Mary (sister of Lazarus)

• Mary (sister of Lazarus)

127:3.5Af­ter the Pass­over sup­per Mary sat down to talk with James while Martha, Laz­a­rus, and Je­sus talked to­gether far into the night. The next day they at­tended the tem­ple ser­vices, and James was re­ceived into the com­mon­wealth of Is­rael. That morn­ing, as they paused on the brow of Oli­vet to view the tem­ple, while James ex­claimed in won­der, Je­sus gazed on Je­ru­sa­lem in si­lence. James could not com­pre­hend his brother’s de­meanor. That night they again re­turned to Beth­any and would have de­parted for home the next day, but James was in­sis­tent on their go­ing back to visit the tem­ple, ex­plain­ing that he wanted to hear the teach­ers. And while this was true, se­cretly in his heart he wanted to hear Je­sus par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sions, as he had heard his mother tell about. Ac­cord­ingly, they went to the tem­ple and heard the dis­cus­sions, but Je­sus asked no ques­tions. It all seemed so puerile and in­signif­i­cant to this awak­en­ing mind of man and God—he could only pity them. James was dis­ap­pointed that Je­sus said noth­ing. To his in­quiries Je­sus only made re­ply, “My hour has not yet come.”

127:6.5Je­sus passed on through Je­ru­sa­lem, only paus­ing to look upon the tem­ple and the gath­er­ing throngs of vis­i­tors. He had a strange and in­creas­ing aver­sion to this Herod-built tem­ple with its po­lit­i­cally ap­pointed priest­hood. He wanted most of all to see Laz­a­rus, Martha, and Mary. Laz­a­rus was the same age as Je­sus and now head of the house; by the time of this visit Laz­a­rus’s mother had also been laid to rest. Martha was a lit­tle over one year older than Je­sus, while Mary was two years younger. And Je­sus was the idol­ized ideal of all three of them.

190:2.6And David did not long wait, for the fourth ap­pear­ance of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred shortly be­fore two o’clock in this very home of Martha and Mary, when he ap­peared vis­i­bly be­fore his earthly fam­ily and their friends, twenty in all. The Mas­ter ap­peared in the open back door, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Greet­ings to those once near me in the flesh and fel­low­ship for my broth­ers and sis­ters in the king­dom of heaven. How could you doubt? Why have you lin­gered so long be­fore choos­ing to fol­low the light of truth with a whole heart? Come, there­fore, all of you into the fel­low­ship of the Spirit of Truth in the Fa­ther’s king­dom.” As they be­gan to re­cover from the first shock of their amaze­ment and to move to­ward him as if to em­brace him, he van­ished from their sight.

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.

162:8.3As Martha bus­ied her­self with all these sup­posed du­ties, she was per­turbed be­cause Mary did noth­ing to help. There­fore she went to Je­sus and said: “Mas­ter, do you not care that my sis­ter has left me alone to do all of the serv­ing? Will you not bid her to come and help me?” Je­sus an­swered: “Martha, Martha, why are you al­ways anx­ious about so many things and trou­bled by so many tri­fles? Only one thing is re­ally worth while, and since Mary has cho­sen this good and need­ful part, I shall not take it away from her. But when will both of you learn to live as I have taught you: both serv­ing in co-op­er­a­tion and both re­fresh­ing your souls in uni­son? Can you not learn that there is a time for ev­ery­thing—that the lesser mat­ters of life should give way be­fore the greater things of the heav­enly king­dom?”

168:5.3Soon af­ter this Martha and Mary dis­posed of their lands at Beth­any and joined their brother in Perea. Mean­time, Laz­a­rus had be­come the trea­surer of the church at Phil­a­del­phia. He be­came a strong sup­porter of Ab­ner in his con­tro­versy with Paul and the Je­ru­sa­lem church and ul­ti­mately died, when 67 years old, of the same sick­ness that car­ried him off when he was a younger man at Beth­any.

190:1.9When David had taken leave of his breth­ren, he went over to the home of Joseph for his mother, and they then went out to Beth­any to join the wait­ing fam­ily of Je­sus. David abode there in Beth­any with Martha and Mary un­til af­ter they had dis­posed of their earthly pos­ses­sions, and he ac­com­pa­nied them on their jour­ney to join their brother, Laz­a­rus, at Phil­a­del­phia.

