Then I remembered

Holy Week Stories with Christ Church Uniting and The Effective Living Centre

Three stories, for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Holy Week.

Listen to or read one a day as a meditation if you wish, or all at once any time.

Loosely inspired by John 11–12, we hear from Mary, sister of Lazarus, a Temple soldier, and Mary, mother of Jesus. Each story is an imagined possibility out of the gaps the Bible narratives leave. Each meditation offers provocations to invite you into your own work of imagination. Be creative, wonder, compose, reflect.

You may use in your own or your faith community’s worship this Holy Week.

Please do not reproduce for any other use or publication without permission.

1. Mary, sister of Lazarus

Story

The crowd the day before was frenetic, hyped up with expectation, drinking up rumour, stirring up that madness collective that makes an individual forget themselves in the euphoria of being swept along feeling somehow set free from everyday life for this moment alone –

My ears were still ringing a whole day later. We were home again, the twelve, the women, and Jesus, with us or our neighbours, on the outskirts of the city. We were getting ready to host them all for a meal; Jesus would no doubt teach us again, answer a question or recount an ancient story anew for today.

Lazarus came in as I was setting plates out, water bowls for cleansing fingers … I could still feel it, the pressing anxiety of those days when Lazarus was ill and we were waiting for Jesus to come. The disappointment when he did not get here in time to prevent it, or even to say goodbye. Looking at my brother now, I imagined I could see the shadow of death still lingering over his shoulder, in his eyes. It had seemed to bring him some comfort, when we bathed him, anointed him, that day death came for him. To give us women some sort of peace, to enact the rituals of anointing, keening, burying, in those days that followed.

Jesus came in after his walk alone – precious rare moments he finds – and his words came back to me all of a sudden: I will suffer, I will die. I shuddered to recall the looks on the faces of the leaders yesterday. If Jesus goes back to the city, I felt so sure in that moment, they will put him to death. I don’t know how it will happen, but I could not ignore it anymore. Death was coming, and no one could prevent it; not even Jesus would prevent it.

And then, I remembered: the perfume. Given by a would-be-suitor scared off by our close connection to Jesus, rabble-rouser, so he said.

There is something I can do.

When he sat that evening in our home, I opened that jar, and I poured it all out, that costly, costly, perfume, and I anointed our friend as I had anointed Lazarus’ body in death. I said nothing, but Jesus understood, and accepted my gift as I intended: love, acceptance, preparation for the inevitable, and the only thing I could do.

Provocations

It’s a gendered story, this; for the place and role of a woman was in those days so defined by her being a woman.

In death, the women did the anointing, the preparing for burial. Perhaps also, as I have imagined here, preparing the dying for death.

But I wonder.

What might happen if we change the pourer of the ointment to be Lazarus? In gratitude for the life Jesus restores in him? In solidarity, for, in John’s account, Lazarus is himself under threat of death from the leaders of their community.

Would you queer the story entirely, and have Lazarus and Jesus more than ‘friends’?

Would you blow our masculine stereotypes away with a tenderness between friends we hardly allow straight, Australian men?

Would it be the women how protest, if a man took their role in this moment connected with Jesus’ approaching death?

How would you imagine the story of Jesus, anointed?

2. A Temple Soldier

Story

The leaders were fuming, this Jesus from Nazareth, his teaching calling their teaching and practice into question. His interpreting of Torah throwing shade all over theirs.

Our commander reckoned it must be hitting home or touching raw nerves, showing them what they did not want to see about change they did not want to make – for them to be sputtering so much, seeking so hard to shut him down.

Whatever. I could see, new as I was to the Temple guard, that making them happy might be a way to get myself off the dirt-shovelling bottom of the ladder. And that was when I remembered: my second cousin Tamar was married to one of those men who left everything, including her and the kids, to follow this Jesus. Mum could not stop going on about it at the time – she does love a scandal!

