NOTES for Mar 14:4-5
The feast is approaching, and division takes place. It is not only that Christ's opponents, preparing murder, are far more concerned about the people's possible reaction to bloodshed during the feast than about the monstrous nature of the execution itself. The division is also that the separation foretold by the Teacher takes place among His disciples.
By pouring precious perfume on Jesus, the woman performs an extravagant, impractical act that does not fit notions of normal behavior. The disciples' reaction corresponds to "common sense": why not use such value for charitable needs? John testifies that Judas said this, but Mark speaks of some disciples. This means the confusion was shared by a group. And yet would the reaction of most of us be different?
The visible manifestation of love, with its seeming madness, troubled the disciples and became one of the stones over which one of them stumbled. But faith, hope, and love cannot always be justified by calculation, and yet how often those who were guided by them did the impossible.
In everyday life, of course, there is no need to reject thrift or practical sobriety; they have their legitimate place in the world. Still, one should not forget the bankruptcy of the calculating Judas.