124:6.9On the east­ern slopes of Oli­vet they paused for rest in the bor­ders of a lit­tle vil­lage called Beth­any. The hos­pitable vil­lagers poured forth to min­is­ter to the pil­grims, and it hap­pened that Joseph and his fam­ily had stopped near the house of one Si­mon, who had three chil­dren about the same age as Je­sus—Mary, Martha, and Laz­a­rus. They in­vited the Naz­a­reth fam­ily in for re­fresh­ment, and a life­long friend­ship sprang up be­tween the two fam­i­lies. Many times af­ter­ward, in his event­ful life, Je­sus stopped in this home.

141:9.2The dis­ci­ples of John re­mained at Beth­any be­yond the Jor­dan, teach­ing and bap­tiz­ing the mul­ti­tudes, so that Je­sus was ac­com­pa­nied only by the twelve when he ar­rived at Laz­a­rus’s home. Here Je­sus and the apos­tles tar­ried for five days, rest­ing and re­fresh­ing them­selves be­fore go­ing on to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over. It was a great event in the lives of Martha and Mary to have the Mas­ter and his apos­tles in the home of their brother, where they could min­is­ter to their needs.

127:6.3Al­though they could hardly af­ford it, Je­sus had a strange long­ing to go up to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over. His mother, know­ing of his re­cent ex­pe­ri­ence with Re­becca, wisely urged him to make the jour­ney. He was not markedly con­scious of it, but what he most wanted was an op­por­tu­nity to talk with Laz­a­rus and to visit with Martha and Mary. Next to his own fam­ily he loved these three most of all.

167:4.2Je­sus was very fond of Martha, Mary, and their brother, Laz­a­rus; he loved them with a fer­vent af­fec­tion. His first and hu­man thought was to go to their as­sis­tance at once, but an­other idea came into his com­bined mind. He had al­most given up hope that the Jew­ish lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem would ever ac­cept the king­dom, but he still loved his peo­ple, and there now oc­curred to him a plan whereby the scribes and Phar­isees of Je­ru­sa­lem might have one more chance to ac­cept his teach­ings; and he de­cided, his Fa­ther will­ing, to make this last ap­peal to Je­ru­sa­lem the most pro­found and stu­pen­dous out­ward work­ing of his en­tire earth ca­reer. The Jews clung to the idea of a won­der-work­ing de­liv­erer. And though he re­fused to stoop to the per­for­mance of ma­te­rial won­ders or to the en­act­ment of tem­po­ral ex­hi­bi­tions of po­lit­i­cal power, he did now ask the Fa­ther’s con­sent for the man­i­fes­ta­tion of his hith­erto un­ex­hib­ited power over life and death.

125:2.7On Wednes­day of the Pass­over week, Je­sus was per­mit­ted to go home with Laz­a­rus to spend the night at Beth­any. This evening, Laz­a­rus, Martha, and Mary heard Je­sus dis­cuss things tem­po­ral and eter­nal, hu­man and di­vine, and from that night on they all three loved him as if he had been their own brother.

139:12.10But these wicked and dan­ger­ous ideas did not take def­i­nite shape un­til the day when a grate­ful woman broke an ex­pen­sive box of in­cense at Je­sus’ feet. This seemed waste­ful to Ju­das, and when his pub­lic protest was so sweep­ingly dis­al­lowed by Je­sus right there in the hear­ing of all, it was too much. That event de­ter­mined the mo­bi­liza­tion of all the ac­cu­mu­lated hate, hurt, mal­ice, prej­u­dice, jeal­ousy, and re­venge of a life­time, and he made up his mind to get even with he knew not whom; but he crys­tal­lized all the evil of his na­ture upon the one in­no­cent per­son in all the sor­did drama of his un­for­tu­nate life just be­cause Je­sus hap­pened to be the chief ac­tor in the episode which marked his pass­ing from the pro­gres­sive king­dom of light into that self-cho­sen do­main of dark­ness.

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.”

172:1.8Both 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.

168:0.4Many friends from near-by ham­lets and oth­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem came over to com­fort the sor­row-stricken sis­ters. Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters were the chil­dren of a well-to-do and hon­or­able Jew, one who had been the lead­ing res­i­dent of the lit­tle vil­lage of Beth­any. And not­with­stand­ing that all three had long been ar­dent fol­low­ers of Je­sus, they were highly re­spected by all who knew them. They had in­her­ited ex­ten­sive vine­yards and olive or­chards in this vicin­ity, and that they were wealthy was fur­ther at­tested by the fact that they could af­ford a pri­vate burial tomb on their own premises. Both of their par­ents had al­ready been laid away in this tomb.