According to the book of Matthew, after his “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem, Jesus “cleansed the temple” in a confrontation with the bunch of salespeople who were selling to outsiders animals for the required sacrifice for Passover. The whole rotten system used the spiritual requirement as an excuse to swindle two ways: requiring local currency to buy a sacrificial animal, then overpricing the required animals. Visitors had to first change their money at whatever rate these crooks wanted to charge them, then use that new currency to buy overpriced animals. This all took place at tables set up in the porch space that was reserved to welcome the strangers.
Jesus was furious that this crooked system was going on in the name of God, leaving no welcoming space for the strangers and pilgrims. He went through the whole porch, pitching the tables to the ground, scattering the money being collected, and probably opening the cages holding “holy” doves and other animals. Is there anything that displeases God more than doing evil in the name of God? What could have been a service to visitors had been turned into racketeering enterprise, deceiving the innocent and trusting. This confrontation from the “gentle Jesus” made him lots of liturgical enemies and probably a lot of grateful friends of those too powerless to confront the system themselves.
Two days before Passover, Jesus had told his disciples that he would be delivered up to be crucified. What about this did they not get?
Meanwhile, the chief priests, scribes, and elders had a committee meeting, at the home of the high priest Caiaphas, to plot how they could trick Jesus and kill him. But in the meeting they shrewdly decided that the people would riot if they captured Jesus during the days of “holy” feasts.
During this evil gathering, Jesus was at the house of Simon who had been a leper before Jesus passed by his life. While at Simon’s place, a woman came in with an alabaster flask of essence of spikenard oil. She broke the seal and poured the oil on the head of Jesus while he was at the table with Simon’s family and the disciples.
The disciples went crazy at the “waste” of something so expensive and gave her a hard time for not selling it and donating the proceeds to a cause benefiting the poor.
Okay, let’s just stop there. Jesus had already told them how precarious the next couple of days were. How oblivious can we be sometimes? How many ways can we still miss the point?
Jesus had to spell it out for them, even then. “Quit picking on her,” he said. “She is the one that gets it. She has the intuitive and sensitive heart. While your greed accuses her, she has anointed me for burial. It is her tender story that will, in her silence, preach the gospel to the whole world. She has not only done a holy and sacred thing out of love, but this will also be a forever memorial to her.”
What timing! The very next character in the Jesus story was to be Judas who was absent because he was out making a deal with the chief priests.
