I became aware again tonight that this year's Lent journey keeps cycling back to a few persisting themes. I felt haunted by memories of past Lenten journeys, and invited to go into deeper contemplations, and placed on new paths to experience what has become familiar to me. Here is our John:12 Gospel text for this Wednesday
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
Pastor Ray preached about Mary as a prophet in foretelling what was to come for Jesus, and as a prodigal for the extravagance of what she gave of herself in Bethany. The prophet and prodigal figures have loomed large this Lenten season for me. In a year of reading daily through the Bible our group has discussed what is a prophet, It has come up in Sunday worship as well. Is what we would consider a modern day prophet primarily a predictor of future events or must there be something more?
Last Wednesday's blog post dived into the Parable of the Prodigal Son. By bringing up Mary's prodigal nature here Pastor Ray brought another view of this story into focus. Prodigal becomes a fulcrum word. One set of associations around the word prodigal is about spending money or resources freely, recklessly; being wastefully extravagant. The other set of associations is about having or giving where one is generous, lavish, and bountiful. There are some who truly view the younger brother, the prodigal son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son as a Jesus figure because of the second set of associations and that this is the son that is dead and comes back to life.
Mary at Bethany is another Gospel reading where both sets of associations are present. There are many elements and associations in play. For instance, the nard's smell is a primary element in the story. To begin with the detail of Lazarus being raised from the dead, the nard suddenly brings to mind Martha's practical objection for Jesus to consider as he raised Lazarus, "Lord, by now there will be a stench!" Mary's anointing of Jesus takes on the additional importance in this Gospel of countering the stench of death and replacing that smell with the overpowering fragrance of the nard.
There are also two kinds of righteousness in play here. There is the righteousness of living into what the moment calls Mary to do. She preserves this moment as something special with what she gives Jesus as she anoints his feet. Our hearts tell us this is the right thing for her to do. Simultaneously there is also social righteousness norms that Mary violates as she anoints Jesus' feet. Pastor Ray pointed out she anoints his feet rather than his head which was not the norm. She let down her hair in public and in front of men. This was not done at that time either.
The most egregious violation in the social righteousness norm she violated is the objection made by Judas,"Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" Here the writer of John's Gospel anticipates the power of this objection. Suddenly an intrusive narrator voice comes in to give us the backstory. Using a rather non-subtle voice-over, Judas is slammed.. First Judas is introduced as the one who would shortly betray Jesus. Clearly Judas is, by this observation, not to be trusted. Next, a motive that could not be possibly known, except by inference, is revealed (it is unlikely that Judas let slip that he intended to steal part of the money the nard could have raised).
This Gospel is obvious in these crude attempts to downplay any righteousness in the question Judas raises. The question still remains, however, regardless of who Judas was or the reasons he may have had to bring it up.
There is an impulse, on first encounter, to judge the response Jesus gives as a departure from what Jesus would normally say and do about the poor. I don't see a dramatic departure but more of an overriding consideration involved. Think about how Jesus opened his ministry with the sermon at the synagogue. He read from Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.".
I will violate a social righteousness norm here and say I doubt Jesus meant the good news to only be taken that the poor would no longer be poor, that there would no longer be captives in prison, or that blind people would all literally see. Jesus came to bring about life and transformation.And a transformation happens when Mary anoints his feet. She preserves a moment in a way that is meaningful to her. Jesus was anointed to bring good news to the poor, and showed this over and over again in his life. Eliminating poverty through charity was not God's root call for Jesus (which many may now see as a primary church mission).
Jesus shared this moment of transformation and understood how Mary kept this moment alive through what she did and gave to him. Interestingly we do not hear her voice in the Gospel. We hear the writer's voice, and both Judas and Jesus, Yet Mary is the human chariot that takes our hearts away to where this story leads. Those who hear what happened at Bethany are left transformed by Mary.
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