I changed out of my uniform and left the barracks to search the neighbourhood we thought they were stopping in. Not there, but I did manage to convince someone to tell me where they were eating tonight, and eventually, I found Jo.

I pretended to be interested in joining; asked about the group – are you all convinced about this guy? The authorities seem pretty keen to end this, and violently if they have to.

Well, some are grumbling, I have to admit, my cousin’s husband told me. But we must stay strong: why doubt him now, after all we’ve seen in him?!

It must hurt, I said, to feel some might be losing faith?

Just then, one of the others emerged from the outhouse, to go back inside. A mild outburst of disgust from my kinsman – Humph. Judas. He has always been painfully tight with the purse strings, but lately, it’s all he cares about. That, and when are we taking up arms – I don’t think he gets Jesus at all.

Yeah, I said, Your guy is all about peace, right? Love, being kind to anyone, stuff all the rules about doing it ‘right’.

Listen, he said, I gotta go back in, but come back early tomorrow, if you want to hear more from Jesus himself. I mean it – he is so worth listening to. It will change your life.

I did come back, with my commander and a Scribe he was close to. I’d told them there was dissatisfaction, and one who might like money enough to help them get their man …

Provocations

From who else’s point of view could you tell Judas’s story?

What might his family have thought? Or another disciple?

Could you imagine more of what Jesus might think or feel, than what the biblical stories tell us?

How would you tell his story, in the voice of Judas himself?

What choices do you need to make about his motivation, or his autonomy? Is this entirely pre-ordained, so he is somehow compelled by history or prophecy or God to take his course of action?

What might you want to say, yourself, to Judas? To Jesus about Judas? To that Temple soldier?

3. Mary, mother of Jesus

Story

Joseph did not like it, but I had to go. My son had told us we were not his family – and yes that hurt. But when I remembered how he had always been, welcoming anyone into his care as if they were kin – it made some sense that his picture of family would be bigger than what we usually see. Jesus had always seen things differently; and usually in a way that made sense, once you sat with it for a while.

So I left.

A group were going to Jerusalem for the Passover Pilgrimage, and I had heard that Jesus was going this year, too. I had to see him. The life I had carried, the boy I had loved. My son. He was still my son.

I was in the crowd when they cried Hosanna! Hosannah – for my son?! They pressed in hard around him, waved branches, shouted over and over and over – hosanna! I couldn’t get near. I was afraid to lose my group – this city I had been in only once before, when I had lost him that first time.

Whispers he’d gone back out to Bethany, but we stayed in Jerusalem. There were rituals and gatherings all week to take part in. I met many who had travelled with Jesus for a time, or followed after him in the larger group, for they say he kept a smaller group close on the Way. One had been healed by the lake; one in a synagogue – on a Sabbath! Many had heard his stories and teaching and felt inspired to leave life as they knew it and follow him. He gets to the heart of Torah, they enthused, you know: the purpose behind all the rituals, and makes it make sense! Others spoke of how they had felt transformed when he had seen them and made them feel welcome – lepers, women, tax collectors. Our community pushes these folk aside, but he, they said, he showed them love and it made them feel whole. My son! Could they really be speaking of my son?

I met her at a well, another Mary. The women I was with had told me this Mary – Magdalene they called her – was close to Jesus, had travelled with him for some time.

I hesitated for the briefest moment – then I remembered why I was here.

‘Mary?’

She turned to me with such openness: ‘Yes, I am Mary.’

‘Are you with Jesus and his friends?’

‘Yes,’ she said again, ‘I am a friend of Jesus of Nazareth.’

‘Mary, I am his mother.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to bother him – I do want to tell him I love him, and that I understand. I see – all his is showing us – I see.’

She seemed to look deeper into my eyes – was she looking for truth or deception, or some semblance of family connection? It seems she liked what she found, for she put down her bucket and took me by both hands, and said again, ‘Yes. I believe you do see. Come and join us.’