Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper,
This verse opens one of the most tender scenes in the Gospels — a woman anointing Jesus with expensive perfume just days before his crucifixion. Bethany was a small village about two miles east of Jerusalem, a place Jesus often retreated to with friends. Simon the Leper was likely a man Jesus had healed of leprosy, a disease that in ancient Jewish society made people ceremonially unclean and forced them to live outside the community. His home becoming a place of dinner and hospitality shows his full restoration to normal life. That Jesus chose to spend precious time before his death at the table of a former outcast is no small detail.
Lord, thank you that you walk through doors others won't. Help me see the people around me the way you do — not by their old names, but by the new life you've given them. And where I still carry a label I can't shake, remind me that you chose to come to my table anyway. Amen.
Think about who was on the guest list that evening. A man once required by law to shout 'unclean!' to warn others away from him was now setting a table and welcoming guests. His very name — Simon the Leper — carried the weight of everything he used to be, a permanent label for a disease he no longer had. And Jesus walked right through the door. There's something quietly radical in where Jesus showed up during his final days. Not at the temple with the powerful. Not in the home of the influential. At Simon's table. If you carry a name you've been called that still follows you around — a past, a failure, a reputation you can't shake — notice where Jesus chose to eat. He keeps showing up at tables like Simon's. Maybe at yours too.
Why do you think the author identifies this man as 'Simon the Leper' even though he was presumably healed? What does that label tell us about how people are remembered?
Have you ever felt defined by something from your past that no longer represents who you are? What does it feel like to carry a name like that?
Jesus chose to spend time in the home of a former social outcast just days before his death. What does that say about who and what mattered most to him in his final hours?
Is there someone in your life you still see through an old lens — someone defined by who they used to be rather than who they are now? How might you relate to them differently?
What would it look like this week to extend the kind of welcome Jesus modeled — intentionally sitting with someone who is usually overlooked or avoided?
Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard , very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.
John 12:3
Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.
John 11:1
And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat.
Luke 7:36
And he left them, and went out of the city into Bethany; and he lodged there.
Matthew 21:17
Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.
John 12:1
Now when Jesus was [back] in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper,
AMP
Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,
ESV
Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper,
NASB
Jesus Anointed at Bethany While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper,
NIV
And when Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper,
NKJV
Meanwhile, Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon, a man who had previously had leprosy.
NLT
When Jesus was at Bethany, a guest of Simon the Leper,
MSG