The Women with Jesus

So I agreed to be in a production of "The Other Twelve Disciples" at church this year. I have successfully avoided being cast in this production previously but this year I decided, what the heck and signed up. I got to play "Lazy Mary" as I referred to my part, Mary of Bethany. She's the one who would much rather sit at Jesus' feet listening to his stories and teachings much to the annoyance of her busy sister Martha. Not too much of a stretch actually...

Anyhoo... as we were rehearsing our various parts I came to realize that my part and another one and possibly even one more were the same woman! Directly after I finished speaking about myself, Martha, Lazarus, Jesus raising Lazarus and annointing Jesus, bathing his feet with my tears and wiping them with my hair, the next character, the woman with the alabaster jar, spoke of the very same incident with the annointing and the tears and the hair.... We have had this play at our church for many years and the script no longer has an author attached if it ever did so I don't know who wrote it originally. But apparently it was enough of a stretch for them to find 12 women associated with Jesus that he or she had to attribute stories of one woman to two. If you add Mary Magdalene to the mix, whom some folks believe is the same Mary of Bethany then there are three. So, I just rewrote my part to expand the first two sections and I left off the last one all together and let the alabaster jar woman take the whole annointing, washing, wiping scene for herself. Everyone seemed to enjoy the whole thing and it was kind of fun. Don't know if I'll ever volunteer to do it again but at least I can say I had the experience. And I'm always glad to bring some attention to the women who served Jesus and ministered with him. I'm going to be interested to find out just how much we didn't know about them when I get the chance to meet them in person.