Today is the fifth Sunday of Lent (next week is Palm Sunday!) and the lectionary offers a text familiar to churchgoers — when Mary anoints Jesus with an expensive oil shortly before the end of his life.
John 12:1-8
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."
All four gospels record a story about a woman anointing Jesus with expensive perfume, each with slightly different details, and three neglect even to mention the woman’s name.
But John identifies the woman as Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha. This selection appears at the end of a long section that began in John 11 with Jesus’ most sensational miracle — raising Lazarus from the dead — and continues into John 12. Not long after this remarkable event, Jesus returns to Lazarus’s home. Dinner is served, and “Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.”
I spent a good deal of time this week thinking about this story — and reading a small stack of commentaries about the text. Funny thing is that most of the commentators don’t know what to make of Mary, who she really is, or why she did this. Indeed, a surprising number of writers breeze over her, centering Judas as the main character to emphasize his coming betrayal of Jesus. One actually said, “It is not clear why John has Mary anoint Jesus’ feet” — that seemed an apt summary of the lack of consensus surrounding this text.
Last October, I introduced the Cottage community to Elizabeth “Libbie” Schrader and her revolutionary scholarship on Mary Magdalene in John’s Gospel. (You can listen to our conversation HERE.) Her work suggests a powerful reinterpretation of this story:
Mary in John 11 is Mary Magdalene, the same Mary who is later at the Cross and is the first witness to the resurrection.
Lazarus has only one sister — Mary — not two as in “Mary and Martha.” Schrader argues that an early editor split one female disciple into two women: “Martha is added as a way of diminishing Mary Magdalene and confusing her presentation.”
If there is no Martha, that means the powerful confession of Jesus as the Anointed One (the Messiah, or Christ) in John 11:27, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world,” was pronounced by Mary Magdalene. In Schrader’s textual reconstruction of John, Mary Magdalene emerges as the disciple who first articulates Jesus’ identity as the Messiah.
This understanding of John 11 illuminates Mary’s anointing of Jesus in John 12. When I exchanged text messages with Libbie Schrader about this passage, she wrote to me, “If Mary confessed Jesus as the Messiah in John 11:27, it would make sense if the next thing she does is to anoint him!”
Yes, it does make sense. More sense than any other reading of the story. Mary proclaims: “You are the Anointed One!” And then she follows up her words by anointing him with oil. Mary re-enacted the ancient rite of anointing a king.
But she did so with a twist. Israel’s kings were anointed on the head. Mary anointed Jesus’ feet.
Imagine the story (beginning in John 11:25) now with one sister:
Jesus said to Mary, “I am the resurrection and the life. . . Do you believe this?”
Mary replied, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”[Jesus then raised her brother Lazarus from the dead. Many people saw what Jesus did for Mary’s brother. And some worried that Jesus would bring down the Roman authorities upon them. So, those leaders who collaborated with Rome began to plot against Jesus. Jesus knew this and retreated in the wilderness with his students.]
Six days before the Passover Jesus came back to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. Lazarus and Mary gave a dinner for him and his disciples. Mary ministered (διηκόνει, the word for “ministered to” from which we get the word, “deacon”) and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Then, 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. This shocked everyone, but most especially Judas. . .
Remember: In this telling of John 11 and 12, there is no Martha. There’s only Mary. Mary ministers to the men. She sets the table. She serves her brother, Jesus, and their companions. And then, she anoints the Son of God. Kings are anointed. And, in Israel, they were anointed by priests or prophets — the part she seizes in this episode.
Mary proclaimed Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, the king of Israel. This scene is, essentially, Jesus’ coronation before he rides the donkey in triumphant procession to Jerusalem. A woman anoints him as king. That would be radical enough. But she didn’t anoint his head — like the kings of Israel had been before him — rather she anointed his feet. And then Mary wiped the oil, turning her own hair into a priestly handkerchief. His feet; her hair. This kingdom was not that of headship, thrones, and crowns. Rather, this kingdom is a table of mutuality, where even the Anointed One was humbly christened to serve.
Five weeks ago, at the beginning of Lent, I invited you to join me on a journey in contrasts — to explore how the Lenten stories set competing visions before us — between the Roman Empire and God’s empire. Along the way, we’ve seen Jesus reject the power pyramid of Rome, envisioned the vulnerability of the motherly God, considered the tender patience of a fruitful life, and welcomed the lost to a feast. And this week, we are reminded that in the spirit there is no longer slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, male and female, but a community of human solidarity and service, with the most unexpected of kings.
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INSPIRATION
Come close with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus
So close the candles stir with their soft breath
And kindle heart and soul to flame within us
Lit by these mysteries of life and death.
For beauty now begins the final movement
In quietness and intimate encounter
The alabaster jar of precious ointment
Is broken open for the world’s true lover,
The whole room richly fills to feast the senses
With all the yearning such a fragrance brings,
The heart is mourning but the spirit dances,
Here at the very centre of all things,
Here at the meeting place of love and loss
We all foresee, and see beyond the cross.
— Malcolm Guite, please visit his site and read his poetry HERE.
(A note: I love this poem. But I don’t think the good poet was aware of Elizabeth Schrader’s recent scholarship. I kept his original, but it reads equally well with just “Mary and Lazarus.”)
Thank you, Diana, for highlighting Elizabeth Schrader's work and supporting her thesis of Lazarus having only one sister and of Mary of Magdala taking the role of a prophet to anoint Jesus as the Messiah and King. Note: Evangelical & Ecumenical Women's Caucus - Christian Feminism Today aka EEWC-CFT, to whom you spoke at our 2016 conference in Indianapolis, awarded its 2020 Nancy A. Hardesty Memorial Scholarship to Elizabeth Schrader to honor her work as a promising doctoral candidate at Duke University. The theme of the 2016 conference was "Prophets in Every Generation." You, Diana and Elizabeth, are certainly among them. https://eewc.com/
This was a most astonishing and soul-opening musing...it has brought me to new soil and journey potential...🌿