesus. One who had shared His meals and His intimacy and His close
friendship. Judas has received nothing but good from Jesus, and yet here he was,
ready to betray Him.
Part of me would like to stand in sharp condemnation of Judas, but I’m
afraid that I sometimes recognize myself in his actions. I too have received
nothing but good from Jesus. He has invited me into His intimacy. He has invited
me to share the meal at His table. I have been part of His inner circle. And yet,
how often in public, I have failed to stand for him. How often I have been
ashamed of His name and I have betrayed Him by my silence, and by my words
and my actions that have not lived up to what they should be as one of His
disciples.
There have been some attempts of late to rehabilitate Judas’ reputation.
They suggest that Judas was hoping Jesus would overthrow the Romans, so he
was trying to help him along and hoping that if he betrayed his master, it would
place Jesus in a situation where He would have no choice but to use His power to
defend himself and overthrow the invaders.
Many still believe that Judas simply did it for the money. It’s a shockingly
small amount for a betrayal of this magnitude. Thirty pieces of silver was the
price set by the Law to compensate for the unintentional death of a slave or a
servant. Perhaps it says something about the point Judas had reached that even
such a trifling sum was worth betraying what he knew to be such an extraordinary
person.
Regardless of whether Judas did it for political aspirations or for the
money, the point is that Judas approached Jesus looking for something. He had an
agenda. There was something he wanted. And he saw Jesus as the way to get it.
I will never forget the way this gentleman once expressed to me his
disappointment about the Christian life. The words showed just how badly he had
misunderstood what this was about. He said, “This Christianity thing really hasn’t
worked out for me. Since I became a Christian, Jesus really hasn’t done much for
me.” It’s one of those moments as a pastor where you don’t quite know where to
start. Never mind the fact that even if the only thing Jesus had ever done for me
was providing for my redemption, He certainly owed me nothing else. But this
man, like Judas, and unfortunately like a large number of Christians in the world
today come to Christ wanting to know “What’s in it for me?”
How will Jesus make my job better? How will He solve my family
problems? I wonder whether Jesus can help me make more money or make my
life happier? What can Jesus do about this political situation I don’t like?
All these things were why Judas was hanging around.
Several times the other disciples betray the same kind of thinking, asking
Jesus for positions of honour, wondering who was the most important in the group
or asking Jesus what they would get in exchange for the sacrifices they had made.
And then of course, the religious leaders opposed Jesus because He threatened
their prestige, their honour and their power in the community.
Surrounded by all of this self-serving posturing, this one woman walks in alone
and she has come to worship. She is not there for herself. She is not there to ask.
She is not there because she thinks it will give here more prestige, in fact, it was a
humbling experience for her to come and do this in front of all these men who
were judging her for her actions.
And yet she came.
And you need to understand that the alabaster flask she brought was sealed
closed. They would put the perfume or the ointment in and then they would seal
the clay around it. So you didn’t come with this flask and pour out a little bit of
the top. You would break the flask and it was gone. The whole thing was poured
out. She didn’t come planning to hold anything back. There was nothing left for
her when she was done. This was not about anything she would be getting out of
it.
Jesus’ comments make clear that she had done this because she knew that
Jesus was nearing His death. Considering the fact that the disciples who were
closest to Him had heard Jesus speak of His death over and over again and had
missed it, we don’t know how this woman, at a distance, had the perception to
understand that Jesus’ death was imminent but she responded to what she knew,
and she came to worship.
When we read the rest of the story in the chapters ahead we will discover
that because Jesus died on the cross so close to dusk and the start of the Sabbath,
hHis body was very quickly taken down from the cross with no time for preparing
it properly for burial. That’s why when the women came to the tomb early that
first Sunday they were coming with spices and perfume to anoint the body,
because there had been no time to do it on the Friday night. We know of course
that by the time they got to the tomb, it was too late to anoint Jesus for burial
because He was already risen. So that means that this woman’s gesture, was
exactly what Jesus needed. This was the only kind of anointing for burial the
Savior would receive.
And it came from this woman, this woman for whom it was not a cautious,
measured, response. She pulled out all the stops in her worship. It was an unwise,
and an unsafe, and a senseless thing to do, but she did it for the Jesus whom she
loved.
When was the last time you did something so costly for Jesus that other
people around you thought you were being foolish?
What a contrast between this woman and the disciples.
In his inaugural address, John F. Kennedy showed that he was a little tired
of the entitlement of a generation of Americans who thought the world revolved
around them, and he pointedly told them “Ask not what your country can do for
you, ask what you can do for your country.”
Like Judas, like the disciples, far too many Christians approach Jesus,
wondering what he can do for them. They want to know “What’s in it for me?”
I wonder today whether you have come to find something for yourself, or whether
like the woman, you have come to worship. I wonder whether you have come to
bring Jesus the honour He deserves as your Redeemer and your Lord.
What is in the alabaster flask that you will break at the feet of your
Redeemer this morning?
You have been praying that Jesus would help you with your career and
with your education, and I wonder whether you have considered the way your
career decisions might allow you to serve him better?
You have been pleading that Jesus would supply the resources that you
need, but I wonder whether you have considered what your resources might do for
the cause of Christ?
The community we are in is beset by pressing and urgent need, and Jesus
would have us bring His love to the hurting people that surround us, so I wonder
whether your worship offering might not be the time and the skill you have to
offer to show His love to others in desperate need.
Have you come empty handed with only your words to offer in praise
today?
I wonder what is in the alabaster flask that you have brought to break open
at Jesus’ feet in an act of costly worship this morning.
AMEN