A memory and a future

When I lived in Israel/Palestine in 1991–92, I was told that people in the “old world” live by memory, whereas we in the West live by the future. If I live by memory, I may blame you for what your forebears did to my forebears a thousand years ago, or I may remember how my family saved your family from a massacre in 1929.

If I live by the future, I will always be seeking a more perfect world. I may not bear old grudges, but I may also never feel a sense of connection to where I live or to those with whom I live.

Both memory and future are transformed for those who follow Jesus. Joining the collective memory of the people of God gives those with no particular history a story to which to belong. The Scriptures give us ancestors whose stories allow us to become part of God’s ongoing story in the world. The future also is transformed as we look forward to and participate in the building of God’s kingdom. This is a future that remembers God’s past acts of mercy and looks forward to a time when all creation will be made new by God’s grace.

It’s significant that the central symbol of our faith is a ceremony of remembrance – breaking bread and drinking wine in memory of Jesus and what he has done for us. By celebrating this act of memory, we reaffirm our loyalty to Jesus and re-member him to the rest of the world. We make him visible through our imitation of his acts of love and justice.

Jesus give his disciples one other remembrance to live by. Near the end of his life, while he was staying in Bethany at the house of friends, a woman entered the room and anointed Jesus with a very costly perfume. The disciples criticized her, saying money from the sale of that perfume could have been given to the poor. Jesus told them not to worry, they would always be looking after the poor, but the woman had done an honourable thing; she had anointed him for burial, and “wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her” (Matthew 26:13 NRSV).

Why would Jesus want us to remember this unnamed woman? I think there are several reasons:

1. By defending her action, Jesus invites us to read between the lines of the story. Why would she give such an extravagant gift? What did she know that the disciples didn’t? In fact, Jesus had been telling the disciples for some time that he was on his way to Jerusalem to be crucified. They still had it in their heads that Jesus was going to free them from oppression under the Roman empire. Whether or not the woman understood that she was anointing Jesus for his death, she took the huge risk of entering a room full of men and giving the only gift she knew how to give. Can you imagine how it must have felt for her to make this sacrifice in a public act of devotion?
2. By honouring the woman’s gift, Jesus jars our senses. Hadn’t Jesus told the disciples many times that they were to care for the poor? Why then would he celebrate the extravagant act of pouring a thousand-dollar bottle of perfume over his body? But the disciples had missed a turn in the road. You will keep on feeding the poor, Jesus told them, and that is good and right, but you need to look more deeply. I want you to enter a relationship with me that will touch you to your core and change you from the inside out. Remember me, not just my rules. The woman’s faith is extraordinary. Remember her, because she will lead you to me.
3. It’s no accident that this story is a prelude to Judas’s betrayal of Jesus. That Judas was willing to sell his master for a small fraction of the perfume’s worth suggests he couldn’t make the leap from his own agenda to the one that Jesus offered. He couldn’t accept a saviour who would squander not only money but also his own life before the powers of the day. Lose your life to gain it? Give away power to attain it? For Judas, the cost was simply too high, the gains unimaginable.

In contrast to Judas, remember the woman, Jesus tells us, and you will find the better way.

Matthew 26:6–13

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 table. When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. . . . Jesus said to them. . . . “She has done a beautiful thing to me . . . Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Lori Matties works as a writer, editor, and spiritual director. She lives in Winnipeg and attends River East MB Church.