Wednesday

According to the Gospel of Mark, today was another day of Jesus teaching in the Temple and retiring to rest on the Mount of Olives. In fact, today Jesus went further, on up the Mount and all the way into the nearby town of Bethany, where a past beneficiary of Jesus's healing power (and, we can surmise, current follower) lived, someone formerly known as Simon the Leper.

Here Jesus reclined with his followers, but their heads were all in very different places. His followers were probably still very excited and disoriented by the triumphal entry, the temple cleansing, and the continued teaching of Jesus. Their leader, however, was beginning to struggle more directly under the weight of what he felt called to do.

We know Jesus was mindful of the immediacy of his suffering and death because of how he responded to what happened that Wednesday night in the home of Simon. An unnamed woman forced her way into the room of reclining men (such an act itself would have been scandalous in Jesus' day) and once inside she poured a jar of expensive ointment (worth about a year's salary for the average laborer) over Jesus' head. While the disciples protested, Jesus thanked the woman, and defended her actions as having been a great service to him.

I can only imagine how he felt, but I can guess that he was appreciative of the kindness, however extravagant, because he knew it was the last such pleasure he would feel before his suffering and death in the following days.

And I'm willing to give the human Jesus this small moment of pleasure.

Tomorrow, I'm afraid, won't be so pleasurable.