Monday in Holy Week: Mary, Jesus, Judas, and Nard

As I read  today’s lectionary gospel passage, I found myself drawn into the intimacy of the moment between Jesus and Mary, and how her gestures and his receiving them would likely have made the whole place uncomfortable.

John 12:1-11

12Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ²There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. ³Mary 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. ⁴But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ⁵“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” ⁶(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.) ⁷Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. ⁸You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” ⁹When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ¹⁰So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, ¹¹since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

The social and moral conventions of the time would seem to be tossed out the window here.  In that ancient culture, women and men were to behave in ways that limited contact between women of a household and men outside the house.   One way to look at this situation is to see that what Jesus has done is to bring everybody in the household together as family, setting aside all the social conventions.  This would square with the Easter morning message Jesus gives to Mary Magdalene to tell the others:  “I am ascending to my Father and your Father…”

Yet there is also something deeply intimate about a woman unwinding her hair and using it to wipe the feet of a man with fragrant and expensive perfume.   Imagine something like that playing out in your house.  Even in our openly expressive society, where the boundaries are being pushed on a seemingly daily basis, this would be an intimate, even an erotic display of affection.  I think this is what really pisses off Judas and gets him to say something politically correct in hopes of getting everyone else in the house to come down hard on what Mary of Bethany is doing, perhaps hoping to shame her as he feels she ought to be shamed.  And then there is Jesus who ought to know better himself.   Yet he encourages Mary, he accepts the over-the-top generosity, he accepts the intimacy.  In that moment, she is in intimate, loving relationship with Jesus, and Judas is most certainly not.  Someone has said that John’s gospel was written as a sort of chronicle of the intimate encounters and relationships people in John’s community had experienced with Jesus and they wrote them down as a living legacy, perhaps in hopes that future readers would have such intimate encounters themselves through the Living Word.

A modern image that clicked to mind when I read this passage was an image of people caught in a judgement scene that could have come straight out of Middle-Eastern antiquity.  There is a video in circulation on the ‘net of a young girl being flogged in the street by a member of the Taliban.  (I was going to post it, but it’s just too cruel a thing to have dominate this post.) Supposedly a man came to her father’s house to do some maintenance and the next thing you know, accusations arose that the two were in improper contact.  The man was found, hauled off and flogged, as was this girl, who was held down by a brother.   I remember that in ancient Jewish law, Jesus’ mother, Mary, could have been stoned to death outside her father’s house had Joseph chosen that course of action.  When you think about it this way, it seems that the good news stories we find about Jesus might just be the subtly powerful levers that have moved much of Western society to a place where such things no longer seem civilized.

Back for a closing thought on the scene in the house at Bethany.  Spikenard was an exotic perfume derived from plants growing in India and Arabia and among its uses was its use as an additive to flavor wine.  The anointing takes place during a dinner, perhaps given in Jesus’ honor and in honor of the resurrected Lazarus.  It might well be considered a Thanksgiving, or Eucharistic, meal.  Earlier in John, Jesus speaks of himself in sacramental language when he says that, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” (Jn 6:54-56)

John tells us Jesus is crucified on the Day of Preparation, when all the lambs to be eaten at Passover are slaughtered.  Given all of these things, there is a very sacramental element to Mary’s pouring the spikenard perfume on Jesus’ feet, one I hadn’t quite seen before.  How interesting that it would be immeshed in such an intimate, even erotic encounter, just days before Jesus’ death on the cross.