Six days before Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, home of Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Lazarus and his sisters hosted a dinner for him. Martha served and Lazarus was among those who joined him at the table. Then Mary took an extraordinary amount, almost three-quarters of a pound of very expensive perfume made of pure nard. She anointed Jesus’ feet with it, then wiped his feet dry with her hair. The house was filled with the aroma of the perfume. Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), complained, “This perfume was worth a year’s wages! Why wasn’t it sold and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief. He carried the money bag and would take what was in it.) 
 
Then Jesus said, “Leave her alone. This perfume was to be used in preparation for my burial, and this is how she has used it. You will always have the poor among you, but you won’t always have me.” 
 
THE ANCIENT LESSON Deuteronomy 15:7-11
Now if there are some poor persons among you, say one of your fellow Israelites in one of your cities in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, don’t be hard-hearted or tightfisted toward your poor fellow Israelites. To the contrary! Open your hand wide to them. You must generously lend them whatever they need. But watch yourself! Make sure no wicked thought crosses your mind, such as, The seventh year is coming—the year of debt cancellation—so that you resent your poor fellow Israelites and don’t give them anything. If you do that, they will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin. No, give generously to needy persons. Don’t resent giving to them because it is this very thing that will lead to the Lord your God’s blessing you in all you do and work at. Poor persons will never disappear from the earth. That’s why I’m giving you this command: you must open your hand generously to your fellow Israelites, to the needy among you, and to the poor who live with you in your land.
 
I think you have probably guessed that the figure of Judas fascinates me, not only because I am did a two-part sermon series back in 2013, but because I mention him almost every time we do communion in this church. This wasn’t always the case—I don’t think I gave Judas much thought over last 10 years or so, to be honest. During that time I began clarifying for myself what I believed about God’s grace and God’s mercy, and to what lengths God will go to in order to bring us to God’s own self, to bring us in, to bring us home. And so as I have had to articulate what I’ve come to believe, that God ultimately brings us all home, whoever we are whatever we have done – or not done. I have thought of Judas often because he symbolizes such a seemingly lost soul. You probably know of the medieval story about Judas that I’ve often shared here, the legend where Jesus is said to have reconvened his disciples from that last super around some heavenly table, though there were only 11 disciples there because Judas was absent. Suddenly though the door comes the missing disciple Judas, seemingly startled to see his Master and his old friends around that table. The legend goes that Jesus cries out with joy, “Judas, we have been waiting for thee!”
 
That legend so captures for me the grace of God, that goodness, that mercy that will ultimately include us all. Still, we all know the pain of being betrayed by a friend, a colleague, a spouse, we know that it is one of the most painful of human experiences. There seems to be nothing worse than realizing that our trust in someone was not merited, was not deserved on our part. I once worked at a church where one clergy colleague betrayed another colleague and though I wasn’t either the betrayer or the betrayed on this large pastoral staff, that act of deception, of duplicity, absolutely changed the dynamic among the rest of the clergy, and we were never quite the same again as a team. This clerg