This is Holy Week! And we’ll take a break from our regularly scheduled programing (which is reading some of Paul’s letters and Rachel Held Evans’ commentary) to read one of Rachel’s reflections on Good Friday and Easter for our Friday discussion:
Reading:
- “The Woman at Bethany Anoints Jesus,” by Rachel Held Evans, April 5, 2012, https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/women-of-the-passion-anoint-oil
Things to Consider:
- What are some of the powerful smells that trigger memory in your life?
- “It’s easy to get frustrated with the writers of Scripture, who are so careful to name and distinguish the Twelve [disciples], but who often blur the Women together.”
- The Mary who anoints “becomes priest and prophet” in her actions during Jesus’s final days. How?
- Mary has very different expectations for what Jesus’s death will mean. How do her actions during Jesus’s final days differentiate her from the twelve disciples?
- What is your reaction to Rachel’s reflection about which parts of the Last Supper we reenact, and which we do not?: “while we break the bread and drink the wine, we rarely pour out the oil.”