Pointed in the Right Direction
Whenever I read this story, it always seems different. Sometimes I’ll pay attention to the obvious things, like the perfume, the dinner, etc. Sometimes I’ll think about the priest planning to kill Lazarus because he’s bringing more people to Jesus. This time the part that got me thinking was what Judas had to say.
Judas says in verse five, “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” The following verse claims that Judas did not say this because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and would then take the money from them. It says a lot about Judas’s character, turning his life as a thief in a different direction to follow Jesus, a man preaching justice, forgiveness, compassion, love, and peace, and then still thinking about the opposite of those things, and soon afterwards, he would hand Jesus over to be crucified. I think Judas is one of the most interesting of the twelve disciples, because despite being a part of Jesus’s followers, he displays acts of selfish and misguided behaviour.
Jesus’s response to Judas’s behaviour was interesting. Despite Judas’s actions, Jesus decides to point him in the right direction. He responds to Judas by saying “Leave her alone so that she may keep the ointment for the day of my burial. For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”
The takeaway is that it can be hard to live a life doing everything that you would think would make God proud, and sometimes we get caught up with things that please us. We can be greedy and selfish, mean and unforgiving. Despite this, God always points us in the right direction, and I think that it’s important to listen to that and try to better our actions.
God, we pray that we can learn from stories like these so that we can become less selfish and unforgiving. We pray for those who are trying to do this but are having a hard time like Judas did, and that they may succeed. We pray that when we have the option to be unholy that we may stop ourselves and reconsider. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Jude Miller