MORNING READING: BETRAYED BY ONE OF HIS OWN BY DAVID MATHIS

Wednesday went quietly. Too quietly.

With the previous three days awash in drama—Sunday’s triumphal entry, Monday’s temple cleansing, and Tuesday’s temple controversies—now Wednesday, April 1, A.D. 33, comes like the calm before the storm.

But out of sight, lurking in the shadows, evil is afoot. The church has long called it “Spy Wednesday,” as the dark conspiracy against Jesus races forward, not just from enemies outside, but now with a traitor from within. It is this day when the key pieces come together in the plot for the greatest sin in all of history: the murder of the Son of God.

The Plot Thickens

Jesus wakes again just outside Jerusalem, in Bethany, where he has been staying at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. His teaching again attracts a crowd in the temple. But now the Jewish leaders, silenced by Jesus the day before, will leave him be. Today they will avoid public confrontation and instead connive in private.

Caiaphas, the high priest, gathers to his private residence the chief priests and Pharisees—two competing groups, typically at odds, now bedfellows in their ache to be rid of the Galilean. They scheme to kill him, but don’t have all the pieces in place yet. They fear the approving masses, and don’t want to stir up the assembled hordes during Passover. The initial plan is to wait till after the feast, unless some unforeseen opportunity emerges.

Enter the traitor.

The Miser and His Money

The Gospel accounts point to the same precipitating event: the anointing at Bethany.
Jesus was approached by a woman—we learn from John 12:3 that it was Mary, the sister of Martha. She took “very expensive ointment” and anointed Jesus. An objection comes from the disciples—John 12:4 says it was Judas— “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” This was, after all, “a very large sum,” more than a year’s wages for a soldier or common laborer. It would have been enough money to finance a family for more than a year, and could have gone a long way for charity.

But Jesus doesn’t share Judas’s miserliness. Here he finds extravagance in its rightful place. The kingdom he brings resists mere utilitarian economics. He sees in Mary’s “waste” a worshiping impulse that goes beyond the rational, calculated, efficient use of time and money. For Mary, Jesus is worth every shekel and more. The Anointed himself says what she has done is “a beautiful thing” (Matt. 26:10).

Judas, on the other hand, is not so convinced. And contrary to appearances, the miser’s protest betrays a heart of greed. Judas’s concern comes “not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6). The traitor had long been on a trajectory of sin and hard-heartedness, but the last straw is this extravagant anointing.

Satan finds a foothold in this heart in love with money, and what wickedness follows. Incensed about this “waste” of a year’s wages, he goes to the chief priests and becomes just the window of opportunity the conspirators are looking for. The spy will lead them to Jesus at the opportune time when the crowds have dispersed. And the greedy miser will do it for only thirty pieces of silver, which Exodus 21:32 establishes as the price of the life of a slave.

Why the Insult of Betrayal?

Why would God have it go down like this? If Jesus truly is being “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23), and his enemies are doing just as God’s hand and plan “had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:28), why design it like this, with one of his own disciples betraying him? Why add the insult of betrayal to the injury of the cross?

We find a clue when Jesus quotes Psalm 41:9 in forecasting Judas’s defection: “He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me” (John 13:18). King David knew the pain not just of being conspired against by his enemies, but betrayed by his friend. So now the Son of David walks the same path in his agony. Here Judas turns on him. Soon Peter will deny him, and then the remaining ten will scatter.

From the beginning of his public ministry, the disciples have been at his side. They have learned from him, traveled with him, ministered with him, been his earthly companions, and comforted him as he walked this otherwise lonely road to Jerusalem.

But now, as Jesus’s hour comes, this burden he must bear alone. The definitive work will be no team effort. The Anointed must go forward unaccompanied, as even his friends betray him, deny him, and disperse. As Donald Macleod observes, “Had the redemption of the world depended on the diligence of the disciples (or even their staying awake) it would never have been accomplished.”

