Forever Nameless: Forever Remembered
(The Woman At Bethany)
Mr. Peter C. Raymond
August 8, 2004
Presbyterian Church in Sudbury

Mark 14: 3-9

That woman. We don’t even know her name.  She is certainly nameless in the Markan and Matthean accounts of what I like to call the incident at Bethany and the Lukan and Johannine purported accounts of that event are so different in so many fundamentally critical aspects that, from an exegetical perspective, I suspect they are really not (as convention has it) talking about the same event. So she is nameless. Presumably she was always nameless. Yet, at least to my way of thinking, she was and will forever be the principal focus of the most poignant moment in our Lord’s life. An incident like no other in its unparalleled loveliness and at once transcendent and ascendant significance. The nameless woman at Bethany.

Some years ago Sandra and I got some disquieting - actually rotten- news. First a call from the coaches at our son’s now alma mater. Then a call from Kevin himself. Seems he had just blown out his knee at football practice. He’d been treated at the hospital and released but was unable to walk and the doctors wanted the swelling to subside before they treated him further. He was in pain, confined to him room and bitterly disappointed. His season (for which he had left for his Freshman year a month before classes started there for practice) was over. Actually, his entire football career hung in the balance. To make matters worse, classes (on an expansive hilly campus where athletes are not given a free pass but expected to compete academically on an even plane) were to start the next day. Kevin had only turned eighteen less than a month earlier. He was very young and very scared. Sad! Hurting! Crushed! And very alone…four hours away from Mom and Dad. I knew we should not cave into the over- powering temptation to rush to his side-so Mom could hug him and Dad could at least go through the motions of  “checking things out.” That would defeat the principal education rationale for encouraging young folks to compete athletically at the scholastic and intercollegiate level. It is process of communal and individual maturation in which Mom and Dad cannot be a part.  But I so desperately much wanted him comforted. I remember my thoughts drifting back to a similar incident twenty-five years earlier. Different student-athlete. Different sport. Same last name and so many of the same scary quirks and characteristics. A freshman sitting on a hospital gurney soaked in blood from a pancaked proboscis splattered all over my face in a pre-season basketball scrimmage against Tufts. The regular season less than a week away. I was scared and alone-eight hours from home. I remember crying–partly from trauma to the sinus cavities - partly from the pain (any of you who have ever had a busted nose know exactly what I mean) - partly from disappointment – but mostly I guess because I wanted my Mom to make things better all the while fighting with the horrible fear (actually realized a few months later) that Mom who had suffered a heart attack two weeks earlier might not ever make things better…ever again. Then, unexpectedly and unannounced and out of nowhere a nurse appeared. She didn’t do much…simply took and squeezed my hand and said softly “we’re going to fix it sweetie”. I never caught her name. Never chatted with her.  In fact I never saw her again after that brief moment. But I have never ever forgotten her or the moment or the overwhelming sense of goodness and peace that she brought to momentarily abate my pain. I will not in this life ever know her name any more than I will ever forget her and twenty five years later as I agonized over my “little boy”, I so very much wanted him comforted as well. I prayed for his own comforter. Other considerations (like seasons and careers and depth charts and even classes) could wait but the need to feel the care of others…can never wait.  Next evening we of course called Kev. I was prepared to counsel my kid (always obsessed with the attainment of academic excellence – gets it entirely from his mother) not to worry about missing a few classes early. He excitedly interrupted my spiel to tell us about those same classes we figured he’d missed. Seems that our favorite non-ambulatory wide-out had gotten a lift-courtesy of the starting offensive line-the big guys (mostly juniors and seniors)-who arrived unannounced and unexpectedly at his room and thereafter unceremoniously carried him to class, returned him to his room and assured him of their intention to be back the following morning.   He never actually got their names and, of course, never hung out with them (football pecking orders seldom accommodate freshmen) but the sense that somebody right there really cared about him was unmistakable in his voice. His was almost joyful in his sense goodness momentarily abating a rotten predicament.

At one time or another we all get sick. Some sooner. Some later. To greater or lesser degrees and usually with far more serious consequences than a blown out knee or a busted snoot. But each of us encounter our own rotten predicaments. Our torments. Our moments of terrifying turmoil.

So did Jesus. You know I worry that we miss the point of our Lord’s divinity when we neglect the reality of his humanity Of course Now concentrating on that divinity is a necessary and appropriate incident of our confession. Jesus was after all Emmanuel and, as such, was and remains the one and only salvific presence in our lives.  But Jesus was also man. Fully and inexorably human with all of the same characteristics and joys and fears as you or I. From scripture we know that Jesus got hungry and tired. He had moments of great joy and depression and was at least subject to temptation. He had a wonderful sense of humor. He got angry and indignant. He could be tender and cursory. He got scared and He suffered…O my how He suffered.

From the earliest stages of His adult life, Jesus of Nazareth knew what he faced. What he faced was the dirty, nasty, bloody, disgusting, wretchedly painful, inordinately cruel affair of crucifixion. A debased tortuous execution which was as emotionally humiliating as it was searingly painful. A just awful fate which His own family would have considered a matter of divine reprobation and which the Romans used only for the worst of the worst. In fact, by the 1st century, Roman law prohibited the crucifixion of a Roman citizen. Jesus the man must have been beside himself. He was decent and committed and so very young. 30-33. A simple young man from tiny Nazareth about to be ravaged, torn, humiliated and brutally murdered in the big city of Jerusalem. He must have been petrified. So isolated and alone and helpless and, well…just plan scared. The kind of fear that makes the bones ache and the stomach churn. The kind of fear that is paralytic. A fate so horrific with no escape and no help.  Not even someone to talk to (much less understand). Just terror. Just darkness and hurt. Sickness and pain.  That young Galilean preacher must have been just plain devastated as he bravely struggled to finish His earthly mission…to teach and include and (what irony) to heal. He probably just wanted to cry. And, if I don’t miss my guess he probably shed many a tear long before those reported that final fateful night in Gethsemane.

