In Mark's Gospel (14:3), Jesus is visiting Simon the leper in Bethany when a woman comes with an expensive flask of ointment. She breaks this over Jesus' head. Those around are appalled at the waste - the ointment could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor. Matthew tells the same story. Here, it is the disciples who are appalled. And John's Gospel has the same, but the woman is identified - it is Mary, the sister of Lazarus (not Mary Magdalene - sorry, Dan Brown!), and the ointment is poured over Jesus' feet. Here the complaint comes not from those around, not from the disciples, but from Judas Iscariot "who didn't care about the poor, but used to steal from the collecting box." (John 12:1-6).
The story holds many messages for us today, but let's just concentrate on the criticism. In the first place, it is extremely judgmental. It implies that the woman was using her wealth wrongly. Mark tells us the ointment was worth almost a year's pay. Although it was hers to use as she wished, the bystanders felt it was being wasted on Jesus. Jesus himself explained that it was not being wasted - it was one of his burial rites which circumstances prevented from being carried out after his death, but in fact the bystanders should never have made the criticism in the first place, and John's Gospel preserves their reputation by concentrating on the reactions of Judas, a known baddie!
We can never fully know other people's motives, and condemning them out of hand for their actions is seldom a good idea. We may occasionally point to a particular sin, but generosity is scarcely a sin!
But the complaint does raise a more general question, and one which is left unanswered when Jesus replies "You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me." The question concerns how we use our money (and not how our neighbours use their money!) Was Jesus saying that we should not waste our money in building fine churches, decorating them beautifully for our worship, giving the best of our possessions to help us in worshipping God?
Some would call this a false dichotomy - a case not of either-or, but of both-and. Giving our best to God does not prevent us from helping the poor: indeed, building churches, making stained-glass, crafting sacred vessels, composing music, all of these create work and benefit the whole of society. There are a lot more ways of helping the poor than giving money to beggars.
When Jesus told the rich young man to sell all he had and give it to the poor, he was asking him to set priorities - wealth, and the contemplation of wealth, can be a barrier to loving our neighbour, and our neighbours are not simply the people we get along with best, but also the children scavenging the rubbish dumps of Rio de Janeiro, the families starving in the deserts of Darfur, or the old people struggling to make ends meet on a small income.
The church has always sought to help the poor from its earliest days (look at Acts 6, or 1 Cor 9, for example). One of the main tasks of churchwardens used to be distributing money to the poor in their parish. Church-based charities have inspired movements, both inside and outside the church, to "make poverty history."
Making poverty history is not a simple matter. To make poverty history requires us as Christians to take an interest in politics, to condemn some activities and to recommend others, to assess seriously the questions posed, for example, by globalization and debt relief. We need to be aware of the consequences of our actions: should we send rice to the starving or enable them to plant seeds?
Poverty is not necessarily a feeding round for violence, bigotry and crime - think of the widow and the mite she put into the Temple treasury. But if we devoted the same resources to the struggle against poverty as we do to the 'war' on terror, perhaps we would see more positive results. And perhaps we might bring the Kingdom of God a little closer!
HD