She Did Not Explain Herself and He Explained Her

The worst version of this is not being accused of something you did.

It is doing the most careful, most costly, most deliberate thing you have ever done in that family, for the right reason, at real expense, and having it come back to you three days later as a story about how you were showing off.

And then discovering that the story has already traveled. That four people have heard it. That two of them have accepted it, and that one of the two is somebody whose opinion you have wanted your whole life.

There is no move available. If you explain, you are defending yourself, and in that culture a person who defends themselves has confirmed it. If you say nothing, the account stands and hardens and in eight years it will simply be a fact about you that everybody knows.

There is a woman in Mark 14 in exactly that position, and what happens is the reason this article exists.

What she did, and what it cost

She comes into a house where He is eating, with an alabaster box, and she breaks it.

And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. (Mark 14:3, King James Version)

She brake the box. Not opened. Broke, which means there is no putting any of it back and no using it later, and everybody watching understands that in the same second.

The room does the arithmetic out loud, and the number they arrive at is about a year's wages.

And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her. (Mark 14:4-5)

They murmured against her. And notice the argument they use. It is not a selfish argument. They are talking about the poor. The objection is a righteous one and it is delivered by people with better public reasoning than she has.

You are not the first person whose costliest act got answered with a better sounding argument. Mark 14:5 has the objection framed around the poor, and it is the Spirit of truth, John 16:13, who is given as the one who guides into truth rather than into whatever sounds most reasonable in a room.

She says nothing at all

Read the whole passage and look for her voice.

She does not have one. She never speaks. There is no verse where she explains what the ointment was for, no verse where she names what it cost her to bring it, no verse where she answers the arithmetic.

She stands in the middle of a room that is talking about her in the third person and she says nothing.

I want to be careful not to make silence into a law, because there are situations where a person absolutely should speak, and staying quiet out of fear is not the same as this. But there is a real thing being modeled here, and it is worth naming: she does not take up the defense of herself, and the passage does not treat that as weakness.

You are able to leave a defense un-made without that being cowardice. Mark 14 gives her no line at all and still calls what she did good, and it is the Holy Spirit, Romans 8:26, who makes intercession for a person who is not making their own case.

He takes it up instead, and He does it immediately

Here is the sentence, and the first two words are the whole article.

And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. (Mark 14:6)

Let her alone. He does not wait. He does not let it settle and address it later in private. He interrupts the room, mid murmur, and takes her side out loud in front of everybody who was doing the arithmetic.

And then He does something more than defend her. He explains her.

She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. (Mark 14:8)

She hath done what she could. He puts a name on the thing that nobody in the room could see, including, possibly, her. He tells them what it was for, in front of them, and He tells it more generously than she would have dared to.

You are able to be explained by Somebody who saw what it actually was. Mark 14:8 has Him naming her intention out loud, and it is the Spirit who searches all things, 1 Corinthians 2:10, who knows what an act was actually for when a room has decided otherwise.

And then He makes it permanent

He does one more thing, and it is disproportionate on purpose.

Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her. (Mark 14:9)

Read what He has just done to the arithmetic. The room valued the act at three hundred pence and called it waste. He attaches it permanently to the preaching of the gospel in every country on earth, for as long as that lasts.

That is not a consolation prize handed to somebody who was misread. It is a complete reversal of the ledger, and it is announced in the room, in front of the people who did the murmuring, while the smell of the ointment is still in the house.

You are in an economy where the final valuation is not the one the room reached. Mark 14:9 replaces the room's arithmetic with a permanent memorial, and it is by the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 2:12, that a person knows the things freely given rather than the things assigned to them by others.

What Scripture asks you to do with the account meanwhile

The practical question is what to do in the years before anything gets corrected, and Paul gives an instruction that is not passive.

Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God. (1 Corinthians 4:5)

The counsels of the hearts. The reasons. The thing an account of you always gets wrong, because a story about a person is built out of what was visible and the reason was never visible.

And David gives the instruction as an action rather than a mood.

Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday. (Psalm 37:5-6)

Commit. It is a verb. It is something a person does, out loud, deliberately, usually alone, about a specific account that a specific set of people are carrying about them.

You are able to hand an account over rather than only carry it. Psalm 37:5 makes committing an action and puts the bringing forth on His side, and it is His Spirit, Romans 8:16, who bears witness about who somebody is while a room says otherwise.