The first confrontation between Jesus and Judas in the gospel of John is about practical matters. Judas uses the poor, “not because he cared about the poor” but because, being a practical person, he liked money enough to take from the common fund Jesus and his disciples had to live on. Being practical, he could not agree with the wastage of the ointment used at Jesus’ anointing.
The Mary of this anointing, Mary of Bethany, (not Mary Magdalene, nor the sinner in the synoptics) has overtones of burial rituals. The following day, Jesus will go up to Jerusalem to die and be buried, but He did not have the chance of having his corpse embalmed. He rose before Mary Magdalene had the chance to do that.
Jesus then understands that this anointing is therefore an anticipated burial ritual, which he welcomes and accepts as an act of charity more important than the act of justice that was to give alms to the poor.
Jesus is not a man of results but a man of the people. People mattered to him more than efficiency. Judas was a man of results, not because he cared of how the results would benefit people, but because he liked the financial result itself.
Our world has made economic success the primary objective of development. When citizens have to decide whom they want to vote for during election, most of the time they think about the economical reasons. We measure the standard of development based more on GNP, than on personal authentic growth.
Like new Judas, today’s policies use the poor to control family life decisions, they use the sick to push for anti-life scientific research. We sacrifice people in the name of progress for the people.
As the church today, we are called to confront the Judas of pragmatism with Jesus’ concern for the WHOLE being and for ALL persons. Efficiency without care is bureaucracy, not life.
