Day 37 of Lent: April 16, 2025

Scripture: Matthew 26:6–16

“She has done a beautiful thing to me.” – Matthew 26:10

Holy Wednesday is an unusual day as it sits between sacred acts and dark betrayal. But just like every day during this holy week it is evident heavy tension hangs in the air.

Now according to Matthew’s telling of the gospel, this is the day before the Upper Room, the day before Jesus washes his followers feet, the day before the bread and wine is shared, and before the garden and the arrest.

And yet even with it being the day before so much, its weight is immense.

You see Holy Wednesday is a day marked by both love and betrayal.

Matthew vividly paints for us a portrait of the days scene: Jesus is at the home of Simon the leper, a pharisee that Jesus had previously healed and then had become a follower of our Lord. The home we can assume was already charged with emotion from the weeks previous events. And for Simons family and friends it also had a air of excitement as the man who had healed Simon was actually with them.

As we enter the scene Jesus is reclining at the table. Now while he was there eating, drinking and enjoying the company of others, a woman enters with an alabaster jar of expensive perfume. Without a word, she breaks it open and pours it on Jesus’ head, anointing him with reverence and extravagance.

Some of those gathered are outraged. “Why this waste?” they ask. This oil could have been sold and given to the poor! But Jesus sees through their rebuke. He defends her. “She has done a beautiful thing to me,” he says. “In pouring this ointment on my body, she has prepared me for burial.” Jesus is foreshadowing the next 72 hours in his statement.

This anonymous woman becomes the first person in Matthew’s telling of the  Gospel narrative to truly understand what is coming. Her anointing is not only an act of devotion but a prophetic witness. While others plot and posture, she worships.

In sharp contrast, immediately following her gesture, Judas slips away to the chief priests. He sells Jesus for thirty pieces of silver—the price of a slave.

One offers everything in love, the other trades love away for profit.

This is the heartache of Holy Wednesday: the closeness of love and betrayal, side by side. The unnamed woman gives all she has to honor Jesus, and Judas, one of the twelve, begins the chain of events that will lead to his death.

Holy Wednesday is a tense middle space. Truthfully though this middle space between loyalty and betrayal, faith and fear, is where many of us live. It reminds us that we too have choices. We can love freely or live fearfully. We can be people of anointing or of avoidance.

And through it all, Jesus receives our offerings, however fragile, however costly. He still calls them and you and I beautiful.

Because as Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor so eloquently shares, “Where love is poured out, heaven breaks in. This is the way of the kingdom.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Alleluia Amen.

Reflection Questions:

• When have you felt caught between loyalty and fear?

• What is one beautiful thing you can offer Jesus today—not out of obligation, but out of love?

• How do you respond when others challenge acts of devotion and grace?