Mary of Bethany
Who sat at his feet, wept at his voice, and anointed him for burial — and whose deed Jesus said would be told wherever the gospel was preached
The Good Part
Mary of Bethany appears three times in the Gospels. Each time, she is at the feet of Jesus. The posture is not accidental — in the ancient world, to sit at a teacher's feet was the posture of a disciple receiving instruction. It was a position reserved for men. Mary took it anyway.
The first occasion was an ordinary visit. Jesus came to the village of Bethany, and Mary “sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word” while her sister Martha was distracted with the work of hospitality. Martha eventually brought her frustration to Jesus directly, asking him to tell Mary to help her. His answer was gentle but clear:
Luke 10:41–42
“Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
This is not a rebuke of service. Martha's work was real and valuable. But Jesus identified something Mary had chosen that could not be taken away — the word of God, received at his feet. It was the one thing needful. Mary had recognized it and would not be redirected from it.
At the Tomb of Her Brother
When Lazarus died, Jesus was two days' journey away. Mary and Martha sent word: “Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick” (John 11:3). Jesus delayed, then came. Martha went out to meet him on the road. Mary stayed in the house.
When Jesus asked for Mary, she rose quickly and went to him. The mourners who had been with her followed, thinking she was going to the tomb to weep. Instead, she found Jesus — and fell at his feet. “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died” (John 11:32). She said exactly what Martha had said, word for word, but she said it from the ground, weeping.
When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping who came with her, he groaned in spirit and was troubled. Then came the two shortest and most searching words in the New Testament: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Mary's grief moved the Son of God to tears. Whatever else those tears mean — and they have been pondered for two thousand years — they mean that he was fully present to her pain. He did not immediately reassure. He grieved with her first.
Then he raised Lazarus from the dead.
The Anointing
Six days before the Passover, a supper was made for Jesus in Bethany. Lazarus sat at the table with him. Martha served. And Mary took a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance.
Judas Iscariot objected: why was this ointment not sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor? The sum was nearly a year's wages for a common laborer. John notes bluntly that Judas said this not out of care for the poor but because he carried the money bag and helped himself to it. But even without that editorial note, the contrast in the room is stark: one person pouring out extravagant, costly love; another calculating its market value.
Jesus answered the objection with something no one in that room understood yet:
John 12:7–8
“Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.”
Mark's account adds the most extraordinary detail — Jesus declared that wherever the gospel was preached in the whole world, what Mary had done would be told as a memorial of her (Mark 14:9). This woman who had spent her time listening at his feet had somehow understood, before anyone else, what the disciples still could not accept: that he was going to die. Her anointing was not extravagant waste. It was the only appropriate response to a moment that would never come again.
Three times at his feet: to learn, to grieve, to worship. Each time, she chose the one thing needful, and each time, Jesus honored the choice. The woman who sat at his feet in an ordinary house in Bethany has been spoken of ever since, in fulfilment of a promise made six days before Golgotha.
Key Scriptures
- Luke 10:38–42 — Mary sits at Jesus's feet; “that good part”
- John 11:1–45 — Death and raising of Lazarus; “Jesus wept”
- John 12:1–8 — The anointing at Bethany
- Mark 14:3–9 — “Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached… this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her”