As he lifts “loud cries and tears” (Heb. 5:7) in the garden, the heartbreak of David is added to his near emotional breakdown: “Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me” (Ps. 41:9). He is forsaken by his closest earthly associates, one of them even becoming a spy against him. But even this is not the bottom of his anguish. The depth comes in the cry of dereliction, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).

But more remarkable than this depth of forsakenness is the height of love he will show. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends, even when they have forsaken him.

EVENING READING: MUTINY AGAINST THE MESSIAH BY JOHNATHON BOWERS

"Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them." (Mark 14:10)

The chief priests wanted him dead. But they couldn’t kill him in the open. No, the people liked him too much. And their public image was fragile enough as it was. Jesus had seen to that. The temple-cleansing. The parables. The shrewd evasion of every verbal trap they could drum up. They needed a way to pounce on him in private. And it had to be quick.

He was in Jerusalem, so the time was ripe. But Passover was in two days. Two days. What would they do?

At this point in Mark 14, we leave the chief priests to their bloodlust and hand-wringing and shift our attention to a house in Bethany, just a couple miles east of Jerusalem. Simon the leper was hosting a meal. Jesus, the disciples, and some others were reclining around the dinner table. And then she came. John 12:3 tells us that the woman was Mary the sister of Lazarus, but Mark is content to leave her nameless: “A woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head” (Mark 14:3).

Very costly. In fact, for some at the table, it was too costly.

Traitor among the Twelve

A year’s worth of wages fell out of the flask. And for some of the guests, the fragrance that filled the room became the stench of lost opportunity. “Why was the ointment wasted like that?” they complained. “For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor” (Mark 14:4–5). Stuff and nonsense. They didn’t care about the poor. What they really wanted was a bloated pouch of coins in the benevolence budget. At least, that’s what Judas wanted. Selling the ointment would give him a fresh stash of funds from which to filch (John 12:6).

Jesus rebuked the murmuring, much like he had the Sea of Galilee. But mutiny was afoot. Mark shifts his narrative focus from Bethany back to the chief priests. Judas, the spy, winded from the two-mile hike back to Jerusalem, found the religious leaders in their lair. Maybe he was seething from the shame he had received back at Simon’s house. Maybe his love for money had so muddied his thinking that he couldn’t get over the waste he had just seen. And not just waste, but waste that Jesus applauded. “She has done a beautiful thing to me,” Jesus said. “She has anointed my body beforehand for burial” (Mark 14:6, 8).

Maybe Judas was stewing over these words as he huffed his way over to the Holy City. All right, Jesus. You’re ready for burial? I’ll make sure you get one. After all, I’d hate to see all that ointment go to waste.

Thirty Pieces of Silver

And so, Judas offered the chief priests the solution they had been waiting for: He would betray his master. But not without something in return. Mark simply records that the chief priests promised to give Judas money (Mark 14:11). The word “promise” suggests that Judas wasn’t surprised by the offer. It appears that he had pressed the priests for payment. Matthew tells us as much, in fact: “Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?’ And they paid him thirty pieces of silver” (Matt. 26:14–15).

The drama of Mark 14 revolves around two characters— the woman and Judas—and their opposing reactions to Jesus. But there is a third character, an antagonist both sinister and stealthy.

Money.

Notice how quickly Judas and his fellow grumblers are able to appraise the value of the ointment at Simon’s house. Like veteran pawnbrokers, they could intuit at a glance how much something was worth. The nard had barely left the flask before they were calculating, “This ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii” (Mark 14:5).

Blind to the Value of Christ

And yet, the irony of Mark 14 is that Judas could see the value of the ointment rolling down Jesus’s head, but he couldn’t see the value of Jesus. He was a pawnbroker with cataracts. That’s why he took such offense at the woman. The woman, on the other hand, could see both the value of the ointment and the value of Jesus. That’s why she broke the flask.

Spy Wednesday is a tragic reminder of 1 Tim. 6:10: “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”

But Spy Wednesday is also full of hope, because it shows us that the beauty of Jesus can break the spell of financial gain. This is the woman’s message to us, a message that Jesus wanted us to hear again and again: “Truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her” (Mark 14:9).

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