Holy Week: The Anointing

Mary of Bethany, who came to anoint Christ for his burial in Matthew 26, performed an act of faith and devotion that even his chosen Twelve were unable to perform for him.

She understood that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, the Son of God. She also knew, and had the courage to confront, that Jesus was going to die. She wasn't in denial of this fact. She didn't attempt to change this reality through violence or vengeance. She accepted it and came to perform the anointing for his body.

What she knew to be true, Jesus was still fighting with the Twelve to get them to understand and accept. They resisted the truth they didn't want to hear. As a result, they were unprepared to help him in the coming days the way he needed them to.

What we can gather about the struggle here is one we still see in the Church today: women will have access to divine truths that men will not have the faith to discern. And when the source of that truth is a woman, they will not believe it because women are not reliable sources of truth to them. Even when Jesus corrected them for criticizing her, saying the ointment she brought to him wasn't wasteful because it was for his burial, they were still in denial that he was actually going to die.

The Church has done a great deal of work to bring women, their voices and perspectives, into the administrative circles of the Church. There has been over a decade of training on the importance of councils with women on them, delegating assignments to women, making women and their contributions more visible. The mileage may vary, but a significant portion of church membership knows this is how things are supposed to work, even if they are poor at implementing it into practice.

What I still see, however, is that men in leadership still struggle to accept women as sources of truth they themselves do not possess. There is an attitude still that women are only trustworthy as long as they're repeating back to men the things they already believe. When it comes to the kind of revelation that serves God in innovative or difficult ways, in their minds, those answers shouldn't be coming to women first.

Jesus Christ trusted women. He found willing, capable disciples among them. They exceeded the faith of his chosen Twelve many times, and Jesus used their faith as examples to these men to challenge their entrenched gender bias. Jesus Christ didn't subscribe to the rigid gender binary that men subscribed to in that day, and it's a struggle he is still having with men to this day.

Jesus was the perfect teacher and advocate for women. He did not tolerate the disrespect that so often defined being a woman then. He doesn't tolerate it now. And as we contemplate the spirit of Easter, celebrating the liberation of the captive, this is the liberation I still find myself praying for.

The hope I have for the future of the Church is the one where we finally achieve the equality Jesus spent his entire life teaching about. Where the preferences and ignorance of men in leadership is no longer a stumbling block to me on my pathway home to my Heavenly Parents.

I've never prayed about this where the answer has ever changed.

"What are you going to do about it?"

Answer: Never stop telling the truth. Never stop reaching for what Jesus taught is my right to receive. Reach out and take what is mine, regardless of how men try to obstruct me. And most importantly, make sure I keep the way open for others who come after me. I'm not the only one hurt by the gender binary. I'm not free until we're all free. And like Jesus, I will stick with it for as long as it takes, even if it takes another two thousand years.

Holy Week: The Olivet Discourse

Holy Tuesday is also called Fig Tuesday. The events attributed to Christ on that day begins with the cursing of the fig tree in Matthew 21 and includes all of the sermons and teachings until Matthew 26.

This includes the Olivet Discourse, the portion of scripture that covers when Jesus prophesied that the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed. This greatly disturbed the Twelve, who asked Jesus to clarify and expand what that meant. They couldn't fathom the events that would result in the temple at Jerusalem, the center of their Jewish faith, being destroyed. They felt great fear at that prospect and wanted answers for what this would mean for them.

What came from that questioning was part of Matthew 23, 24, and 25. And in Latter-day Saint tradition, we have Joseph Smith-Matthew in the Pearl of Great, the JST of Matthew 24.

Receiving difficult truth and having the courage to face a future of hardship is part of what we learn here. Jesus did not come to destroy Rome on behalf of the Jewish people, despite their expectations that this would happen when the Messiah arrived. Instead, Jesus revealed the spiritual violence and oppression that existed in his community. He gave God's power and authority to his disciples, knowing he would leave them until a later time. Even Jesus did not know when he would return to them again, to finish his work as the Messiah.

The salient parts of his instruction here that I think matters for us is what it means to wait. The kind of sacred waiting that can go on for lifetimes, maintaining hope for a future that we may never see. To be the servant of God that endures well through all the trials of life, becoming a better servant because of them. And Jesus provides instruction in Matthew 25 of what qualities those servants have.

The parable of the ten virgins teaches wisdom in planning and thinking ahead, in gathering and conserving resources that allow us to last through the night.

That parable of the talents teaches us to make the most of the talents and resources God has given to us, to multiply and magnify them in our service to the Lord.

The parable of the sheep and the goats teaches us self-awareness in ways that are only obvious if you've had the experience of working with sheep and goats. Goat are ornery and self-defeating, making messes and breaking out of their enclosures simply because they can. They resist all attempts to care for them, instead choosing to do only as they please, even when it puts them in danger. They taunt, bicker, and fight with one another constantly. They are troublemakers in every sense of the word. Every person I've known who has a herd of goats knows that to make good decisions goes against their every instinct. In a cultural agrarian shorthand that is lost on many today, the parable of the goats invites people to do self-reflection, identify those tendencies in themselves, and to confront the ways we actively resist the love and care of Christ.

And of course, one of the most important teachings of Christ in the scriptures, the contemplation of how we treat the undesirables of society. Do we understand that's who Christ was in his society, and that how we treat those people is exactly how we would treat him if we saw him? Humility and universal love are difficult and go against human reason and much of our nature. But it's impossible to be a good disciple, to withstand the difficulties of this life and maintain a sense of human dignity intact, if we reject and spurn people based on how we've been socialized. To be a good disciple of Jesus Christ, we can't judge people that way.

All of these lessons form an image of the trust Jesus has in us. While we contemplate how to deepen our faith in God, I think it's equally important during Easter to realize how much faith they have in us. They've given us so much responsibility, trusting that we are equal to the task they've given us.

We are capable of seeing the holiness in ourselves and in each other. We are capable of bringing forth good fruit, in contrast to that fig tree. To me, this is what it means to multiply and replenish the earth. It's not just about bearing children. It's bringing goodness, health, vitality, and healing into the world where it did not exist before.