Going into Jerusalem

172:1.1Pil­grims from out­side of Judea, as well as the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties, had all been ask­ing: “What do you think? will Je­sus come up to the feast?” There­fore, when the peo­ple heard that Je­sus was at Beth­any, they were glad, but the chief priests and Phar­isees were some­what per­plexed. They were pleased to have him un­der their ju­ris­dic­tion, but they were a tri­fle dis­con­certed by his bold­ness; they re­mem­bered that on his pre­vi­ous visit to Beth­any, Laz­a­rus had been raised from the dead, and Laz­a­rus was be­com­ing a big prob­lem to the en­e­mies of Je­sus.

172:1.2Six days be­fore the Pass­over, on the evening af­ter the Sab­bath, all Beth­any and Beth­page joined in cel­e­brat­ing the ar­rival of Je­sus by a pub­lic ban­quet at the home of Si­mon. This sup­per was in honor of both Je­sus and Laz­a­rus; it was ten­dered in de­fi­ance of the San­hedrin. Martha di­rected the serv­ing of the food; her sis­ter Mary was among the women on­look­ers as it was against the cus­tom of the Jews for a woman to sit at a pub­lic ban­quet. The agents of the San­hedrin were pres­ent, but they feared to ap­pre­hend Je­sus in the midst of his friends.

172:1.3Je­sus talked with Si­mon about Joshua of old, whose name­sake he was, and re­cited how Joshua and the Is­raelites had come up to Je­ru­sa­lem through Jeri­cho. In com­ment­ing on the leg­end of the walls of Jeri­cho falling down, Je­sus said: “I am not con­cerned with such walls of brick and stone; but I would cause the walls of prej­u­dice, self-righ­teous­ness, and hate to crum­ble be­fore this preach­ing of the Fa­ther’s love for all men.”

172:1.4The ban­quet went along in a very cheer­ful and nor­mal man­ner ex­cept that all the apos­tles were un­usu­ally sober. Je­sus was ex­cep­tion­ally cheer­ful and had been play­ing with the chil­dren up to the time of com­ing to the ta­ble.

172:1.5Noth­ing out of the or­di­nary hap­pened un­til near the close of the feast­ing when Mary the sis­ter of Laz­a­rus stepped for­ward from among the group of women on­look­ers and, go­ing up to where Je­sus re­clined as the guest of honor, pro­ceeded to open a large al­abaster cruse of very rare and costly oint­ment; and af­ter anoint­ing the Mas­ter’s head, she be­gan to pour it upon his feet as she took down her hair and wiped them with it. The whole house be­came filled with the odor of the oint­ment, and ev­ery­body pres­ent was amazed at what Mary had done. Laz­a­rus said noth­ing, but when some of the peo­ple mur­mured, show­ing in­dig­na­tion that so costly an oint­ment should be thus used, Ju­das Is­car­iot stepped over to where An­drew re­clined and said: “Why was this oint­ment not sold and the money be­stowed to feed the poor? You should speak to the Mas­ter that he re­buke such waste.”

172:1.6Je­sus, know­ing what they thought and hear­ing what they said, put his hand upon Mary’s head as she knelt by his side and, with a kindly ex­pres­sion upon his face, said: “Let her alone, ev­ery one of you. Why do you trou­ble her about this, see­ing that she has done a good thing in her heart? To you who mur­mur and say that this oint­ment should have been sold and the money given to the poor, let me say that you have the poor al­ways with you so that you may min­is­ter to them at any time it seems good to you; but I shall not al­ways be with you; I go soon to my Fa­ther. This woman has long saved this oint­ment for my body at its burial, and now that it has seemed good to her to make this anoint­ing in an­tic­i­pa­tion of my death, she shall not be de­nied such sat­is­fac­tion. In the do­ing of this, Mary has re­proved all of you in that by this act she evinces faith in what I have said about my death and as­cen­sion to my Fa­ther in heaven. This woman shall not be re­proved for that which she has this night done; rather do I say to you that in the ages to come, wher­ever this gospel shall be preached through­out the whole world, what she has done will be spo­ken of in mem­ory of her.”

172:1.7It was be­cause of this re­buke, which he took as a per­sonal re­proof, that Ju­das Is­car­iot fi­nally made up his mind to seek re­venge for his hurt feel­ings. Many times had he en­ter­tained such ideas sub­con­sciously, but now he dared to think such wicked thoughts in his open and con­scious mind. And many oth­ers en­cour­aged him in this at­ti­tude since the cost of this oint­ment was a sum equal to the earn­ings of one man for one year—enough to pro­vide bread for five thou­sand per­sons. But Mary loved Je­sus; she had pro­vided this pre­cious oint­ment with which to em­balm his body in death, for she be­lieved his words when he fore­warned them that he must die, and it was not to be de­nied her if she changed her mind and chose to be­stow this of­fer­ing upon the Mas­ter while he yet lived.

172:1.8Both Laz­a­rus and Martha knew that Mary had long saved the money where­with to buy this cruse of spike­nard, and they heart­ily ap­proved of her do­ing as her heart de­sired in such a mat­ter, for they were well-to-do and could eas­ily af­ford to make such an of­fer­ing.

172:1.9When the chief priests heard of this din­ner in Beth­any for Je­sus and Laz­a­rus, they be­gan to take coun­sel among them­selves as to what should be done with Laz­a­rus. And pres­ently they de­cided that Laz­a­rus must also die. They rightly con­cluded that it would be use­less to put Je­sus to death if they per­mit­ted Laz­a­rus, whom he had raised from the dead, to live.