I knew he was
going to die. He’d told all of us enough
times. But none of them heard or wanted
to hear.
That’s why I
decided to do something dramatic – to show them all what he was saying. What I chose to do was certainly
appropriate. Look at all the drama he
employed when he acted out his parables!
It was six days
before the Passover celebration. Jesus
was coming to our home. It was a good
time to do it. So, I carefully worked
out my plan. I had some very costly
ointment of pure nard from the far, far East, beyond Parthia, from the great
mountains of India, about a pound of it given to me as a dowry by my parents
before they died. It was my greatest
treasure. I fished this out of my
keepsakes and exempted myself from kitchen duties. Martha was serving and our beloved brother
Lazarus (whom Jesus raised from the dead to the joy and gratitude of all of us)
was sitting with him and various friends at the table when I quietly stole in
and crouched at Jesus’s feet. He smiled
at me, because I’d often done that so I could listen to his wise teaching – and
here I was safe, because he wouldn’t let anyone remove me.
But, instead of
simply listening carefully to him in silence, letting myself be enraptured by
his thoughts, as any good student should do, I quietly slipped the perfume out
of the little leather bag I was carrying and began to pour the entire pound of
oil on Jesus’s feet. Then, unbinding my
hair, I began wiping his feet gently with my own hair.
Immediately, the
strong fragrance of the nard flooded the house.
Everyone stopped talking and stared at me.
Jesus did not
move. He just looked at me with such
tenderness and such sadness.
Then Judas
Iscariot broke the moment by suddenly demanding loudly why I hadn’t sold that
oil and given the money to him for the poor.
I knew very well the poor that he was talking about! This same Judas had taken charge of the donations
Jesus had insisted the disciples gather and share with the widows and the
lepers and the blind and lame beggars, but I, for one, had been suspecting all
along that Judas had been stealing it.
His look was so avaricious when he was railing at me that you’d think
everyone would have noticed it, but some of the slower on the uptake disciples
began to rally around him – when Jesus cut Judas off sharply.
“Leave her
alone! For the day of the preparation
for my burial she has reserved this.”
And then he lectured them all, “The poor, miserable beggars you will always
have with you, but you will not always have me.”
They were stunned
and no one reprimanded me further.
Four days later, a
woman none of us knew showed up at Simon the Leper’s house and, to everyone’s
shock, anointed Jesus – also with costly nard, perhaps following my example,
though this time she anointed his head, not his feet, as I had done.
And, then, can you
imagine? The disciples repeated Judas’s
complaint, rather than Jesus’s counsel.
So Jesus had to repeat his correction another time. He told them once again, “Don’t molest this
woman. She is preparing me for my burial for I am about to die.”
Nobody is going to
forget her actions, or Jesus’s kind words of forgiveness, though Judas’s harsh words
will blow away like the chaff they were.
People had been
gossiping that I did it because I was grateful for Jesus raising my brother –
or, some suggested, because I was in love with him and not in the way that I
and all of us in my home were. Then they
wondered if this other woman had anointed Jesus because Simon hadn’t done it –
just the way Simon the Pharisee hadn’t anointed Jesus and a prostitute had even
dared to creep into his house to pour costly oil on Jesus’s feet, just as I had
done.
But I knew these
were all signs from God. Each of these
women had felt an urging and responded just as I had done. His head and his feet were now anointed, a
symbol of the spices and unguents we would use to prepare him at death.
Jesus had revealed
by now that he was not only the Prophet of Nazareth, as many now called him,
but the fulfillment of prophecy and, also, as well, the priest who was
interceding for us and who was about to perform for us the greatest sacrifice
of all – giving his life as the ransom for many. And, he was telling us he was indeed the
true king of Israel, prophesied in our Scriptures, the one who would be our
suffering redeemer. All these truths he
was revealing to us as he explained to us and everyone these strange actions we
women felt compelled to do for him, for we were symbolizing what he had been
telling us all along; to give us life, he had to die.
Aίda and Bill
(from John 12:1-8, compare with Matt
26:6-13; Mark 14:3-9; Luke 7:36-50).
