Jesus had a large circle of friends, both men and women. On the fifth Sunday of Lent, we got an inside glimpse at three of those friends: Martha, her sister Mary and their brother Lazarus from the little town of Bethany, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. It was that special place in the life of Jesus where he and his disciples could stop in, get some rest, enjoy a good meal and then go on their way!
If you pay attention to the details of John’s gospel story about Martha, Mary and Lazarus, you soon realize just how close Jesus was to these people. Martha was the famous extrovert who complained from her kitchen about getting some help. Mary was that famous introvert who would rather sit in the living room with the men and listen to Jesus talking. It was this Mary, in today’s gospel, who kissed Jesus’ feet in public, rubbing them with perfumed oil and drying them with her hair. You must be pretty close to do that, not to mention a woman doing that in public!
Sunday before last, we read down the text and saw how John underlined, again and again, just how intimate these friends were with Jesus. Here’s what it says: “Lord, the one you love is sick.” “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus very much.” “See how much he loved him!” They are even so close that both of these women can “chew him out” and get away with it: “Lord, if you had been here, (meaning if you had not dilly-dallied around so long) my brother would never have died!” Remember the text told us that Jesus had delayed two days after he heard that Lazarus was sick! And finally, seeing Mary weep, we are told that “Jesus began to weep,” too. What we have here is a continuation of that story of intense love colliding with intense stinginess.
Mary may not have been a good cook or a hopeless extrovert like her sister Martha. Mary may not have been the head of the household or the subject of a great miracle like her brother Lazarus, but her dramatic all-in gestures of love for Jesus were breath-taking! Let’s compare her full-throated gestures of love with the narrow minded and self-serving reactions of Judas and the religious authorities.
First, we see Mary’s extravagant love. She gave the most precious thing she owned – a vial of very expensive ointment. Second, we see her humility. It would have been a great honor to anoint the head of Jesus, but out of humility, she anointed his feet. Third, we see a total lack of self-consciousness. After anointing them with perfumed oil, she dries them with her own hair. At the time of Jesus, no respectable woman would appear in public with her hair unbound. It was the sign of being an immoral woman. Mary loved Jesus so much that she did not care, or even notice, what others thought about it.
Then we have Judas. Judas ungraciously questioned her action as sheer waste and then hiding his flawed self-serving nature behind the excuse that it “could have been given to the poor” while he himself was guilty of regularly stealing from the poor. Jesus probably knew at this point that his days were numbered. He accepted Mary’s lovely other-focused gesture of generous love. He exposed the hypocrisy of Judas who turned this loving gesture into a story about his own greediness!
Finally, for the religious leaders who were there, it was a chance to
“check out both Jesus and Lazarus.” From there they plotted not only to kill
Lazarus, but also Jesus, because they were drawing followers from their ranks.
Like Judas, they were filled with self-serving stinginess, while Mary was
filled with other-serving love.
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