Nancy Somerville
St. Gertrude the Great Writing Group (co-leader), St. Francis de Sales Writing Group
Slashes of sunlight from the small, high windows contrasted sharply with the unlit corners of the room as Mary swept the floor. The day was unseasonably warm, the late afternoon air still, the aroma of cooking slowly gaining strength. Her sister Martha wanted everything to look perfect because they were expecting company. Their teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, and his closest companions were coming to their house for the Sabbath meal.
She swept diligently, the repetitive movements a balm for her jangling nerves. Looking up as her brother Lazarus returned with wine for their meal, Mary shook her head as if the motion might settle her thoughts into order. Lazarus. Just a few days ago, her brother had been dead! Carried off swiftly by a fever. She and Martha had lost all hope as their message to Jesus to come to their brother’s sickbed remained unanswered. Numb with grief over his unexpected death, she and her sister had anointed Lazarus’s body. Entombed him.
Four days later, Jesus arrived at their village with tears on his face and asked to be taken to Lazarus’s tomb.
Then it was as if the earth shuddered, like the way she’d once felt a rockslide moments before it toppled houses into unrecognizable heaps. Jesus brought her brother back to life. Jesus raised her four-days-dead brother to life as if death had never slackened his countenance or stilled his blood. She’d witnessed all of it yet still struggled to make sense of what had happened.
Mary had heard the stories of his other miracles, but none were as bold as this one, which Jesus declared was wrought for all to see and believe in the glory of God. In no time, the story fanned outwards past the borders of their small village of Bethany onto the well-traveled streets leading to Jerusalem.
The story of Jesus bringing her brother Lazarus back from the dead broke loose the safe mooring of everyone’s understanding of life and death. The Jewish leaders were appalled. This was a force of untold power, and they had no weapons to fight it. There were no scrolls of wisdom to unroll and proclaim, no laws to refute or contain it. Instead, there were terse whispers of the need to destroy Jesus, arrest him . . . eliminate him.
The dark murmurs formed an insistent rhythm, and the noise, hushed and scattered at first, was increasing. It was a chorus of unrest, the din like a grim drumbeat echoing in her heart. Mary and her family were trying to keep to themselves, fearing their brother might be stolen away to destroy evidence of the miracle.
Their guests began to arrive, rousing Mary from her anxious musings, and she set the broom aside. Her gaze immediately went to Jesus, and she noticed the dusky pink tinge to his eyelids and the slump of his usually straight posture. Her heart crowded her chest as he met her eyes, but the soft smile she sought was absent as he nodded a greeting. She had hoped that seeing him again would calm her nerves and reassure her somehow, but the sight of him laden with worry only heightened her anxiety.
He had given her so much. Jesus had given her back her brother! What could she give him in return? How could she thank him for these years of friendship and loving guidance, for how his teaching had infused her world with all-new meaning?
Extremes of gratitude, compassion, fear, and sorrow merged into a new unnameable feeling, and she suddenly felt as if she was floating in something like the margin between sleep and wakefulness. Those threatening whispers she’d overheard, the clamor of feelings, and the dramatic events of the past few days billowed up inside her, forming an image of her beloved teacher . . . lifeless and shrouded. In her premonition, she was back in the tomb she had so recently attended, but this time, it was not her brother’s body—it was Jesus lying there.
What if he were to be killed, taken away in shame and dishonor? What if this was the last time she ever saw him? The need to take action eclipsed every other concern as an urge coursed through her. As soon as the idea formed, it became all-consuming. How Martha would chide her for her impulsiveness!
Unnoticed as the guests continued to greet each other, Mary slipped away to the backroom and located a bottle of precious nard, the same kind of oil they had used mere days ago to prepare her brother’s body for burial. Darting back with the bottle, she knelt in front of Jesus.
“Mary, my little thinker, always content to sit at my feet,” he said softly.
Flushing slightly, pleased by his gentle teasing, she focused on her task. Carefully breaking the wax on the recently replaced seal, Mary poured the oil, chilled from the jar’s cool alabaster, into the palm of one hand to warm it before touching him gently, smoothing the pale gold liquid over his feet.
The oil’s earthy fragrance reminded her of the grasses that grew on the river bank. The pungent scent began to float through the room, and several eyes turned to them in a curiosity that almost immediately boiled over into concern as all conversation stopped. It was strange how a particular fragrance could be seared into memory. All present knew that this was the scent of burial, of death.
“Is that nard?” Simon Peter asked, confused. “Why are you doing that?” There was a challenge in his voice. Lazarus hurriedly got up and headed toward them, and Martha abandoned her meal preparations to see what was happening.
“That stuff costs a fortune!” Judas Iscariot came around the table, looming over her with indignation. “You could have sold that and given the money to the poor. Foolish girl—why are you wasting it?”
But their voices seemed to be coming from a great distance, so focused was she on her task. Mary was used to being scolded. Judas had never paid much attention to the poor before now, she thought ruefully.
As Jesus raised a hand to quiet the men, she bent even lower, shielding her face behind the curtain of her hair. The veil of hair seemed to give permission for shy tears to escape, tears she hadn’t known she’d been holding back. They dotted Jesus’s feet like tiny stars, and Mary thought of how he had brought them a whole firmament of new light with his teachings. She bent lower still, taking hold of the long strands of her hair and reverently drying his feet.
Laying a protective hand on her head, Jesus said, “Leave her be. She alone among you knows what she is doing. You can help the poor at any time. They will always be with you, but you will not always have me.”
She met his gaze as he said, “Let her save the rest for my burial.” The sadness underscoring his words seemed to curl around her, making her a partner in his thoughts. Her next breath didn’t come. Nor the one after that. She had to force herself to breathe, as she would need to force herself to live by faith after he had gone.
And then it all happened so fast. Before the week was out, as he had foretold and as she had feared, Jesus was laid to rest in a tomb.