The Smell of Empathy

At the heart of Jesus' way is empathy. Clay explores what it is by looking at what it is not. "Today’s Gospel on the face of it is troubling. While at a “Back from the Dead” party for her brother Lazarus Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with a very expensive perfume and her tears. Judas expresses what everyone is thinking: her act is inappropriately extravagant. It would be like taking Mother Theresa an $800 bottle of wine. Then we are caught off-guard by the seeming callousness of Jesus’ response, “You will have the poor with you always, but not me.”    While I can appreciate John’s literary genius of using this story to foreshadow Jesus’ washing of his disciples feet and Mary Magdalene’s failed attempt to anoint his body after his death, over the years I have struggled to make sense of how someone who identified with the marginalised could sound so indifferent to their needs." Text and video links at http://www.stmatthews.org.nz/nav.php?sid=534&id=1042.