1. When Jesus had finished teaching all these things, he said to his disciples,
2. “In two days, as you know, it will be the Passover Festival, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.”
3. Then the chief priests and the elders met together in the palace of Caiaphas, the High Priest,
4. and made plans to arrest Jesus secretly and put him to death.
5. “We must not do it during the festival,” they said, “or the people will riot.”
6. Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon, a man who had suffered from a dreaded skin disease.
7. While Jesus was eating, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar filled with an expensive perfume, which she poured on his head.
8. The disciples saw this and became angry. “Why all this waste?” they asked.
9. “This perfume could have been sold for a large amount and the money given to the poor!”
10. Jesus knew what they were saying, so he said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? It is a fine and beautiful thing that she has done for me.
11. You will always have poor people with you, but you will not always have me.
12. What she did was to pour this perfume on my body to get me ready for burial.