Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.— Matthew 26:13
Nard. Pure spikenard, imported from the Himalayan highlands of northern India, carried overland through trade routes that made it among the most expensive substances a person in first-century Palestine could own. John’s Gospel tells us the flask Mary brought was worth three hundred denarii (John 12:5). A denarius was a day’s wage for a common laborer. Three hundred days of work, sealed in a single jar of alabaster.
This was not a luxury item someone had picked up on impulse. This was the kind of thing a family saved for over years. It was likely her most valuable possession.
And she could have opened it carefully. She could have loosened the seal, tilted it over His head, let a little spill out, enough to honor Him, enough to be meaningful. She could have kept the rest for future uses.
She didn’t do that. She broke it. The flask itself was shattered and every drop was gone.
The room did not receive this well. *“Why this waste?” *(Matthew 26:8).
Matthew uses the plural: the disciples were indignant. Men who had been with Jesus for three years, who had heard things no one else heard, who were there for the miracles and the late-night conversations. And when this woman walked in and poured out everything she had, every one of them looked at the ointment dripping onto the floor and thought: what a shame.
But here is what makes this strange. Jesus said she had done it to prepare Him for burial (Matthew 26:12). Somehow, she knew what was coming. Deep down, she understood that He was about to pour out His very life.
Mary was not one of the Twelve. She held no formal place among the disciples. By any external measure, she was on the periphery of His inner circle.
So how did she recognize something the people closest to Him seemed to have missed?
I’ve sat with that question for a while. What I keep coming back to is this: she had received His love, and it had gone somewhere deep in her, not as information, not as doctrine, but as something personal and unbearable in its weight. All she could do was pour herself out in return. She gave without counting the cost, without keeping anything back.
Jesus called it beautiful. Then He made a remarkable declaration: “Wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told” (Matthew 26:13).
He didn’t say her act illustrated the gospel. He said it belonged alongside it. It revealed what it looks like.
Why would Jesus say that?
A few days later, Jesus walked to Golgotha and was crucified. He could have done less. He could have come, taught, healed, and ascended, leaving us with His wisdom and a better moral framework. He could have opened the flask and poured a little out.
But He gave Himself fully. His body was broken. His blood was poured out. He held nothing back, giving everything to the very end for those who stood by and wondered, “Why this waste?”
The woman may not have fully understood the meaning of what she was doing. Yet somehow, she grasped a truth she could not quite put into words. She wept. She broke the flask. And she left that room with nothing.
She had received His love, and all she could do was pour herself out in return. She gave freely, without counting the cost, without calculating what she could afford to lose, without keeping anything back for herself. When love like that takes hold of a heart, nothing less than wholehearted surrender seems enough.
A few days ago I was teaching a Bible study with middle schoolers, several sessions on the gospel, asking them to sit with it, turn it over, find their own words for it. At the end I asked them to define it.
One child raised her hand and said something that has stayed with me ever since.
The gospel isn’t just one thing for me. But one part of it is this: before the resurrection, there was a cross. And the cross was the most foolish, the most lowly, the most uncalculating thing, giving away the most precious thing you have, the one thing that once it’s gone, it’s gone. And still, you give it.
She was describing the alabaster flask without knowing it. And she was describing what Jesus did for us.
The cross came first. The emptying came first. And then the resurrection. Not instead of the loss, but after it, because of it. God’s answer to the most complete act of love was the most complete act of power. The resurrection was not a reversal of the cross. It was its vindication. Empty first. Then filled beyond what was lost.
The disciples were not bad men. They were practical men. And practicality is not always wrong, except when it stands in the presence of love being poured out and calls it waste.
Most of us love Jesus, but proportionally. We give what we can comfortably afford, hold back what we think we need, and call it faithful stewardship. The flask remains sealed. Or we open it just a little, pouring out only enough to spare us the cost of giving more.
But the gospel is not a carefully measured pour. It is a breaking. Jesus gave everything for us. Not a measured amount. Not merely what was reasonable or sustainable. Everything, without reservation, holding nothing back. And is that not the very love by which we have been saved? We were saved because He gave Himself completely, pouring out His life for us.
She walked into that room with everything she had and left with nothing. What foolish love. And the only person in the room who understood what had just happened looked at her and said:
“Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.” (Matthew 26:13)
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