The poor you will always have with you, Jesus says in defending the woman’s “wasteful” devotion, but you won’t always have me.
The key to understanding this is to recognize that Jesus speaks of the woman pouring oil on His “body.” The key is to recognize the double body of Christ. While Jesus sits at table, the woman pours perfume on His body for burial. Soon that body won’t be there, but Jesus says at the close of the gospel that He will continue to be with them (28:18-20). How? Not in the buried body, but in the risen body, which is present through the agency of the Spirit, and which is present also in the Spirit-filled body of disciples.
Me you will not always have with you, Jesus says, but He will be with them in the body, in the poor, the “least of these My brothers.”
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