Luke 10:39-42
Sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word
She takes the posture of a disciple in a house where she was expected in the kitchen. She is told she has chosen the good part, and it shall not be taken away.
People of the Bible
Mary of Bethany
Is found at his feet all three times she appears, and the third time she breaks a year’s wages over them.
Every scene she is in puts her in the same posture. In Luke she sits at his feet and hears his word while the house is busy, which was the position of a student and not the position of a woman in that room. In John, when her brother has died, she falls at his feet and says the same sentence Martha said, and the response to hers is not an argument but tears. Nothing is recorded of her outside those three occasions.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Mary of Bethany
- 01
- 02
John 11:28-33
She fell down at his feet
She comes only when called, weeps, and says what her sister said. He groans in the spirit and is troubled, and the shortest verse in the Bible follows.
- 03
John 12:3
The house was filled with the odour
She anoints his feet and wipes them with her hair. The smell is what the room notices, and John records it as if the fragrance were the point.
- 04
Matthew 26:6-13
Told for a memorial of her
The disciples call it waste and are answered with burial. The promise that follows is unique in the gospels and it is made about a woman nobody else defends.
Why it matters
The anointing is the one thing the gospels promise will be remembered. She breaks an alabaster box of spikenard, very costly, and the house fills with it. Judas prices it at three hundred pence, which is most of a year’s work, and calls it waste. The defence given for her is that she has done it against the day of his burying, and the promise attached is that wherever this gospel is preached, what she did will be told for a memorial of her.
14 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
Matthew 26:47-75; Mark 14:43-72; Luke 22:47-62; John 18:1-27
Before the Cock Crow
Matthew 26:1-16; Mark 14:1-11; John 12:1-8
The Fragrance and the Silver
Matthew 26:17-35; Mark 14:12-31; Luke 22:7-38; John 13-17
This Do in Remembrance
