Mary and Martha of Bethany

Message for worship on the 22nd day of the Third Month, 2026 given by Elizabeth Terney

Ilyas Basim Kjuri Bazzi Rahib, Mary Anoints Christ's Feet

These two Bible stories feature two women: Martha and Mary of Bethany. They are the sisters of Lazarus. They are friends and loved ones of Jesus. We can see from the scripture that they have a trusting and honest relationship with him.

The first story read today is often called the raising of Lazarus. However, it’s mostly about Jesus’s relationship with Mary and Martha. Of the forty-four verses about these events, only seven have their setting at Lazarus’ tomb. While the story seems to end triumphantly with the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the author describes in detail the grief, anger, and hope of Martha, Mary, and Jesus.

The story starts before our scripture reading did - with a message from Martha and Mary to Jesus that their brother, Jesus’ friend, Lazarus, is ill. Jesus waits two days after receiving the message before beginning his journey to Bethany. He indicates this is purposeful – for the glory of the Son of God. By the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days. This is significant because Jewish belief is that the soul lingers near the body for three days. Therefore, Lazarus is truly dead, and his soul has left the body behind.

We are told that other Jews have come to console the sisters, some likely from Jerusalem since it is so very close. Remember, Jesus’ life is in danger in Jerusalem.

When Martha learns Jesus is on his way into town, she immediately goes out to meet him. And she says, “Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” She complains to, almost confronts Jesus. Her language is similar to a psalm of complaint, which like most psalms of complaint is followed by a statement of faith, “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus tells her that her brother will rise again, and she believes he’s talking of the resurrection on the last day. He gives one of the nine “I AM” statement in the Gospel of John, “I am the resurrection and the life.” In the past month we’ve heard two of his other I AM statements, I am the living water, and I am the bread of life. Jesus continues, “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She says, “Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” This is a stronger statement of faith than even Peter’s declaration in John 6:69. John puts this strongest statement of faith in the mouth of a woman. A woman! In Jesus’ time, this is amazing. I believe it’s yet another example of how Jesus intended to break the mold of patriarchy.

Martha returns home to her sister Mary, saying, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” I feel her naming Jesus as The Teacher is significant. It’s quite possible Mary and Martha considered themselves disciples.

Mary gets up quickly and goes to him. Jesus has remained outside the village, perhaps hoping that Mary would be able to meet with him by herself. However, those who were consoling Mary see her rise quickly and leave and decide to follow her to the tomb. They end up accompanying her to Jesus’ side. Mary kneels at his feet and says to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” just as Martha had complained. Mary is weeping, as are those who came with her. Jesus becomes “greatly disturbed in spirit”. According to many English translations, he was “deeply moved,” however, reliable sources tell me the Greek indicates something different. It indicates anger & indignation. Jesus snorts in rebuke like a horse, according to the Greek (but sometimes even the Greek Bible interpretations don’t follow the traditional Greek meaning found in other Greek texts). If this translation is correct, why is he annoyed with Mary and/or her followers? Is he annoyed at them? One possible interpretation is that he knows some of these weeping Jews will report his next actions to the Pharisees. He says, “Where have you laid him?” and they ask him to follow to the site. Jesus began to weep. However, the Greek here is also strange, because it doesn’t indicate why he has tears, merely that he has them. This is another one of those gaps in scripture that we fill in in various ways.

I find this literal Greek translation of this interaction difficult. Many who read that Jesus weeps or wept are moved by his humanity, his grief, his being more like us than before thought. If God weeps with us in pain, that’s powerful stuff. The part that gets confusing is Jesus earlier telling the disciples that Lazarus’ “illness does not lead to death; rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” And, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” So, knowing that Lazarus is dead and that he will raise him – why would he be overcome by tears in this moment? One possible explanation is seeing Mary’s grief. I know that my tears are often brought forth by the anguish of another, so that’s probably why I think of this explanation. Others say that even though he knows he can raise his friend, having him die is still painful. Still others suggest he’s dreading the future. By coming so close to Jerusalem, he’s possibly accelerating the timetable of his death. He’s yet again raising the anger of the Pharisees and chief priests. They want to end his life even more after he raises Lazarus from the dead. The Jews who will convert because of Lazarus’s raising are a serious concern among the chief priests. In John 12:10 we’re told that they also plan to put Lazarus to death.

The answer is, we don’t know. None of this story is repeated in the other three Gospels. We only know as much as the gospel writer tells us. I can only believe what I believe – that God suffers when we suffer. That the Son of God seeing Mary of Bethany’s tears makes him sorry she was put through this pain in order to serve the glory of the Son of God.

Then, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Martha, in this scene, objects to the stone being moved away from the cave that housed Lazarus’ body. “Lord, already there is a stench.” Jesus reminds her, “Did I not tell you if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

Our second story of Mary and Martha comes a bit later. It’s foretold in John 11:1-2, which reads, “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus is ill.”

