IN MEMORY OF HER

The depth and breadth of interpretations about Sunday's Johannine lection have filled volumes. Mark and Matthew also have versions of the narrative. In Matthew's and Mark's, the woman who anoints Jesus with expensive perfume is unnamed. Jesus tells his disciples to remember what she did in memory of her. John's Gospel does exactly that. The woman who anoints Jesus is named. She is Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.

A reading of the gospels focused on his followers would show that, more often than not, they cannot understand what Jesus does and what he says. Over and over Jesus has to explain his words and his actions. Over and over Jesus tells them about his suffering and his resurrection and they misunderstand him. All four gospels end with women coming to the tomb to anoint a dead body! No one among Jesus’s named disciples believed that he will rise again.

But one woman in the whole narrative does believe: the unnamed woman in Mark and Matthew; Mary of Bethany in John. She anoints Jesus for burial because there would be no body to anoint later. There would only be an empty tomb—as the named women disciples led by Magdalene discover when they came Easter morning with their anointing oils.

Only one person believed that Jesus will be raised up. One woman. Mary of Bethany. And she was right!

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*art, "Mary of Bethany and Jesus," anonymous, wood carving (from the vanderbilt library digital archives).