Friday, March 05th, 2010

Anointed

In this week’s Parashah we find a recipe for sacred anointing oil.  With it, Moses was commanded to anoint the Tent of Meeting, the Ark, the furnishings of the Tent, including the lampstand and the altars, and finally he is to anoint Aaron and his sons.  The Hebrew word מָשִׁיחַ, “messiah”, means “anointed”, or “anointed one”.  Anointing was a way of setting something or someone apart for sacred service.  Thus the Tent of Meeting with all its accoutrements, and the Priests who served therein, were anointed . . . sanctified.  So the first person who could rightly be called a מָשִׁיחַ in Israel wasn’t King Saul, or King David, but Aaron the High Priest.  Later, first Saul (1Sam 10:1) and then David (1Sam 16:13) were anointed to be king over Israel.  Although they didn’t perform the function of a priest, they did have a divinely authorized role as the military leader of God’s people, Israel.  After the time of David, the “kingly” and “military” connotations of the word מָשִׁיחַ eclipsed the “sacred” and “priestly” ideas.  By the first century AD, the term מָשִׁיחַ more commonly evoked the notion of a warrior-king in the mold of David (or even of Judah Maccabee).  We do know, however, that the Essenes of Yeshua’s time (who hid their scrolls in caves near the Dead Sea), who were mostly priests, expected two “messiahs,” a Messiah ben David, and a Messiah ben Aaron, but their expectation was not the norm. 

In the second reading today, we see the anointing of Yeshua shortly before His passion.  Instead of being anointed “warrior-king” by a Prophet like Moses or Samuel, Yeshua was anointed for a different purpose by a woman of no social, political or religious standing.  Yet He accepted her anointing as of such significance that wherever the Good News would be proclaimed in all the world, her anointing of Him must be told as well.  Note that Yeshua associates her anointing of Him with His death.  His anointing was of the “sacred” and “priestly” sort, as in today’s Parashah.  How different was His anointing from that of Saul or David!  How like God to use unexpected means to carry out His will.
The Gospel of John tells us that the woman who anointed Yeshua was Mary, the sister of Lazarus, whom Yeshua had raised from the dead.  Another Mary, from the Galilean town of Magdala, was the first to see the Master risen from the dead, and for some hours was the only one to believe He had indeed risen.  These two Marys stand as “bookends” on either side of the Lord’s death and resurrection, each woman playing extremely important roles in the events of Yeshua’s self-offering and victory over Death.  One anointed Him, and the other saw Him risen, and proclaimed Him to His unbelieving disciples.  Who would have expected the prominent roles played by women in the greatest salvation event?  In the first instance, the disciples criticized Mary of Bethany for anointing Yeshua (a waste in their eyes), and in the second instance, they refused to believe Mary of Magdala’s report of His resurrection until they saw for themselves.

Look back over your life.  Did God use someone to do something for you, whom you would never have expected?  Did someone tell you something that God had done which you couldn’t believe until later events proved their words true?  We can’t anticipate the unexpected, but perhaps in retrospect we can see where God has acted in our lives or the lives of others, through people we may have criticized or didn’t believe at the time.  Remember God’s admonition thru Isaiah,
“’My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways’” declares the Lord.”
Think on those times in your life and let them strengthen your faith.  Share them with others to strengthen their faith too.

Dan Reilly