The writer expects the reader to know the names Mary and Martha and the story of the anointing. This is interesting because a pair named Mary and Martha are only mentioned in Luke’s Gospel, but without a brother, Lazarus, and it takes place in Galilee. Two sisters who disagree on the right thing to do, and Jesus takes a side. The story of the anointing is mentioned in other gospels, but it is not Mary of Bethany who is credited with it. However, the oral tradition after Jesus’ ministry must have frequently mentioned Mary and Martha for such an expectation to exist on the part of the author of John’s gospel.

Six days before Passover, Martha serves a dinner for Jesus, where Lazarus is one of the men reclining with him. Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus by putting perfume of pure nard on his feet and wiping it with her hair. Judas, who is not portrayed charitably, objects to Mary’s extravagance. Jesus defends her actions. He suggests she will keep the rest for his burial.

This has similarities to the story in Luke about the female sinner who anoints Jesus with ointment and wipes it with her hair and tears. But the stories take place in different locations. In Bethany, at the home of her brother Lazarus, his friend, in the case of John, and in a Pharisee’s home in an unnamed town in Galilee in Luke. When you look at Mark and Matthew, they have very similar stories – an unnamed woman anoints Jesus’ head with ointment in Bethany at Simon the Leper’s home. In the nearly identical passages in Mark and Matthew, Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” It’s too bad they didn’t recall her name.

The woman who anointed Jesus may have been a prophet, to know that she should anoint the Messiah.

One-fourth of women in Judea in the first century were named Mary. It would have been helpful to us if that were not true. Having fewer women named Mary would certainly prevent a lot of the conflation of characters that occurs in the interpretation of the Gospels.

Our human minds love patterns. We like to compare and contrast, and try to make similar things the same. Have you ever watched the news when they’re trying to interview eyewitnesses to an event? Eye-witness accounts are never the same. Everyone has different perspectives, different levels of detail-orientedness, different experiences, and biases. The Gospels are based on other accounts, in addition to any eyewitness accounts that went in.

There’s a lot we don’t know about Martha and Mary. How old are they? Do they still live with Lazarus? Are they or have they been married? What kind of households do they live in? Are they economically well off, poor, or somewhere in the middle? What do they look like? What are their temperaments? What does Mary think about Jesus snorting at her and then weeping – she’s silent.

There are a lot of unknowns when you read the Bible. There are many gaps in the stories. It’s natural to want to fill them in. We do it all the time. People wanting to understand the history of Jesus try to harmonize the four gospels to find the “true” Jesus.

The way you fill in gaps can reflect or create your theology. There are four different accounts of Jesus’s ministry, death, and resurrection that were canonized in the Bible we read today. People want to make it all make sense. To fill the gaps within each Gospel and between the Gospels. Especially if you believe the Bible is inerrant and literal. Then each bit of difference needs to be explained. The stories must be reconciled, harmonized, unified.

I believe this is unnecessary and sometimes dangerous. Overlooking the differences in texts means you're missing important details unique to each Gospel.

If you believe God inspired the gospel writers, you might ask why there was not just one Gospel.

Why not one version of the story? Why would God inspire so many?

Perhaps the number of viewpoints is part of the point. Each has an important aspect of the story to tell, yet none has the full story, the complete story, the Truth. It’s much like sending a bunch of poets to look at a single tree. Each of them writes a poem reflecting their view of the tree – affected by their history, their taste, their opinions, and their style of writing. All those poets describe the tree – but it’s not the full tree, it’s not everything one could possibly know about the tree. If you took all the poems, you could not recreate the tree, or even an image of the True tree. If you took all the poems and tried to merge them into one grand poem – you’d fail and likely end up misrepresenting what had been True in each of the poems themselves.

Pope Gregory the Great created a misrepresentative mishmashing of stories that makes Mary Magdalene a prostitute. In 591, in a homily, Pope Gregory the Great merged three figures, Mary Magdalene (from whom 7 demons were cast), Mary of Bethany, and the unnamed sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, creating the lasting but false image of Mary Magdalene, the repentant prostitute. The Roman Catholic Church did not formally acknowledge this error until 1969. They later confirmed Mary Magdalene’s status as the “Apostle to the Apostles.” However, since not everyone Christian is Catholic anymore, this change has not made it out to all denominations. Many denominations, and some Catholics, still believe this conflation of characters. Mary of Bethany was not the sinner woman, and certainly not a former prostitute. And neither was Mary Magdalene.

In a world that denigrates women, that has Christians who believe women cannot be ministers or priests or even vote, men and women need to remember not to conflate Bible stories, characters, or instructions. We know from the Samaritan Woman at the Well that Nathan described two weeks ago that Jesus’ relations with women were bizarre for his time. I believe Jesus didn’t believe in patriarchy. There are many examples throughout scripture and in archeology of women in prominent positions in the Church after Jesus died. At some point, this egalitarian influence was drowned. Revivify it, like Lazarus was raised, so that the place of women in Christianity is revived.