Death Is Not the Last Word

“But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” — Luke 15:20

Our reading in John’s Gospel is grand drama in miniature. In one short paragraph, Jesus is invited to dinner in a private home, and at that dinner one of his followers, Mary, breaks open a jar of “costly perfume” and rubs it on Jesus’s feet. It is hard to overemphasize what a radical, and perhaps scandalous, gesture this is.

As Mary anoints Jesus with tender intimacy, she both honors him and foreshadows his imminent arrest and death. The disciples in the room protest that she is wasteful — the perfume could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor — but perhaps they also find her extravagance ostentatious and grandiose.

Jesus disagrees. Leave her alone, he says, for “she bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.” Jesus blesses both her premonition and her compassion, seeing her gesture as an overflow of profound belief in his mission.

Mary’s intuition is rooted in love — the kind of love that reflects God’s abundance. This is not a love that hoards a beautiful treasure, even for the purpose of good ends, but a love that spills over from the broken places in our lives.

Amazingly, though, none of these elements is the most astounding part of the narrative. The most incredible part is in the very first sentence, almost hidden and unnoticed. The home Jesus is visiting belongs to Lazarus, and seated at the dinner table is Lazarus himself.

Why is this astounding? For the simple reason that Lazarus was recently dead — wrapped in burial clothes and placed in a tomb — only a few days before. In other words, the entire company is casually dining with a man they have seen raised from the dead. Lazarus is breaking bread with them, laughing with them, and watching the events unfold.

In a real sense, this is the heart of these verses. Mary’s broken jar is not merely a portent of Jesus’s death. It is a story bathed in the light of a much greater revelation: the truth that God is the God of resurrection.

Jesus does not show a lack of concern for the poor. This would make no sense, given his insistence on caring for those in need — a concern echoed across all four Gospels. Rather, Jesus reframes his purpose as an eternal concern: the truth of God’s reality breaking into human lives.

Lazarus will die again, and Mary, too, will die, but in Jesus the surety of life beyond death becomes possible. Jesus is raised to eternal life as “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18). His personal resurrection is just the beginning, for it uncovers the promise of resurrection for all who come to rest in him.

Mary’s powerful deed is therefore an act of recognition. Death is coming, but it will not have the last word. Her overflowing perfume fills the air with joyful fragrance. Lazarus is alive, and so is God.

— Summerlee Staten

Summerlee Staten is executive director, Faith Formation and Education.

Read all of Sunday’s Scriptures

Step Into the Story

Here are some ways to think more deeply about the promise of resurrection.

Visual Art

In this sparse but evocative medieval Spanish painting on display at The Cloisters in New York City, we see Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, with Mary and Martha looking on.

Theology

The resurrection is a vindication of Jesus’s ministry, “a gospel call” to stop the multidimensional violence of our world that includes “systemic patterns of exploitation, inequality, marginalization, oppression, and overall injustice,” writes the Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, author and visiting professor of theology at Harvard Divinity School. “The resurrection is God’s response to anything that insults the sacredness of all those created in God’s image.”

Poetry

Poet and priest Malcolm Guite captures the beauty of the moment Mary anoints the feet of Jesus in “The Anointing at Bethany”: The whole room richly fills to feast the senses with all the yearning such a fragrance brings.