Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus (John 12)

In Nomine etc..

       There is a lot of meaning packed into this story of Mary, who anointed Jesus, and Martha, and their meal together with Lazarus. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus are siblings, of course. The western church in the Middle Ages identified Mary with Mary of Magdala, but today’s story doesn’t make that connection. In any case, from this story we can learn a lot about the people around Jesus, about the community around John the Evangelist, and what they understood about Jesus. The story reminds us of important teachings, and anticipates the death of Jesus.

      “Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany.” Six days. This recalls the six days of creation, and links the Passover, the implied seventh day of the story, with the seventh day of the Genesis story. The six-day period before the Passover parallels the six days of creation; Jesus arrives in Bethany on what amounts to the first day of a creation renewed in and through him. Jesus has already raised Lazarus from the dead, a sign of renewed life in the new creation. It foreshadows Jesus’s own resurrection, just as the dinner with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus foreshadows Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples.

      We take it for granted that  Jesus is the host of the Last Supper; we don’t really know who the host of the Bethany supper is; is it Mary or Lazarus, or Martha, "who is serving"? The Scripture doesn’t say. And the ambiguity reveals something about the community around Jesus and John the Evangelist: women are prominent. The apparent wealth of Mary and Martha suggests that perhaps they were financing Jesus’s ministry. Without their support, there might have been no ministry at all.

      “Mary took a pound of costly perfume...anointed Jesus’s feet, and wiped them with her hair.” Notice what’s happening here: Jesus the Anointed One, the Messiah, is receiving a second anointing, a confirmation of his role and ministry. And he’s allowing Mary to anoint herself with the same perfume, to declare that she’s participating in that ministry. We remember that Christus means Anointed. That is why we are called Christians; we are descended, so to speak, from the anointing of Jesus and Mary of Bethany, and we pass that anointing on sacramentally to those who come after us. That is one way to understand the line, “the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” The fragrance of the anointing fills the whole church. Just as Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus, so he anoints us.

      Judas Iscariot speaks, as the story continues to foreshadow and parallel the Last Supper. “Why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor?” A denarius, my commentary says, is a day’s wage for a skilled laborer. So the perfume is worth about a year’s pay for a worker, clearly a high-value, high-status item, meant to show not only how much Mary of Bethany values Jesus, but also how much he values her. Jesus in effect responds in kind to Mary’s gesture.

       Jesus also adds an interpretation to the gesture. “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.” More foreshadowing of the coming Passion, and a reminder, suitable for Lent, that there is no new, resurrected life without first giving up our pre-resurrection life, if I can put it that way. In the approaching Passover, Jesus will recall the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, and will look ahead to passing through death to new life.

      “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” Jesus does not allow anyone to follow Judas Iscariot, and descend into a moralizing rant about the proper uses of wealth. It is easy to discern Judas’s motive; the Evangelist is on to it when he says that Judas “kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.” Judas, in other words, is covering for his own greed and hypocrisy. Mary of Bethany in fact is making good use of her wealth, by symbolically placing it at Jesus’s disposal. This gesture continues to benefit the church spiritually to this day. May we all place our resources at Jesus’s feet, and may we accept his anointing us, to the benefit of the poor and all God’s people.

      In Nomine etc.. (6.IV.19. Adv., n. p.)