Week 10: Chapter 9 — The Anointing

1.In Mark 13, Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple — which comes true in 70 AD — and speaks of future tribulation. Keller notes that Jesus's apocalyptic teaching is not meant to generate fear but to generate faithfulness. What is the difference between those two responses to uncertainty about the future? How does Jesus's teaching here serve as an anchor rather than an alarm?

2.An unnamed woman pours an entire jar of expensive perfume over Jesus's head. The disciples are indignant at the "waste." But Jesus says she has done "a beautiful thing" and that her act will be told "wherever the gospel is preached." What does the woman's act express about her understanding of who Jesus is that the disciples have missed? What makes her extravagance not waste but worship?

3.Keller observes that the woman anoints Jesus's head — the place where kings and priests are anointed — but she may not have fully understood the theological significance of what she was doing. Keller says she did the right thing for perhaps incomplete reasons, and Jesus honors it fully. What does that tell us about how God receives our imperfect acts of devotion?