Jeremy L. Berg

This is an original short story I wrote and shared at a recent Sunday gathering. You can listen to the audio version here.

As long as I can remember, I’ve always been quietly breaking things—breaking customs, breaking gender roles, and, one day, breaking an alabaster jar. History remembers me sitting quietly at the Jesus of feet, but a first-century woman taking the posture of a male disciple was a loud and revolutionary act in my day. A quiet person is not always a compliant person. A gentle spirit is not necessarily a tame spirit.

I am Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus whom Jesus called out of the tomb. You probably associate me with my sister, Martha. As siblings who often clashed and had very different temperaments, I was drawn to the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob was born into the world grasping at the heel of his brother, trying to control his destiny and circumstances. Esau, on the other hand, was a “man of the field” and hunter out in the wild, while Jacob stayed closer to home tending to household affairs. 

Like Jacob, my sister Martha came into this world a white-knuckle personality grasping for control and order in domestic affairs. I came into the world a wilder, free spirit hunting for deeper meaning and harder to reach realities. I was gentle in spirit, but wild at heart with an insatiable curiosity and a taste for holy trouble. 

The first time I remember my wild streak getting me into trouble was when, as a young girl, I got sidetracked on my walk to synagogue one sabbath morning. A cooing white dove was perched on a branch just off the trail, and I swear she was looking right at me and trying to convey a secret message with her morning song. She then flew further off the trail into an olive grove nearby, stopped and waited for me to follow. Before long I was lying on my back, basking in the warm sunlight piercing the trees, and lost in holy wonder as the song of the dove harmonized with the Song of the Creator whispering into my ears in the warm, gentle breeze. 

My unconventional worship was rudely interrupted by the stern voice of my abba. “Where have you been, Mary! You missed the entire service! Good little Jewish girls aren’t supposed to be lying in olive groves on the sabbath. Come home now and help Ma set out lunch.” That was the first time I remember feeling like a rule-bender, a law-breaker, but it wouldn’t be the last.

~~~~~~~

Some twenty years passed before I heard the Song of the Creator whispering to my soul with the same intensity of that sabbath morning as a child. This time the Song was not in a gentle breeze or a cooing dove, but coming from the mouth of the prophet from Nazareth. Jesus was a white dove sent from God to lead us all into a New Day. He talked as though he was, in some sense, the very wind of God. “The wind blows wherever it pleases,” he said. “You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

I sat transfixed every time I heard him teach. Time stood still, like it did in that olive grove long ago. His words transported me out of my ordinary existence and into a more spacious state of being he called the Kingdom of God.  

So, I was over the moon when my brother Lazarus became part of his circle, occasionally hosting the prophet in our home. On one such occasion, my sister and I once again displayed our very different personalities. While she was dutifully fixing up food and offering good Jewish hospitality, I was again breaking something.

As all of Jesus’ disciples sat at the feet of the rabbi, hanging on his every word as though it may be his last, I sat down among them. I wasn’t trying to start a revolution! I just wanted to soak in Jesus’ words and grapple with his teachings like all the men. But I was breaking custom. I was breaking established gender roles. And I was unknowingly stretching Martha’s patience to the breaking point. 

Martha preferred to live her life within the set boundaries of propriety, never stirring the pot or coloring outside the lines. My soul had a wild streak that longed to set sail and explore new islands of human existence. Again, a quiet person is not always a compliant person, and a gentle spirit is not always a tame spirit. My spirit wanted to catch every wind Jesus’ teachings were stirring up in our otherwise still and stagnant town.  

While I sat at the Master’s feet, Martha was busy making all the preparations and being a gracious host. She came to Jesus upset and said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” His response was gentle but firm. “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38-42). Jesus continued with one of his riddles, saying, 

“Do wedding guests fuss about while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. They can’t fuss over the table settings while the groom is with them. But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they can go back to fussing over such things. But celebrate the groom while he is among you.”

Bless her heart. Martha is a better person than I. She wants everything to be perfect, and tries so hard to bring goodness and order to every task and space she enters. But you can’t trap electricity in a bottle, or bring order to a hurricane. Somethings in life are just wild and intended to break the mold and shatter the little containers we try to force life into. Jesus was what you folks of the future  call electricity and he was lighting up our darkened village and sparking new possibilities for all who were willing to plug themselves into His in-breaking Kingdom. But he was also an uncontrollable wind that could not be tamed or contained or constrained. 

Jesus stood by me because he saw I was enraptured by the wind and I wouldn’t hesitate to break cultural norms in my attempt to plug into his Kingdom electricity. And I was discovering that Jesus, too, had a reputation for breaking things when they threatened to contain or constrain the work he came to do. Another one of his riddles makes precisely this point:

“No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins” (Mark 2:22). 

Old containers become rigid and unbending over time. They dry up so they no longer stretch and expand to accommodate the fermented wine they carry. Jesus saw in me a mind ready to be expanded and a heart willing to be stretched. The Marthas of the world, on the other hand, are great at preserving order and maintaining old traditions.They are not naturally flexible and resist the New Wine that threatens to burst their precious old wine skins or break the glass bottle trying to contain it. Sometimes glass jars just need to be broken for life to pour out. And sometimes tombs need to be opened so death can be undone. 

~~~~~~~

Jesus took his norm-shattering, boundary breaking ministry to the highest point possible after my brother, Lazarus, succumbed to a fever one dark day in spring. Martha and I had sent for Jesus, asking him to come quickly to heal our brother before the fever took him. But Jesus had other plans. He allowed Lazarus to die. Only after Lazarus’s body had been in the tomb three days did Jesus finally arrive. Our brother’s fate seemed to be sealed tightly in that tomb. But Jesus was again breaking things thought unbreakable. In one world-shattering moment, he broke the law of death by rolling away the stone and flooding Lazarus’s tomb with Resurrection Wind and New Creation breath. Lazarus was again in the land of the living, shedding his grave clothes and sending death into retreat for a short while. 

