(New article tomorrow)
Bethany, in Scripture, is a little town down in the southeast corner of the Mount of Olives, less than two miles from the city of Jerusalem. It’s a suburb of very little consequence and one nobody knows much about; its only real claim to fame is Mary, Martha and Lazarus live there.
“It’s fascinating that this is the place that Jesus goes to perform THE hallmark miracle of His ministry—the resurrection of Lazarus,” says Jordan. “No greater miracle did He do than that one and He doesn’t do it in Jerusalem.
"You remember back in chapter 7 how His brothers wanted to go to Jerusalem and show all His glory and do all this big stuff? Well, that’s where the crowd was; that’s where the fame was. You know, if you want to get a Pulitzer Prize or your name on a marquee, you go to Jerusalem.
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“Do you realize the Bible doesn’t mention any of the great cities of the New Testament era? There were great wonderful cities in existence at the time of Christ and the apostles but you don’t read about hardly any of them in the Bible.
“Now, you read about Ephesus and ‘great is Diana of Ephesus.’ That's the temple in Acts 19 that was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. But it’s just sort of a side note in Acts about a more important story.
“The Bible’s a strange book of history. It’s a book of history, but it focuses on the odd things. It’s not focusing on the big marquee places; it’s focusing on places like Bethany because Jesus goes there to that seemingly insignificant place to perform the hallmark miracle of His whole life.
“I think about that and that’s a tremendous example of how He glorifies Himself, not in the glory of man, but in the insignificance of man.
“He picks this little nothing of a place, as it were, as the place of the final, conclusive proof of His identity as He’s preparing to surrender Himself to death. This is a moment of great import in the life of Christ. But He doesn’t do it on the stage of human history where the cameras are rolling.
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“Bethany is the town of the sisters Mary and Martha. In Luke 10, you get introduced to them for the first time. This is a wonderful home. Luke 10:38-39 reads: ‘Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.
[39] And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.'
“It’s always good to receive Christ, but when you think about it in the context of Luke 10, He’s being rejected everywhere He goes. Here’s a home that receives Him. This is a home of Believers interested in hearing what Jesus is teaching.
“Notice in John 11 how that John assumes the people he’s writing to know who Mary is. That’s the reason, by the way, that Mary is placed first in verse 11. Every other time Martha, Mary and Lazarus are all three mentioned in the Bible, Martha is mentioned first. The reason, obviously, is because people knew who Mary was. She’s the one who anointed Him and wiped His feet with her hair.
“You can go to Mark 14 and read about it. One of the things Christ said about her was that what she did would make her famous among the Believers forever and obviously she was quite well-known.
“The passage reads: [6] And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me.
[7] For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.
[8] She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.
[9] Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.
“So, this woman that does this is going to be well-known everywhere. And that’s why in John 11:2 it says this is the Mary that did that. It’s her home.
“But you notice that this account in Mark, and the parallel account in Matthew 26, her name doesn’t appear. She’s sort of like that thing in Philippians 4:3 when Paul says, ‘And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life.’
“He doesn’t identify who his yokefellow is. He does talk about Clement and Euodias and Syntyche but the true yokefellow, the one who was the dearest to him, he doesn’t even mention his name, obviously because everybody would know who that was.
“Matthew and Mark don’t put the name but John does. That’s sort of the way the Book of John works. It’s fascinating the little details John adds that the others leave out. For example, look at John 18:10: [10] Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus.
“You can go over to Matthew 26 and Mark 14 and Luke 22 and you won’t read about the servant’s name, Malchus.
“It’s in John that you learn the women who anointed Jesus was Martha and Lazarus’ sister, Mary. The Book of John is talking about how ‘the light of the world has come,’ and little things like that kind of come out in the light of that book. It’s sort of characteristic of the way the Book of John operates.
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“There’s something else interesting about John 11:2. John assumed his readers already knew the accounts in Mark 14 and Matthew 26. ‘This is the woman you already knew about,’ he’s saying. If that’s true, that means Matthew and Mark, at least, were written before the Book of John, because John assumes they know all about Mary.
“Well, if the Book of John was written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and Matthew and Mark are assumed to be written before John, that puts all of them much earlier than what tradition wants to put them.”
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Personal info: Once when I was in my mid-30s I attended a small party in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood that was held by a 77-year-old Beatnik-generation woman who had become my friend through a mutual friend, also a former Beatnik. I always remember how they laughed over the fact that my dad was, more or less, kicked out as a missionary doctor in the Amazon jungles of Ecuador for drug use. They saw this as some kind of weird badge of honor. I remember the people at the party agreeing, “I would love to meet your dad. He sounds like a real character.”
For me, the “funny” part was I had just learned this information about my dad from the year before. I spent my whole childhood on through my 20s not knowing my dad was a habitual pill-popper! From what I now know, it was my dad’s drug use, in part, that led him to become a missionary--something he paid his own way to do--in the first place. . .
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