Each Wednesday throughout the summer our Canon Chancellor The Revd Canon Dr Gordon Giles will reflect with us on the life and influence of a Saint for the week: someone whose life and ministry has been honoured with a festival in the Church Calendar.

Mary, Martha and Lazarus, friends of Jesus July 31st

A reading from St John’s Gospel: ‘Six days before the passover, Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazerus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him, Martha served, and Lazerus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume, made of pure nard, annointed Jesus’s feet and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of her perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, the one who was about to betray him, said: ‘why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor?’. He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief. He kept the common purse, and used to steal what was put into it. Jesus said: ‘leave her alone, she bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me’.

Today we commemorate Mary, Martha and Lazerus, and this gospel story describes how Mary, Martha and her brother Lazerus gave Jesus hospitality in their home is Besthemany, which is not very far from Jerusalem. Jesus is said to have loved all three of them and it may be said that they were the closest thing he had to a family and their house the nearest thing he had to a home, a kind of safe retreat. It was at their home that he shared a meal before the traumas of Holy Week.

Another trauma had occurred when Lazerus died. Jesus arrived too late and he wept, being moved by the sisters’ grief, before bring Lazerus back from the dead in order that the glory of God might be shown. Martha recognised Jesus as the Messiah while Mary annointed his feet, and on another occasion was commended by Jesus on her attention to his teaching, while Martha served. From this, Mary is traditionally taken to be an example of the contentative spiritual life, while Martha embodies the active spiritual life. Both women represent discipleship we recognise and need today. We cannot, and should not all be the same. Our gifts and callings differentiate our lives, alongside the greater calling to christian kindness, expressed in faith, hope and love.

Let us pray:

God our Father whose son enjoyed the love of his friends Mary, Martha and Lazerus, in learning, argument and hospitality. May we so rejoice in your love that the world may come to know your wisdom, the wonder of your compassion, and your power to bring life out of death, through the merits of Jesus Christ our friend and brother who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. One God, now and forever, Amen.