“How could the One Who raised others from the dead die?” Mary repeatedly quietly asks herself on her pallet. “How could the One Who so eloquently taught justice and righteousness allow the unrighteous and the unjust to take His life?”

Sleep eludes her, even after midnight on the Sabbath of this high holy day of Passover. She lies on a pallet made up for her in the home of the bereaved and distraught mother of Jesus. An hour before, the mother of her Lord ceased her quiet sobbing and was now silent just one step away in the darkness. But although Mary had tried to will away the grief, to somehow avoid the living nightmare by escaping into the darkness of sleep, it will not come to her.

It was not possible that Jesus was dead. Again, she wonders, “How could the One Who raised others from the dead die?” Mary replays the vision of Jesus in her mind over and over again while another warm tear drops from her eye and onto her pillow.

The emptiness of a world without Jesus haunts her soul. The oppressive silence of the Passover Sabbath night is suffocating. Disbelief and devastating sorrow overlay another layer of blackness on the unrelenting darkness of the night.

The memory of witnessing Jesus’ broken and torn body on the cross triggers horror and sorrow beyond her comprehension. She had watched from a distance as Joseph of Arimathea had the Lord’s body lowered, wrapped in a linen cloth, and carried to a new tomb. He was hastily laid on the roughhewn stone inside the cavernous crypt and a large stone rolled across its opening because sunset was approaching and there was no time to prepare His body for burial before the Sabbath began. She would return at sunrise on Sunday morning to complete the task properly.

She recalled an afternoon she could never forget over two years earlier when, for the first time, her path crossed that of Jesus of Nazareth. On that dusty road, even though she was covered inside and out with the filth of her sin, Jesus cleansed her and drove out the seven demons that made her life a living hell. His hands reached around her head as He gently touched the untouchable. His forehead pressed lightly to hers and she could hear the whispers of His quiet prayer. Although He spoke in a language she had never heard before, nonetheless, she clearly understood His every word. When she became lightheaded and dropped to her knees, Jesus followed her down, never letting her go, while continuing His prayer. A moment later, when Jesus’ whispers ceased, she opened her tear-filled eyes and looked directly into His. At that extraordinary moment, Mary knew in the deepest part of her heart that she had been remade by His touch and His words into a new creation – a different and pure woman. The stains and scars left by her demons were irrevocably gone. From that instant, Mary followed the One Who recreated her and saved her from the wretchedness of what she had been.

Soon, Mary joined the dedicated group of women who followed Jesus and became good friends with His mother, who shared her name, even though many Jews disdained a formerly disreputable sinner. She had heard Jesus rebuke the Pharisee’s incessant criticism of this practice by saying, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners.” (Luke 5:31b-32)

Yet, there was one memory that Mary treasured in her heart as greater than all the rest. Just a week before, as Jesus reclined for dinner at the home of Simon surrounded by His friends and disciples, Mary approached her Lord gripping a one-pound alabaster bottle in her hands. She knelt beside her Master looking into His eyes. As Jesus returned her gaze, Mary carefully broke open the ornate container and gently anointed his head with some of the costly perfume of pure nard. She then moved to the end of His couch and began to pour the aromatic fluid over Jesus’ feet – a liquid that was valued at a full year’s salary for a common worker. As she drizzled the precious oil over Jesus’ feet, it ran down and covered His skin. She began to wipe His feet gently with her hands, feeling the warmth of His flesh as she thought of all the places those feet had trod and all the people they had taken her Lord to minister to – including herself. Suddenly, she recalled her loneliness, shame, and despair that Jesus had vanquished with His unconditional love and forgiveness, and her heart spontaneously gave way as tears began to flow, spilling over her eyelids and running down her cheeks. Her heart was not filled with sorrow but overcome with an emotion that she could not even begin to fathom. As she poured from the pound of pure nard, she knelt with her face to His feet, pulled her long hair forward from beneath its covering, and began to wipe His skin in humble adoration. Her tears merged with the oil and were rubbed away by her hands and hair as she quietly wept.

The room grew quiet as she worked, reverently anointing her Lord and drying His feet with her hair. When she finished, Jesus reached down, placed His finger beneath her chin, raised her face, and gently smiled at her, His penetrating gaze filled with love and capturing her very soul.

Then Jesus’ disciple Judas Iscariot shattered her joy-filled peace as he scolded her and loudly complained, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the proceeds given to poor people?”

Jesus replied with unhidden exasperation, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of My burial. For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me.” (John 12:5,7-8)

But Mary had poured out every last drop on Jesus’ head and feet. So, at His words, she looked down at the alabaster container asking herself, “How can I keep what I no longer have?” Then, peering into the vessel, she saw that it was now half full once more! Mary, knowing Jesus so very well, smiled. She was absolutely unsurprised, as she had seen Jesus work miracles almost every day for over two years.

Only now, in this oppressive darkness and despondency following His brutal crucifixion does she piece together Jesus’ small miracle and the impact of His comments. He was prophesying when He said to Judas, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of My burial.” And now, just a few feet away, the half bottle of precious nard remains for the journey to His tomb that she and a few women will make at sunrise, the first instant the Passover Sabbath ends.

But that moment of departure to properly prepare His body in His borrowed tomb is still hours away. Though Mary is exhausted, she is unable to sleep. Realizing that her beautiful Jesus-centered world has disappeared like a vapor in the wind, she begins to bitterly weep in earnest once more. Suddenly, she feels His Presence kneeling beside her pallet in the darkness, and for the first time in her life, she prays to Jesus Himself, as though her precious Lord and Master is God incarnate. Somehow in that darkest night that she has ever known, she falls asleep in the invisible embrace of the only One she had ever truly loved with all her heart, with all her soul, and with all her mind.

In a few short hours, with the rising sun of the first day of the week, Mary is about to discover that her heartfelt prayer built wholly on the foundation of that love, saturated in her despairing tears, was not at all misdirected.

--------- Dennis and Claudia Chamberland