This morning in church M wrote a note to me about the lectionary reading Jesus Annointed at Bethany: “Maybe Mary was in love with him.”
I whispered back, “Or else his feet stank. She was at them enough, don’t you think?”
Then I remembered the story of Ruth and Boaz, where Ruth initiates courtship with Boaz in a customary show of humility (see Ruth 3) by lying down at his feet. Is this what Mary of Bethany was doing with that expensive perfume?
If this sounds like the stuff of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, along the lines of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as a couple, I wouldn’t know it–I haven’t read the book. But Wikipedia suggests that not everyone believes that Mary of Bethany–Lazarus’s and Martha’s sister–and the demon-possessed Mary Magdalene were the same lady.
Maybe M’s is a different love story supposition.
