Mary Poured Perfume on Jesus

We struggled a bit with the identity of the Mary who poured perfume on Jesus because Mark refers to her only as Mary. Matthew records the incident word for word just as Mark did but The Book of John identifies the location as the home of Lazarus rather than Simon the Leper and identifies the woman as Martha’s sister Mary. Further, unlike Mark and Matthew who described the perfume being poured on Christ’s head, John writes that Mary poured it on his feet and wiped it with her hair. Given that she watched Jesus resurrect Lazarus, her actions are believable. Luke describes the event as a sinful woman who cried tears on his feet and then wiped them with her hair and poured perfume on them. While the stories differ, the point is the same; the disciples shouldn’t have criticized her.

We also marveled at Jesus having said, “The poor you will always have…” It is temping to think that, in a Christian world, there would be no poor but I thought he was saying that anointing him was a once in a life time (all time) event while helping the poor was part of the disciples routine activity.