In this morning's Gospel story, Martha is serving at table. Lazarus is the minor celebrity that comes with overcoming death and getting to tell about it during dinner. The focus abruptly shifts to Mary, and her prophetic action of anointing Jesus: "Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair." The impact of her action is not readily apparent, since nard is one of those Biblical words - like cubits, and talents, and myrrh - that doesn't connote anything particular to most of us anymore. But as John writes, "The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume," Jesus and all of those present would have recognized its significance. Nard is a rare, precious distilled fragrance made from the muskroot, found only in the Himalayas of India and China and Nepal. It was so rare that the Greek poet Horace offered to send Virgil a whole barrel of his best wine in exchange for a small vial of nard. And in the Hebrew Bible nard is referred to in the Song of Songs, as a symbol of the intimate nature of the Bride's love; when the perfume of nard is named, the bride recognizes her beloved as such. Jesus himself recognizes the nard as having been bought to embalm his body for his own eventual funeral.

So it should come as no surprise that John uses the extravagance of a whole pound of pure nard as a symbol of revelation of the very nature of God. The extravagance of her gift - even in the moment of the gesture of kneeling at the feet of her teacher - makes this a profound moment of the mutuality of mentoring, Mary and Jesus each offering the other the very best that they had. Jesus, Mary knows, is the leader who is taking his followers beyond the law of the Torah to the law of the heart, beyond what has been prescribed as right, to what can be seen as right only in the moment that Jesus is able to give up everything for the sake of those he loves. In a flash of revelation, Mary sees Martha's service as the discipleship of service-a deaconate so to speak, and she knows that Jesus' way of being Lord of all will be anything but the domination of power. As Reuther has written: "The Christian gospel calls us all, as those baptized into the new humanity in Christ, out of dominating rule and also out of devalued servitude. It calls us all into service for God's reign. But to understand the meaning of that call we must gather at the feet of Jesus and learn his teachings. This is indeed the first and better part, which should not be taken away from any of us, either because of gender stereotypes or because of busyness with the tasks of daily life." And so when she sits at the feet of Jesus, Mary offers him everything that she is and has: "Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume."  

What better symbol could she share of the lavish, costly, generous, bold, fiercely-tender, sensuous, and loving extravagance of God's coming to us in Christ as one brave enough, and compassionate enough, to call us beloved. Mary knew this was something that couldn't just be said; and although it was something she had to do, its significance was in the person she saw herself coming to be. Sitting at the feet of Jesus, Mary is mentor for each of us. Her anointing of the feet of Jesus, with her own hair, is the public witness of extravagant love, which few of us have ever tasted. Mary provides Jesus a praxis of possibility that he could do for his friends at their last supper on Maundy Thursday, where Jesus will give us the new commandment surpassing all the law and the prophets, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. Mary is the first person in the Gospel to model the love commandment of Jesus, not just by the extravagance of her gift-extravagantly bending the knee to anoint his feet with the costly nard- and by the extravagance of who she is coming to be - one utterly available to the costly love of Jesus that is drawing her, and us, both towards the cross, and towards a way of loving that death itself cannot touch. Mary is our mentor, and we are Christ's apprentices, not learning more things to do, but a more authentic way to be -simply ourselves, as God has made us. Mary mentors us by showing us how we know we have begun to follow Jesus' way, and not some other -