Jesus, fully aware that the end was near, traveled some 2.5 miles south of Jerusalem to the suburb of Bethany. To the home of Simon for what was probably a late afternoon meal. Contextually (and assuming as accurate our modern interpretation of the sequence of Jesus’ final 48 hours) that dinner engagement would have occurred on the Wednesday immediately preceding Holy Thursday. It would have been His final evening meal before the Last Supper. His second to last evening meal in this life. He knew that. He knew the forces of misunderstanding and hatred and political-economic self-interest (not to mention more mundane matters of crowd control, political “turf”, a sewer system on the fritz and an bureaucrat peeved that his vacation was interrupted) were swirling in a madingly, deliberate and rapidly fermenting mixture of doom. You have probably noted that both Mark and Matthew report Jesus’ visit to Bethany immediately following the final decision of Joseph Caiphas and the Sanhedrin elite to seize Jesus and kill him…and immediately prior to the agreement of a trusted disciple Judas Iscariot (Judas the “Sword”…to betray Jesus. Betray… from the Greek meaning literally to hand over---to isolate and identify Jesus and thereby to facilitate His apprehension.

This was anything and everything but a happy time. Jesus must have been very sad. Very scared. Very sick. Very alone. Then…out of nowhere it seems- unexpectedly appears the nameless woman…. carrying an alabaster jar of nard (probably slang for spikenard…a plant (indigenous to India) which was highly because it produced a particularly fragrant, soothing, luxuriant and very expensive oil.  We are told she poured the oil on Jesus’ head. We read that she anointed Him.

Anointing, of course, was a matter reserved for royalty and that event at Bethany is susceptible of considerable metaphorical nuance as we interpret “anointing”. But clearly and undeniably what that woman did was to make Jesus the man feel special. She made Him feel loved and cared for and cared about…just at that very moment in His life when He undoubtedly didn’t much feel loved or special or cared about She shared her loving kind tenderness with a tormented man. She healed. She did not speak. She asked for nothing. We have no reason to believe she had met Jesus before…or any reason to believe that Jesus had the foggiest idea of who she was. I like to think she smiled at the Lord as she ministered to him through healing. I’ll bet Jesus smiled as he accepted that ministry. And that is what makes the incident at Bethany…okay…the “Anointing at Bethany”…so very very special…so touching and so moving. It was Jesus being ministered to It was Jesus receiving for a change. It was Jesus who was being healed. It was Jesus being cared for and cared about and made to feel special…and loved.  He must have been so deeply moved. It must have been a moment of such comfort for Him…knowing that somebody…truly cared about Him. Wanted to heal Him.

The woman clearly demonstrated that her mission that moment was of paramount important. Not a side trip of cordiality but a pilgrimage of abiding commitment. The ointment she used to sooth Jesus…the spikenard …was valued at 300 denari…the equivalent of nearly a year’s wages for the average 1st century laborer. We have absolutely no idea how she came up with that kind of money or otherwise got her hands on that jug of nard. What did she sacrifice? What did she sacrifice in her boldness? Whatever our unanswered questions, it is perfectly obvious how very dedicated she was to her mission. And Jesus was clearly moved.

Of course-just like us as the disciples- grumbled and complained. After all a years worth of wages could have been put to many more uses. Certainly many more uses of tangible practicality. Of course had she done that her widow of sanctified opportunity would have closed forever…48 hours later the young man she so tenderly comforted would be dead. So when the disciples scolded the woman for wastefulness…Jesus responded, ”Why do you trouble this woman”?…I hear real hurt in the voice of that fated young Nazarene as He almost pleads with his clueless and insensitive followers….”She has done what she could. She has done a good service for me. You will always” have other acts of kindness available to you (but) “you will not always have me”…How right he was! How sadly and terribly and earth-shatteringly right he was.

Dead two days later. The care and comfort of the woman didn’t alter or abate that reality. She did not affect His ultimate fate. But she did affect the process. At a time when it seemed the whole world wanted take something from Jesus …that nameless-faceless woman gave something to Jesus. She gave her love-her care-her gentle touch to a tortured soul-a pained body—a broken spirit.

She healed. And her healing was as powerful as that administered by any doctor or medical professional. Hippocrates was right in ultimately observing (after having spent a lifetime…400 years earlier…mightily endeavoring to separate the science of medicine from the emotive philosophy of medicine) the therapeutic criticality of “contentment with goodness”. The outcome of life on this earth just plain the same for us all. The path to that outcome need not be. We may be lucky enough to encounter the comfort of our own special “woman at Bethany”. We may be even luckier to reach out to another in emulation of that nameless woman. Maybe an unknown and unanticipated nurse or teammate or colleague or just am complete stranger. You or me or any one of us as a giver or a receiver. The comforted. The comforter. Who knows? But what I am sure of is this: that the healing…the real healing surely comes as we love and care and reach out as gentle comforters… just like that nameless woman at Bethany.

When the hoopla settles, she represents the essence of the Gospel. The point of the Great Good News! With deliberate care and loving tenderness, she humbly brought the message to life.  She healed a young man.  Of course…Jesus was God Among Us. He was also man among us. Both transcendent and ascendant and both so manifestly moved by that nameless woman’s kindness…as to proclaim “that wherever the good news is proclaimed…in the whole world…what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.

Nameless. Always remembered. That magnificent…precious…kind…powerful healer. That nameless woman at Bethany.

God Bless you all.
 

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