The Anointed One

“The Anointed One”

Rev. Stephen Milton

Lawrence Park Community Church

April 6th 2025

John 12: 1-8

In today’s scripture reading, Judas Iscariot gets angry when he sees Mary pouring expensive perfume on the feet of Jesus as they sit down for dinner. Judas is the treasurer of the Jesus movement. Judas complains that the perfume could have been sold to give money to the poor. This suggests Jesus has not just been healing the poor, and providing impromptu banquets of fishes and loaves to them. Judas’ comment suggests they may have been giving out donations to the poor as well.

But why was Mary pouring such expensive perfume all over Jesus’ feet anyway? This odd action is actually a key event. Mary is anointing Jesus’ feet with perfume. This was a sign of enormous respect. Not everyone gets anointed, only important people. The word Messiah means the anointed one - God’s anointed one. So, although the male disciples have been calling Jesus the Messiah, none of them have actually gotten around to anointing him. But Mary does, with great respect and tears. And Jesus appreciates it. He knows that when they reach Jerusalem in the days ahead it will be his last trip. He will be killed there. So although they will always have the poor to feed and help, they will not always have Jesus. Mary gets this, but the disciples do not.

This raises a question, though. If Jesus is the Messiah, God’s anointed one, why has he spent so much time among the poor? His disciples were chosen from poor fishermen along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. This is a poor part of Israel. People make fun of the rustic accents heard among the Galileans. One disciple even asks,  can anything good come out of Nazareth? (John 1:46) Jesus grew up in Nazareth, a small, poor town in Galilee. But once His ministry began, he didn’t have to stay among the poor. Why didn’t he head straight to the temple in Jerusalem , to teach the good news to the priests? Why not work his miracles among them?

Or perhaps he could have gone to Caesaria by the Sea? 

Caesaria by the Sea
That was a city built for the Romans on the seashore. Its ruins still stand. 

Horse racing
There was a horse racing track, a theatre, and a few nice palaces and a lovely harbour. This is where Pontius Pilate lived. Why not take the good news to the rich Romans, the people in charge?

Jesus could have also gone straight to the Jewish rulers of Palestine, the sons of King Herod the Great. Why not announce the goods news there as the Messiah? Why not work miracles for the men and women of the court and their families - they must have had illnesses and bunions to cure. Why not spend time teaching the kings about the ways of God, turn them around? Jesus could have avoided all this persecution by getting them on board from the start.

The problem is that Jesus is not just a miracle worker, but the Jewish Messiah, the anointed one. In the Hebrew Scriptures, there are many descriptions of the Messiah to come. They appear in the prophecies, like Isaiah, and in the psalms. The psalms are the Bible’s hymn book, songs every Jew would know. At our church, on Wednesdays, we have a prayer service at 3 o’clock. We’ve been doing this since the pandemic began in 2020. In that service we always read a psalm or two. It is impressive just how many of the psalms denounce the hoarding of wealth.

Psalm 73: (2 slides)

For I envied the arrogant
    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

4 

They have no struggles;
    their bodies are healthy and strong.[a]

5 

They are free from common human burdens;
    they are not plagued by human ills.

6 

Therefore pride is their necklace;
    they clothe themselves with violence.

7 

From their callous hearts comes iniquity;
    their evil imaginations have no limits.

8 

They scoff, and speak with malice;
    with arrogance they threaten oppression.

The psalms clearly expect that when the Messiah comes, He will be on the side of the poor and the oppressed. This is stated in many psalms. In the prophecy of Isaiah, it predicts that the Messiah will come to heal the lame and the sick, to free the prisoner and help the poor.  In the book of Job, when Job is trying to defend himself against the judgement of God, he declares that he was a good rich man:

Job quote

Whoever heard me spoke well of me,
    and those who saw me commended me,

12 

because I rescued the poor who cried for help,
    and the fatherless who had none to assist them.

13 

The one who was dying blessed me;
    I made the widow’s heart sing.

14 

I put on righteousness as my clothing;
    justice was my robe and my turban.

15 

I was eyes to the blind
    and feet to the lame.

16 

I was a father to the needy;
    I took up the case of the stranger.

Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures it is clear that the Messiah will be the champion of the poor. The Messiah will not hang out with the rich and self satisfied, but will do everything he can to help the poor and downtrodden. When people wonder if the United Church is too focused on social justice, this shows me that they haven’t read much of the Bible. The message is very clear: God wants the Messiah, and by extension, all of us, to help the poor and marginalized. 