Just days later we hosted a meal in Jesus’ honor, where I once again managed to break something, causing another kerfuffle. John’s Gospel records the event that made me famous in chapter 12 noting—surprise, surprise—how my dutiful sister, “Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him.” 

I remember the night in great detail—the warm flickering of oil lamps, the stuffy air in the packed room, the smell of Martha’s food, and joyous laughter around the table. Also burned into my memory of that night was the way the mood suddenly shifted after supper when Jesus began to speak of a coming storm. “They shall strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered,” Jesus said.  He continued:

“Very truly I tell you anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.” (John 10)

There are some truths too hard for many to entertain. Out of self-preservation, our minds swat some unbearable facts away like pesky flies at a picnic. The Marthas of the world are perhaps most prone to shutting disturbing news outside the consciousness and barring the door. Like Jacob, my sister Martha and apparently most of the disciples clung with white knuckles to a reality that would not accept Jesus’ repeated hints that he was going to die in order to accomplish God’s salvation. I, on the other hand, was more like Esau the adventurous hunter, unafraid of crawling to the outermost edge of a dangerous cliff if it could give me a better view.

By the night of the banquet, God had given me an elevated view of what was come. I knew Jesus’ life was about to be shattered by death in order for death to die once and for all. If our good shepherd was about to die, I was going to pre-anoint him for burial while I had the chance. And that meant breaking some things again. I broke through the circle of men seated around Jesus. I broke the heavy silence that hung in the air after Jesus spoke of laying down his life for the sheep. I broke propriety as I approached the Master, knelt down at his feet and let my hair fall down over his feet.

I took out an alabaster jar of pure nard, an expensive perfume our family had kept for generations. Then I broke the jar open and began pouring it all over Jesus’ feet and wiping his feet with my hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume and a dozen hushed murmurs of shock and disapproval (John 12:1-8).

The house smelled of impending death and burial.

The house smelled of secret plotting and treachery.

The house smelled of the disciples’ shock and confusion.

And the house smelled of my reckless love and audacious devotion.

One of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray Jesus, objected, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” But he did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief in the sheep pen. As keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. 

“Judas, Judas,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. “Leave Mary alone, she has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her. It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” 

Martha was listening in from the kitchen, and recognized Jesus’ rebuke of Judas all too well. Years of putting up with her little sister breaking custom, breaking gender roles, breaking decorum and now breaking a precious family jar of expensive perfume brought Martha to tears of anger and confusion. Aware of Martha’s inner turmoil, Jesus approached her and put his hands lovingly on both cheeks and looked into her eyes with patient love. Then he spoke:

“Martha, your desire to keep things in their proper place is admirable. Your longing for an ordered world of divine shalom is praiseworthy. Your tireless efforts to fix what’s broken and keep in one piece those things we treasure most is so good.”

Tears dripped down Martha’s cheeks as she nodded, trying to accept the Master’s difficult words. “Now listen to closely, precious daughter,” Jesus continued. “Sometimes healing only comes on the other side of brokenness. Sometimes a thing needs to be broken open in order for healing to come to it or through it.” 

~~~~~~~

Martha pondered these things in her heart, and only later did she grasp what later writer, Thomas Keating, would say about my wild act of unashamed devotion:

“What her lavish gesture symbolized was the deepest meaning of Jesus’ passion and death. The body of Christ is the jar containing the most precious perfume of all time, namely, the Holy Spirit. It was about to be broken open so that the Holy Spirit could be poured out over the whole of humanity—past, present, and to come—with boundless generosity.” 

Jesus’ boundless generosity would be on display repeatedly over the next week as he embodied his message about healing coming through brokenness, and  God’s spirit poured out in death. Before the good shepherd was taken and his sheep scattered, Jesus hosted his own last supper. 

Martha and I stood in the back corner of the upper room, watching from the doorway as Jesus took up a loaf of bread, blessed it, and making eye contact with me and Martha, said those famous words: “This is my body broken for you.” And we both recalled his words to Martha a week or so ago: “Sometimes healing only comes on the other side of brokenness. Sometimes a thing needs to be broken open in order for healing to come to it or through it.” After supper he took the cup, and didn’t need to break it—because his body would soon be broken and pierced.

On that Friday when Heaven shed tears and the Earth maker shed his blood, one more precious container would be broken open in order for the aroma of undying love to redeem a dying cosmos. In the shadows of that awful night—that hideously beautiful night of tortured love and healing death—Martha and I watched again from a distance. He hung. He suffered. He prayed. He thirsted. He cried out. He gave up his spirit and died. 

And then as we looked on through our tears, we watched in wonder as his body preached one more time the mysterious message of the cross he had share with me—and through me. Just as I broke open the alabaster jar in order to fill the house with the aroma of his impending death, so the Roman soldier pierced the chest cavity of Jesus with his spear pouring out the blood and water of our salvation onto a sick and dying world. 

As long as I can remember, I’ve always been breaking things. But ever since breaking the alabaster jar  and watching Jesus break the bread, I’ve come to see that God works wonders through broken vessels. That our very lives are cracked pots in the Good Potter’s hands. He patiently picks up our pieces and lovingly glues us back together through the bonding agent of the Holy Spirit.

And as the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus fills more and more of us, we find his light shines brightest not through the parts of us that have never been broken, but through the healed cracks where amazing grace has left its indelible mark. 

“We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.” (2 Corinthians 4:7)

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10)