2024/37 MARY, GET THE OIL

John 12: 1-10

“Mary, get the oil.”

I have imagined this phrase being whispered into her ear when Jesus greeted her. It’s only my imagination, but it evokes a feeling that seals me to my Lord. I’ve been a pretender my whole life and I don’t feel like it has warped me or put me in a state of harmful denial. I am also a learner, and what I’ve learned does not leave me without foundation.

Today is Silent Wednesday, the day in the Holy Week where not much is said in the scriptures about what Jesus did. One thing we know is he visited a house in Bethany, where Mary lived. And one thing we know is that when he visited there Mary sat with him. Her sister Martha made herself useful and was likely at the hot stove sweating under the heat of preparing food for fourteen hungry men. Blessed Martha. She gets a bad rap for being irritated with her sister for sitting with Jesus when there was so much else to be done. I remind myself to thank Martha, in my imaginary realm, for her loving efforts to nurture and nourish. 

Still, I can also hear Jesus teach Martha to let go of her busyness. 

Jesus knew what the others didn’t know. Martha and the others had likely been through this before… gathering and eating and resting in Bethany, her brother Lazarus eating beside Jesus. What they didn’t know was that this would be the last time.

But Mary… perhaps she knew.

“Mary, get the oil.”

Up on the shelf, set apart from the goods of daily living, was an alabaster jar of costly Spikenard oil. Most well-to-do houses had them, special oils saved for special occasions. These oils were like the hope chest of our grandmothers. Spikenard was specifically set apart for two occasions: for a bride to wear on her wedding day, and for treating a body before its burial. Jews did not embalm. The sweet and powerful fragrance of Spikenard, pressed from an aromatic flower in India, could mask the smell of decay. This oil was incredibly expensive and was always used sparingly.

Later that night,
after criticizing Mary for wasting expensive oil,
would sell his soul for a pittance.

I imagine the gentle, maybe even trembling voice of her lord whispering:

“Mary, get the oil.”

I imagine the pit in her stomach, the pounding of her heart. I imagine her turning from him, falling to her knees and weeping. I hear her whimper, “No, not yet.” 

I imagine they had discussed this before. Maybe she had even worn the oil before, on her own flesh. 

Mary reaches up in the sacred place, lifts the alabaster jar and blows the dust from the lid. She carries it hesitantly to her Lord. First one drop upon his head. Then more on his neck, his arms, his shoulders. A sacred initiation. Finally, at his feet, she impulsively empties the jar. The room is filled with fragrance. She prays the fragrance will linger.

Mary, like all good believing women of her faith, has covered her head. Only family would see her hair. Never in public. And so, she takes her long locks of hair and wipes the excess oil from the dripping feet of the one she loves. She takes the oil and claims it as her own, just as she claimed the Lord as her own. 

I imagine, days later, Mary lifts her hair up to her face, inhaling the fragrance of her love, as he is laid in the tomb. 

The next morning I imagine she takes the jar, with only a few drops remaining, to finish the task.

Some say Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene are not the same Mary.

Some say they are.

I imagine only she would have that consecrated oil. Only she would be obligated to anoint after death. And only she would be at the tomb to see it was empty.

What we imagine in silence, on this day in the Holy Week when not much is given, involves quiet retrospective moments. Thoughts of wholly personal relationships. 

Our Savior loved his Mary’s. Birth to death to resurrection... Marys were there.

Mary getting the oil reminds me to claim him as my own, to be willing to pour upon him all that is precious and sacred to me, to freely give what I am prone to reserve in acknowledgment of his divinity. 

Lord, let your fragrance pour itself upon me.

 

3-28-18 NEGATIVE SPACE Silent Wednesday

"Draw the air around the chair, and the chair will appear."

We woud-be artists sat at the table in the room behind Jan's house, pencils in hand, learning art from our neighbor, a truly accomplished and talented painter. Our lessons were based on a book called Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain, and the chapter for that particular lesson addressed the value of "negative space". 

Try it. Try looking at a chair, or anything else for that matter, and then ignore the item and just look at the space directly surrounding it. We are accustomed to seeing only the items themselves, in general. But that space around the chair, where there is a break in the energy of the item itself, is just as important in that it sets the chair apart. We need negative space. This feels like an eternal truth to me. The fact that our bodies require sleep testifies of the concept. And any experienced storyteller knows that the quiet before the climax makes the story so much more engaging.

So it is that the fourth day of the final week in the life of our Savior is often called Silent Wednesday. Though the word silent likely refers to the fact that there is little said in scripture about the events of the day, I think of it also as the negative space, the quiet against which the powerful and poignant are set. The day is also sometimes called Spy Wednesday, because of the whisperings of betrayal that set Judas onto his steep and slippery downward slope. 

The drama of the previous days, beginning with the Triumphal Entry, and the cleansing of the temple, and the vocal retribution of the temple tribunal, interspersed with Jesus offering seven parables in one day; imagine the emotions and the exhaustion. 

I recently read about the stages of Anticipatory Grief:

Jesus had to have grieved his impending death. The fact that only he knew it was coming had to have been so lonely. There was the isolation evidenced as he wept over Jerusalem, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! " (That passage makes me weep) Then the anger evidenced in the temple. And then the quiet. This stage includes what grief counselors refer to as depression, but they separate it into two types of depression. Here's how one describes the second type of depression:

The second type of depression is more subtle and, in a sense, perhaps more private. It is our quiet preparation to separate and to bid our loved one farewell. Sometimes all we really need is a hug.

This is the negative space, the silent air around the chair. 

It is noted that on Wednesday, whether it is through recollection or the actuality of chronology, Judas sold his salvation for a bit of silver, and Jesus quietly visited his friend Lazarus and his sisters,Mary and Martha. I think it is no accident that he visited the home of one whom he had raised from the dead on the day before He entered Gethsemane.Their home was likely his emotional, safe place, where he was known for exactly who he was, and loved for it.

It was there that Mary anointed Jesus' weary feet with expensive oil. Ironic that Judas would complain about the cost of that oil. It was no accidental occurrence that Jesus would, in life, be anointed as he would soon be anointed in death. That, while he had offered so much meaty teaching the day before, he sat quietly at the table with his friends. Mary must have sensed the need for calm, as she poured the expensive oil Spikenard on his skin and wiped it with her hair. Scripture says the aroma filled the room. Spikenard was anciently used for strengthening the immune system against ailments, and was also used to calm nerves and treat anxiety and stress. 

All these centuries later I inhale slowly, imagining the scent. I close my eyes and listen to the silence, the occasional rustling of fabric as he shifted his weight and she lifted his feet in her hands. I hear the water being poured, feel the gentle strokes of her hands in the washing. And then the dusty air of the room being infused with the sweetness of precious oil. I sense a hovering sadness in the air, and an overwhelming radiance of love. When the Savior's companions broke the silence, Judas the betrayer complaining about the wasted valuable oil, I hear the reassuring tones of the Master, telling them that she had done a beautiful and symbolic thing. I wonder if, in the coming day, when he hung there on the cross, in the heat and the agony of impending death, did he catch a whisper of the scent of that oil brought to Him on a sacred breeze?

The events of the next final days of our Savior's life, brutal and unfair and agonizing, are sweetly placed against this backdrop of Silent Wednesday. 

Be still, my soul.