So when Jesus appears, he knows that to be the Messiah, his mission is clear. He has not been called to hang out with the rich who overtax the people, making them poor. This rules out the Romans and Herod’s sons, the tetrarchs of Judea. Instead, he will make his way among the poor, the sick, the possessed, the lame and the blind. He will preach God’s love to all those who have been told they don’t matter. He cures even the people the poor shun, such as lepers. Everyone is welcome in God’s kingdom. Jesus proves this in his teaching and in his actions. 

He even suggests that voluntary poverty is worthwhile. In his beatitudes, he declares that blessed are the poor, for theirs will be the kingdom of God. Not all poor people are paragons of virtue, of course. There are murderers and wife beaters among the poor. Jesus isn’t saying that every poor person is morally pure. He is speaking to his disciples, who have walked away from their livelihoods to become poor preachers of the Good News. Blessed are you who choose poverty for God’s sake. This interpretation of poverty inspired generations of Christians to become hermits, monks and nuns. Those of you who have been receiving my daily Lenten emails have seen how poverty and piety were assumed to go together. Being poor by choice is very different than being poor by force.

So, if Jesus is the Messiah, he should be spending his time teaching and helping the poor of society. This is important because in our time, there has been debate about how to know when a Messiah is among us. Among Hasidic Jews, a rabbi in Brooklyn is believed by some to be the long -awaited Messiah. 

Hassidic Messiah?

His name was Menachem Mendel Schneerson. He died in 1994, after a long tenure in a synagogue in Brooklyn. His followers believed that in his words and deeds, he qualified as the Messiah. Most Jews do not believe he was the Messiah. Among his followers, there have been strong debates about what they could do next, 

Secret Tunnel
and even small riots in Brooklyn between his followers which the police have had to break up. 

Among Christians, there has also been a debate about how to understand the role of Donald Trump. For right wing Christians who oppose abortion, Trump has seemed like a gift from God. In 2016, he endorsed a long list of conservative Christian demands. He would outlaw abortion; he would decrease the size of government so Christians could have more say in their children’s education. They wanted the United States recognized as a Christian nation, with white Christians in charge. They wanted a strong relationship with Israel, which they believed must take over all the land the Jews once occupied in Biblical times. Trump has supported all of these demands.

But does that make him the new messiah? There has been great debate over this. At first some suggested it was possible, but there were problems. Trump has been married three times, and has committed many immoral acts in his personal life, including affairs and, according to the courts, sexual assault. The Messiah would not do this. So, for a time, right wing Christians suggested that Trump was the Persian king Cyrus, who freed the Jews from the kingdom of Babylon when they were taken captive for 70 years. King Cyrus was not a Jew, but an instrument of God.  Some have argued that Trump may be a modern Cyrus, chosen by God to rescue Christianity in America. Others see him as a modern prophet. Others see him as the Son of Man, the Jesus who will come back at the Second Coming.

Yet, we should note that Trump’s version of Christianity bears little resemblance to the faith that Jesus preached. Under Trump, foreign aid has been abolished, robbing millions of people around the world of medicines and vaccines that could prevent diseases like malaria. 

Food Banks
Programs to feed the hungry within the United States have been cancelled, causing critical shortages for food banks. 

Pope Francis
And, as Pope Francis has observed, this government is treating refugees like criminals. This is a shameful act;  

our faith is rooted in God’s freeing of the Israelites from slavery and providing a homeland for those who suffer. Jesus was also a refugee as child when his family fled a murderous king. 

Trump has endorsed a version of Christianity which conflates wealth with divine favour. 

Paula White Cain
His White House faith leader, Rev. Paula White-Cain, is a prominent proponent of the prosperity gospel. She preaches that God rewards his chosen ones with riches.

This promise is offered to the poor - pray enough, donate enough to your church and God will make you rich, too. It is easy to see how Trump would fall for this kind of Christianity, but we should not. 

In today’s scripture reading, Mary spread perfume over the feet of a Messiah who has spent his entire ministry helping the poor. He knows that helping the poor and downtrodden is threatening to the people in power. They are the ones who keep the poor destitute, this is the source of their wealth and power. The last thing they want is a peasant revolution. They will falsely claim that Jesus has called for a rebellion, that he has called himself the king of the Jews. Jesus knows this is coming. 

Jesus could escape all of this. He could walk away, head back into the hills of Galilee, or disappear completely. Instead, he chooses to walk towards Jerusalem, on feet anointed with perfume. He will finally encounter the rich and powerful at his trial. But he will die as a poor man. Soldiers will gamble over who will get to keep his last possession, the clothes that were on his back. His last companions will be thieves on their crosses. To the end, he will be among the poor. 

This is what a messiah looks like. This is what Christianity looks like. Jesus predicted the poor will always be with us. And we as Christians, should always be with the poor.  Amen.