Oil for Anointing

Oil for Anointing
By Anna Wulfekuhle

Monday of Holy Week doesn’t have a special name or liturgy. After the fanfare of yesterday, I pack up my lunch and devotional life and head back into the work week, trying to remember the Sacred Head Surrounded as I make up new verses to Wheels on the Bus and help four-year-olds co-regulate.

But then two miles from Jerusalem, six days before a high religious holiday, three siblings have a dinner party.

“Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus, and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.”

Maybe it’s the two-too-many coffees, but this scene makes my heart feel like it’s going to burrow through my clavicle.

Oil for anointing— her whole future— a bottle the size of a gas station soda.

Feet that bring Good News Itself.

The apocalypse (from the Greek, uncover, reveal, unveil) of her hair.

Tears caught and kept in His flask.

The rebukes, the willful misunderstandings, the seething gazes.

“Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial.”

He told everyone in the room that she chose the better part, that it would not be taken away from her. He raised her brother from the dead. And now she has anointed the Anointed One, the Christ.

Our Eastern brothers and sisters refer to these seven days that we call Holy as the Week of the Bridegroom. On this Monday in Bethany, Mary is extravagant, wasteful, dangerous on behalf of Christ the Lover. This prenuptial display, the pouring out of her dowry, is scandalous.

So is the Cross.

I don’t know what to do with this today and I don’t want to be saccharine, but I want there to be nothing between Jesus and me. I want the fragrance of our love to fill the rooms we’re in together. I want to be the oil poured out in magnificent, lavish abandon. I want to be changed.

Palm Sunday