While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.
When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”
Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
(Matthew 26.6-13 ) This records an incident towards the end of Jesus’ earthly life. Jesus visited Bethany, just outside Jerusalem, ahead of his final journey into the city. He would then share a final meal with the Twelve, walk to Gethsemane, be arrested and put to death.
Deuteronomy 15 includes a section concerning the seventh year of the Jewish calendar, which included the cancellation of debts, which was designed to provide for the poor. Verses 4 and 5 strongly link the statement ‘there should be no poor among you’ with the people’s full obedience to these commands. Obedience to the commands to forgive debts, to bless the poor, would be rewarded by overflowing blessings upon the nation,
Yet verse 11 indicates ‘there will always be the poor,’ since the circumstances of life in a broken world tend towards unfair distribution of all material things; food, wealth, etc. And, I might add, national disobedience thereafter guaranteed this.
In the early chapters of Acts, there is a different approach. The first believers ‘had everything in common’ (2.44-45) and ‘no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own’ (4.32-35).
This is a different way of thinking. Instead of obedience to earn blessings, we respond to abundant blessings which come by faith in Christ, by generous and costly obedience. There is an organic overflow of blessing in the community of faith.
In recalling a meeting with the apostles, James, Peter and John, Paul comments that they urged him to continue to remember the poor (Gal 2,10).
Generosity towards others was and is, as essential mark of the New Testament way of life.