JN's pretending to be LK today, but I guess most of us can pick him out. Identify his style. At least, preaching on a concrete event such as this is easier for most of us than dealing with JN's more 'spiritualised' (for want of a better word) efforts. Or so some of those who contact me from time to time seem to believe. I admit it's sometimes the case for me. Concrete imagery better reaches most people in most congregations, even some who think they're more highfalutin than that!
Is the then Jewish view that respectable women kept their hair covered any more than another way of keeping women in submission? One man, one family keeping her for himself / themselves? Where might the argument go from here? Muslim women may need to address that issue in the light of the continuing controversy over the wearing of the hijab. Do we Christians still have our subtle or not so subtle ways of doing the same thing? Is it at root part of God's people's inability to cope as well as we might with issues of sexuality? Is it at base an attempt to keep God from being seduced? The mind boggles!
That Mary breaks through the 'respectibility barrier' by letting her hair down in public poses a question of how often we don't do what we might feel moved to do for someone because we're too concerned about, proud of our respectability quotient'?
Mary's anointing foreshadows Jesus' death, just as her raised brother Lazarus foreshadows his resurrection. Are we living as those already anointed for death (in our baptism) & 'brought back to life' in Jesus' resurrection? Mary's act also prefigures the Son of God washing grubby human feet in the upper room. Is it even thinkable that Mary's humility in not only anointing but also drying Jesus' feet with her hair makes such a mark on him that he makes the act his own? Is she going to be one of those waiting on the menfolk at the last supper? With Martha? Did they, or whichever other women were there, 'communicate'?
JN blackens Judas' name, albeit at a safe distance. It's far easier to blacken someone's name than to help them attain, or recover, a good one.
Do we ever hide behind the smokescreen of 'there'll always be poor about' to avoid grasping the nettle of why someone is poor - I'm talking at personal, local level - & doing something about it? At the other end of the scale, Governments have developed particular expertise in this field. A former prime Minister of Australia said a few years back that 'no Australian child would live in poverty by.....' It didn't happen. It'll never 'appen, will it?