Mark 14:1-9 ▼

1 It was two days before the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a cunning way to arrest Jesus and kill him.

2 “Not during the festival,” they said, “so that there won’t be a riot among the people.”

3 While he was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured it on his head.

4 But some were expressing indignation to one another: “Why has this perfume been wasted?

5 For this perfume might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they began to scold her.

6 Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a noble thing for me.

7 You always have the poor with you, and you can do what is good for them whenever you want, but you do not always have me.

8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body in advance for burial.

9 Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”