This past Sunday, April 6, I had the opportunity to preach and do a presentation at St. Mary's in Chappaqua, NY. My presentation focused on walking through the instances in which money comes up in Jesus' last week. Thank you to the Rev. Chris Lee for the invitation!
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Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year 6
April 6, 2025 at St. Mary's in Chappaqua, NY
Good morning on this fifth Sunday of Lent. My name is Miguel Escobar, and I am a recently ordained deacon serving in the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. Currently, I serve as a curate at a small, Spanish-speaking parish in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, called San Andrés. We are a diverse community, with members from many parts of the United States and Latin America—primarily from the Caribbean, but also from Mexico and Central America.
In addition to that new role, I am a writer. Each morning, I wake up, drink coffee, and spend the first hour of my day researching and writing about Christianity’s complex relationship with money. During the pandemic, I wrote my first book, which explored how Jesus’ teachings on money evolved over the first five centuries of Christianity. Now I’m working on a second. And it’s that current project that brings me here today.
Last year, while out walking my dog Duke, I found myself reflecting on how often money comes up in Jesus’ final week of life. There are the obvious instances: Jesus’ cleansing of the temple and Judas’ betrayal for thirty pieces of silver. The importance of these two made me wonder: Could money be a theme?
When I got home, I began flipping through the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ last week, and I ended up counting thirteen references to money. By the end, I was struck by how frequently—how insistently—money appears in that final week. Money is not a marginal detail, but is central to understanding Jesus’ final days.
A few months ago a colleague asked me: Why do you write about money? It’s a good question. I write about money because it gets to the heart of the matter. Jesus himself said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” and more recently, the shadowy informant in All The President’s Men advised, “Follow the money.” It’s good advice. And in this case, following the money reveals Jesus’ final week to be a story of corruption and betrayal—but also of extraordinary, sacrificial offerings. These realities—corruption and faithful offerings—exist side by side.
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Of those thirteen money-related instances, perhaps none better captures the tension between faithful offering and corruption than today’s Gospel: Mary of Bethany’s anointing of Jesus with costly perfume.
In this story, Mary, the sister of Lazarus, kneels at Jesus’ feet and anoints them with expensive perfume, wiping them with her hair. The fragrance fills the house. But Judas is scandalized, claiming the perfume should have been sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor. The Gospel then clarifies that Judas didn’t say this out of concern for the poor, but because he was stealing from the common purse. Jesus defends Mary, saying she has kept the perfume for the day of his burial. And he adds, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
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There’s a lot packed into these verses, so allow me to highlight a few things:
First, this all takes place at a meal in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Second, although all four Gospels tell of a woman anointing Jesus, John’s Gospel is the only one to name her as Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus, whom Jesus had already raised from the dead.
Mary’s relationship to Lazarus helps explain the extravagance of her gift. How extravagant? The perfume is said to be worth three hundred denarii, equivalent to a full year of a day laborer’s wages.
In all four Gospels, disciples express outrage at the expense. In John’s version, it’s Judas in particular who objects. And here we learn two new details: that he was the keeper of the common purse, and he was stealing from it.
(Once, during a presentation in Connecticut, a woman raised her hand and exclaimed, Wait—you mean the disciples had a treasurer?! Yes, sort of! Though, unfortunately, a corrupt one… That woman turned out to be the parish treasurer, by the way. )
When Judas protests that the perfume should have been sold and the money added to the purse he managed, Jesus rebukes him and affirms Mary’s act as intended for his burial. It is here that Jesus says, “The poor you will always have with you, but you do not always have me.”
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This statement - “The poor you will always have with you” – is so often misunderstood and misused that it merits a digression.
According to a survey by Jim Wallis, former editor of Sojourners, this phrase—“The poor will always be with you”—is the most widely known teaching of Jesus about the poor in America. More than “Blessed are the poor.” More than the story of the beggar Lazarus and the rich man. Even more than Matthew 25 where Jesus says, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do unto me.”
Tragically, this phrase is often used to justify a kind of resignation—There’s nothing we can do about poverty, so why try?
So I urge us to consider the fuller context:
First, Jesus says this to a man who was stealing from the common purse. He essentially blocks Judas through this statement. Second, Jesus is not making a timeless generalization about poverty, but affirming an offering made in preparation for his death. And third, across the Gospels, Jesus consistently aligns himself with the poor: “Blessed are the poor.” “As you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.”
It’s unfair to Jesus - unfair to the message of the Gospels – to take this one line and treat it as if it summarizes his whole approach to poverty. This passage must be read in light of the scene in which it occurs, and in light of the whole Gospel.
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So in today’s Gospel, we see Mary’s faithful, extravagant offering of thanksgiving. And we see Judas’ resentment and corruption.
A final note: In Matthew’s version, the very next thing Judas does after Jesus is anointed is go to the chief priests and agree to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. The amount is striking. If Mary’s perfume was worth a full year’s wages, thirty silver coins amounted to roughly a third of that. It’s as if the Gospel writers are saying Jesus was betrayed for just a little bit of money.
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Let me close with one final thought.
Money is never just about money. It’s easy to focus only on the material dimension of these stories. But if we do, we risk missing something deeper. One of the things that’s so remarkable about Jesus is how he uses the language of money to express deep, spiritual truths.
In the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” When speaking of his death, Jesus refers to it as a ransom, a payment that frees the enslaved. The widow’s mite is not just about a coin, but about giving one’s all from the little that one has.
In other words, the Gospels invite us to see money not only as a practical reality, but also as a symbol, one that helps illuminate what it means to give, to lose, to betray, and to love.
And in Jesus’ last week, I believe the Gospel writers are meditating on what it means to make a faithful offering in a world full of betrayal and corruption, a world where people so often betray their values, their communities, even themselves, for a little bit of money, for power, or a moment of fame.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, writing in the fourth century, summed it up thusly: “Jesus was sold—and cheap was the price, just thirty pieces of silver. And yet he buys back the whole world at the mighty cost of his body and blood.”
And so we too are called to make our offering (financial and otherwise) even in the face of the world’s corruption. We make our offering and join it to the widow’s mite, to Mary’s perfume, and ultimately to the sacrificial offering of Jesus.
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