IN MEMORY OF HER

Mark and Matthew also have versions of Sunday's Gospel from John. In Matthew's and Mark's narratives, 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 canonical 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 and disbelieve him. All four gospels end with women coming to the tomb to anoint a dead body! No one among Jesus’s twelve male 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.

Friends don't forget this, ever: only one person believed that Jesus will be raised up: a woman.

And she was right!

Art, "Jesus speaks about forgiveness", JESUS MAFA, 1973, Cameroon (available online at the vanderbilt divinity library art galleries).