Jesus Didn’t Diss the Poor: Making Sense of Matthew 26:11

In perhaps one of the oddest moments of the passion narrative, Jesus seemingly sets himself at odds with his disciples’ concern for the poor. Breaking ranks with the twelve, Jesus did not think Mary should have “given to the poor” the money that she had used to purchase the oil needed to anoint Jesus’s feet. Rather, the Messiah praises Mary saying, “For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me (Matt 26:11).” Some within the church have appealed to this passage to justify why they focus on everything and anything but caring for the poor. They assume that since Jesus said we will have the poor with us tomorrow, we can wait until tomorrow to care for them.

What’s Going On?

But when Jesus rebukes the disciples, he takes issue not with their ministry priorities (music team vs. clothing drive) but with the men’s lack of historical or temporal awareness. In other words, Jesus has not contrasted caring for the poor with preaching, singing, prayer, or any other faith driven ministry. Rather he contrasts the time needed to care for the poor against the time needed to commemorate his death and resurrection. In other words, Mary has grasped the temporal uniqueness of this historical moment and commemorated it in a right and meaningful way. There will be no second chances or opportunities for the next generation to prepare Jesus for his death. Had she done anything else at that moment including fasting, singing, or leading a Bible study, she would have chosen the lesser thing for Christ’s death alone saves!

Through the horrors of having nails driven into his hands and feet, Jesus would accomplish what the law could never do. Being fully man and fully God, he was the perfect sacrifice for us because he was us and yet was also God. He could satisfy the wrath of God with his blood and free us from our bondage to sin and death. To quote the apostle Paul, “By him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses (Act 13:39).” In that one act which also contained the hope of the resurrection as Jesus’s death implied his triumph over death, Jesus saved sinners. As John Stott noted, “The Christian faith is the faith of Christ Crucified.”

Finding herself on the approaching the crux of salvific history, Mary rightly spent a crazy amount of money (perhaps around 50K U.S. dollars) to prepare Jesus for death. Were there to be a Scriptural analogy to this evening, it would be the night of Jesus’s birth in which the angels told the shepherds to go and find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Had the shepherds spent the night feeding the poor, they would have chosen the lesser of things for Christ would not be born again.

Jesus, the Early Church and the Poor

Thus, this verse in no way absolves Christians from the general scriptural command to care for the poor. In Matthew 25:35-36, Jesus prizes caring for the “least of these” as one of the true marks of saving faith, explaining that he will invite his followers into heaven because, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” As we care for the least of the people of God, we care for Jesus.

Quite naturally, the early church shared Jesus’s concern for the poor. When the Jerusalem church came into being following Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, its members began to sell, “their possessions and belongings,” for the purpose of “distributing the proceeds to all as any had need (Acts 2:45).” And when Paul set out on his missionary journey, the other apostles asked only one thing of Paul and Barnabas, “to remember the poor (Gal 2:1).” Jesus and the early church knew nothing of a faith that was too heavenly minded to be any earthly good. As the apostle John concludes, “whoever loves God must also love his brother (1 Jn 4:21).”

How To Apply Matthew 26:11

Rather than excusing our neglect of the poor, this Matthew passage calls all Christians of all ages to base their actions upon Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection. The believer never moves beyond the cross to greater things, but rather can do things such as making sandwiches for the poor, putting together sermon notes for Sunday, and deleting distracting social media apps off of his phone because of the crucifixion. It is faith in this event that guarantees our eternity with Christ and that unites our soul with Jesus so that today in conjunction with the Holy Spirit we can obey his commands and do things such as care for the poor. As the reformer Zwingli helpfully sums up, “Faith, then, is not acquired by deeds, but works by faith.” Without the cross and all that it means, we have nothing. But with it, we have everything. As the old hymn says, “Because he lives I can face tomorrow!”

In the end, Jesus never dissed the poor and nor should we.