Performance Notes:
I first told this story in a Zoom session of the Network of Biblical Storytellers Scholars Seminar (a group of “storytelling scholars” and “scholarly storytellers” who gather to explore Scripture through biblical performance criticism). You can learn more about the Scholars Seminar here.
John, Luke, and the Bethany Siblings
The scene that opens this story echoes (and conflates?) various stories found in the Synoptic Gospels. Most notably, the cast of characters reminds the hearer of the story about Martha and Mary in Luke 10. Following the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke recounts a short story about Jesus visiting the house of Martha and Mary. In that well-known story, Martha serves while Mary sits at Jesus’s feet, leading Martha to complain that Mary has left her to do all the work. Jesus responds by affirming Mary’s place as a disciple at his feet. The story in John has significant differences—Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, reclines next to Jesus, and Mary anoints Jesus’s feet—but the same dynamics are present. Martha serves while Mary gives her full attention to Jesus. In this story, even more than the story in Luke 10, Mary takes center stage with Jesus, even though the raising of Lazarus is the verbal thread that frames the episode (12:1, 9). Thus, with my facial expressions and shift in posture, I try to front Mary and her role in the story.
Mary Empties while Judas Pockets
Of course, the story does quite well on its own—without my gestures—focusing the hearer’s attention on Mary’s actions. Indeed, the whole story establishes a comparison between Mary, who empties the expensive perfume on Jesus’s feet, and Judas, who would prefer to pocket the perfume’s worth for himself. I highlighted this comparison with repeated gestures. I use a cupped hand to imagine Mary bringing the pound of pure nard, and I turn my hand over to communicate Mary’s choice to release her grip on the costly perfume as she empties it to anoint Jesus.
Judas claims that he also wants to release his grip on wealth for the benefit of the poor, but the narrative aside reveals his true motives. So, as Judas speaks, I repeat the gesture of a cupped hand being opened and emptied. He’s claiming to want the same thing that Mary has just demonstrated, though his question indicates that he misunderstands Mary’s action. He thinks Mary has selfishly wasted the value of the perfume. During the narrative aside, however, my gestures reinforce Judas’s actual desire. I cup my hand to symbolize the common purse that Judas keeps, creating a visual link with the vessel of perfume. But, whereas Mary emptied the perfume to anoint Jesus, Judas pockets the purse for himself. He’s the selfish one.
I repeat the gestures one more time as Jesus speaks to Judas. He affirms Mary’s ownership of the perfume (“she bought it”), creates narrative tension by briefly introducing doubt about Mary’s motives (“so that she might keep it”), and then resolves the tension by reaffirming Mary’s choice to relinquish her hold (“for the day of my burial”). She makes a different decision than Judas; she does not keep the perfume for herself; she empties it in order to anoint Jesus for his impending burial. The repetition of the cupped hand connects Jesus’s words to what has just happened and highlights his words as an affirmation of Mary in contrast to Judas.
The Lazarus Roller Coaster
During the last scene of this story, I used a repeated gesture to emphasize the chief priests’ faulty planning. First, I repeat the “raising hand” gesture when the narrator repeats the description of Lazarus—the one “whom he had raised from the dead” (12:1, 9)—in order to visualize the verbal frame for the story. Then, I lower my hand to visualize the chief priests’ plan. They want to put to death the one who has already been raised. (They are grasping at the Judeans who are deserting them just as Judas grasps for the monetary worth of the perfume.) What do they imagine will happen? Will he stay dead this time? Or, will they inadvertently create the sign (a dead person being raised back to life) that they are trying to silence?
The narrator reminds us that Lazarus is not the only person the chief priests would like to kill. They plan to put Lazarus to death “as well.” Although their earlier planning is not included in this story, the phrase “as well” points the hearer back to the end of John 11. After news of Jesus raising Lazarus spreads, the chief priests and Pharisees convene and, convinced by the “wisdom” of the high priest, they decide to put Jesus to death (11:53). Now, in our story, they plan to do the same to Lazarus. As John ironically foreshadows, however, their plans to hide the “sign” by violently removing Lazarus and Jesus will actually bring about the greatest sign in John’s gospel: Jesus’s own crucifixion and resurrection. To hint at this foreshadowing, I raise my hand one more time. The executed one will rise again, and on account of that sign many will believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.