Mary Washes Jesus’ Feet – Putting long hair to use

This is just one more reason patriarchal men force women to maintain long hair: it’s for foot washing.

A week before the crucifixion Jesus went to visit his girlfriends Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus. Martha was the hard-working responsible one, so she was working her ass off to make sure the dinner went well. Lazarus was sitting at the table chatting with Jesus and his apostles. Mary, bless her little soul, did neither.

Instead, Mary rummaged through Martha’s valuables until she found a pound of really nice ointment and rubbed it on Jesus’ feet. Then she wiped off his feet with her hair. Of course Martha was pissed. Not only was Mary not helping out in the kitchen but has also stolen her most expensive ointment and was using it to get extra attention from Jesus. Now Mary’s hair was going to smell like kick-ass ointment and magic feet for weeks!

Before Martha could intervene, Judas Iscariot piped up saying, “What gives man? If you’re so into helping the poor and everything, why wasn’t this ointment sold? You could have fed a whole bunch of people for a long time. Instead your girlfriend is rubbing it on your feet?” Jesus wasn’t very kind to Judas when he replied, which is probably understandable given Jesus’ anxiety over his quickly approaching trial date in Jerusalem. Jesus said to Judas, “Screw the poor! There will always be poor people around. You can take care of them anytime. I’m going to end up in jail, or worse, and then who’s going to fawn over me? I’m pretty sure Martha was saving this stuff in preparation for my death anyway!”

If Jesus’ contemporaries could just respect his anger management problem, the New Testament would be a whole lot less interesting.

Ref: John 12: 1-8

“Lazarus, come forth!” - Grandstanding much, no?

Jesus is such a crybaby

By the time Jesus made it down to Bethany, Lazarus had been dead and entombed for four days. Mary and Martha were busy because apparently they were pretty popular and had tons of well-wishers and such visiting. Martha heard Jesus was coming and booked it straight out of the house to meet him, while lazy Mary just stayed behind on the couch with her friends.

The first thing out of Martha’s mouth when she met Jesus was, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.” Because Jesus was only really there to show off he said, “Thy brother shall rise again.” Martha was pretty well educated regarding Jesus’ take on religious so she replied, “Of course I know he will. In the resurrection at the last day, right?”

Jesus, being the egomaniac he was, was deeply offended by Martha’s response. He put his left hand on his hip, z-snapped with his right, and said, “Lissen up beeotch. I am da resurrection. I am da life. Any foo what believe in ME will live even if dey be dead! Any of yous what be livin’ and believin’ in ME ain’t nevah gonna die!  Wassah mattah? You no believe beeotch?”

Martha was a little surprised her boyfriend chose to berate her for giving what she thought was the right answer, so she just fell back to the good old strategy of stroking Jesus’ massive ego. She said, “Yes of course. I believe you are the Christ. I believe you are the Son of God we have been waiting for.” Then Martha high tailed it out of there before she could piss off Jesus again and went to fetch her sister.

Mary ran straight out to where Jesus was still standing after his meeting with Martha. Mary threw herself on the ground in front of her Lord and they went through the whole drama of “Oh, no. If you had been here my brother would still be alive, blah, blah, blah.” Then, she started to cry. Jesus wasn’t really in touch with normal people so he was shocked that Mary was crying. Then he noticed all the other mourners were crying too. He really struggled with the idea that all these people didn’t think he was going to snap his magic fingers and make everything better. He was so upset after thinking on this for a while that He started to cry too.

After crying for a while, Jesus finally gave up on his fantasy of walking into town and being met with the cheers of the masses while he led them triumphantly to the tomb before dramatically raising Lazarus from the dead. He didn’t want to back out of the deal though, so he bowed his head and shuffled over to the tomb. Once there, he raised his head and said, “Father, thank you for agreeing to help me bring Lazarus back to life so these people will think I’m cool.” Then Jesus shouted in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.”

After a minute Lazarus stumbled out of the tomb wearing his burial clothes. Everyone watching was surprised because they totally didn’t expect this turn of events and they said, “Wow, Jesus is even more magic than we thought. Cool.” Some of these people ran off to tell their religious leaders about Jesus’ latest magic trick. These religious types were united in the fear that the commoners would listen to Jesus’ teachings and rise up against the government, so they also decided to try and kill Jesus.

Now that Jesus was on the run from the law and organized religion, he reneged on his whole “people that walk in the light won’t have anything bad happen to them” thing.  He immediately booked it out of Judea with his apostles again to lay low in Ephraim so everyone that wanted him dead could cool off a little.

Ref: John 11:17-54

Lazarus is Dead - oops

In which we see that Jesus acts like a jerk so later he can show off his awesomeness

Today we examine the story of Lazarus as told in John 11. Now this has nothing to do with the sixth episode in season 3 of the Dr. Who reboot (first aired 5 May 2007), titled “The Lazarus Experiment.” That Lazarus was a professor of human genetics and when he built a machine to cheat death it turned him into a shape changing monster that sucked the life force out of people to extend its own life. This story is totally not about THAT Lazarus.

This story is about the Lazarus who lived in Bethany in the early first century. Lucky for him, he was related to Mary and Martha. Because Jesus was hot for both Mary and her sister Martha he was always especially nice to their brother Lazarus. Things were going really well until Lazarus got crazy sick while Jesus was away on vacation (i.e. hiding from the law) with his “gentlemen friends” (apostles).

Of course Mary and Martha knew where their boyfriend was hiding out and once they figured out Lazarus was going to die they sent Jesus an urgent message, “Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.” After Jesus and his apostles heard the message Jesus saw an opportunity to show off and said, “This sickness is not unto death. Lazarus is sick for the glory of God and so I can be glorified too.”

Then, just to be sure everyone reading the bible understood the situation, the author of “The Gospel According to St. John” said, “Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus” (KJV). I hope this means they were just friend and that they weren’t into four-ways. That would be pretty twisted since three of the parties involved were siblings. Of course I’m not an expert on first century sexuality. For all I know, that sort of thing could have been perfectly normal back then. I do know that people used to sex up their cousins and siblings all the time in the Old Testament. Look, I’m just saying it’s something we should consider.

So after Jesus hatched his little plan to give himself glory from Lazarus’ sickness he stayed “on vacation” for two more days and then said to his apostles, “Ok, it’s time for us to head back to Judea.” Of course his apostle said, “Um, have you forgotten why we’re hiding out here? You’ve been sentenced to death back in Judea for your anti-government, anti-religion, and pro-wine stances: oh, and let’s not forget blasphemy. The Jews have already sentenced you to stoning and they’re certain to carry it out if we run into any law enforcement types or angry mobs.”

This next part really confuses me. To reassure the apostles, Jesus said something like, “Aren’t there 12 hours of light every day? If a man walks in the light he doesn’t stumble. If he walks in the dark, he will trip and fall.” I think Jesus was trying to say if someone is righteous nothing bad will happen to him/her, but that seems like a bit of a stretch (and a bald-faced lie). Then Jesus said, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep. I will now go and wake him.” The apostles were happy to hear Lazarus was just sleeping, so Jesus had to clarify his statement and said, “Look, I’m sorry you don’t understand my odd way of saying things. I meant to say that Lazarus is dead. Seriously, try to keep up.”

Understandably, the apostles were still convinced Judean law enforcement would do its job and take out Jesus. However, because they loved Jesus so much they decided to go with him so they could be stoned and die too.

Ref: John 11:1-16