Hello, John Eldridge here. Welcome back to our special Easter week of

podcasts and it's Wednesday already. Monday, Thursday, tomorrow, good Friday coming two days away, and we pick up the story

of the life of Jesus and searching in particular for what this whole experience was like

for him, what was his internal world like

during this week what did he experience with the Gospel of Mark today which is

Wednesday in Chapter 14. Now the Passover and the Feast of

Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the Chief Priests and the teachers of the age were looking for some

sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. But not during the feast, they said,

or the people may riot.

While he was in Bethany,

reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the leper,

a woman came in with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume made of pure nard.

She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Now pause before we get into this extraordinary beauty of this story. So once again

Jesus is back in Bethany. He kind of goes into Jerusalem and deals with what he finds there each day, but each night he's been leaving the city

and going back to a small village, to a little house to just be with a small company of his friends.

What I love about this is that while he's in Bethany,

now normally he's staying at Mary, Martha, and Lazarus's house,

but here it says that he's reclining at the table in the home of a man

known as Simon the leper. Okay, nice people don't do this. This is not where you hang out. If you're trying to

establish any kind of credibility in this culture that you are a holy man or woman, that you are a righteous man or woman, that you are a good and earnest Jew. This is not where you go to dinner. I mean the fellow is known as Simon

the leopard. You don't get anywhere near these folks and I just love it that right here in the middle of the most dramatic

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