Something about Mary
Phil Cobb
Karen Fulton First Presbyterian Church Elder
Today we return to Bethany (not the one in Harrison County) and Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. If Martha is the talker of the Bethany family, Mary is the actor. She says little, but she listens and acts. Mary is first introduced to us in Luke as she listens at Jesus’ feet while Martha complains. Remember hers is the “better part.”
She figures in the Lazarus story as the co-writer of the letter to Jesus and the speaker of the same complaint as Martha.
Her weeping calls forth the weeping of the Jews who surround her and finally of Jesus. She accompanies the crowd to Lazarus’ tomb and she is witness to Jesus calling forth a living Lazarus.
It is her last scene in John that intrigues us. In John 12, directly after the Seder celebrating Lazarus’ revival, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with “pure nard” so that the whole house is filled with this perfume. Judas sees this as a frivolous display and says the money could have been given to the poor (fulfilling Jesus’ mission on Earth).
Jesus rebukes Judas and speaks one of the most misinterpreted lines of the Bible. “You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” For centuries this line has been used to excuse people from caring for those in poverty. Instead, it is a call to honor the divine among us and in us.
Mary has intuited the road Jesus is on — the raising of Lazarus coming before the journey to Jerusalem — and acted on it. She has anointed Jesus for what lies ahead — a kingship and a sacrifice.
Mary completes what is a sacred ritual anointing to prepare Jesus for completing of his divine mission, Jesus mentions that if she did not use the nard now, it would be used for his burial. All four of the Gospels contain this anointing, and in each one a woman performs this sacred ritual. Only in John is that woman named. In Matthew 26 and Mark 14, after the miracle of Lazarus, Jesus is in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper when “a woman” comes with “costly ointment” on his head.
In Luke 7, the incident takes place in the house of a Pharisee named Simon when a “woman of the city, who was a sinner” bathes Jesus’ feet, which she then kisses and dries with her hair. Then she anoints Jesus’ feet from an alabaster jar of ointment.
In Luke, the incident comes much earlier in the narrative and serves as an object lesson for the Pharisee. In the other versions, the incident is a rite of preparation for Jesus as sacrifice and king.
I remember only one anointing. It is in the films of Queen Elizabeth II during her coronation. Surrounded by men of authority, she was covered in a special golden cloth and then taken behind a screen where the Archbishop of Canterbury anointed her head, her hand, and her breast. One small young woman surrounded by the men of power taking on the rule of the Empire. It was very impressive.
Jesus’ anointing is very different. There is no special covering, no pomp, no crowds. The sacred ceremony is visible to all and it is a woman, in all versions, and Mary of Bethany in John, rather than the Archbishop of Canterbury or John the Baptist, who performs the ceremony.
And in Mary of Bethany’s anointing of Jesus, we come full circle. The woman who neglected her duties to sit and learn at Jesus’ feet, who acts rather than speaks, fulfills her calling as the instrument to prepare him for his final destiny on Earth and his full embrace of the divine.
