Although we are observing the feast of St. James, I chose to
keep the readings appointed for today because I couldn’t resist this story
about Mary and Martha.[1] We so
rarely have women figure prominently in our readings that I didn’t want us to
miss one of the few opportunities to hear one of them. I also
wanted to maintain the continuity of the readings, as this story is meant to be
heard in relationship to the parable of the “good Samaritan,” which we heard
last Sunday (both of which are unique to Luke’s Gospel).
It is difficult to hear yet another man – even Jesus –
telling women what they need and how they should behave. The options for Mary and Martha are either
passively to sit at Jesus’ feet – making him feel special and adored – “Oh
Jesus, you are so smart” – or to labor for him in the kitchen. When Martha asks for help, she complains to
Jesus. Why does he need to mediate the
relationship between Martha and her own sister?
Isn’t it possible for women to relate to each other in ways other than
as rivals for some man’s attention? And
you can almost hear the condescension in Jesus’ voice when he responds,
“Martha, Martha.” Mary has chosen the
better part: me! Isn’t that what you
really want? What could be better than
sitting at my feet?
A feminist interpretation makes one suspicious that our
Gospel text re-inscribes women’s traditional role as caretaker of men’s
emotional and physical needs; women as trophies or servants or both. Let’s not give Mary too quick as pass as the
“good girl” and Martha too hard a time for being “hysterical.” It is important to recognize the legitimate
discomfort that many women – and sympathetic men – feel upon hearing this
story. How is this story good news for
women?
I suspect Jesus was not quite such a sexist bore as Luke
makes him out to be. There are hints
around the edges of the story that move us into more liberating territory. Notice that Jesus is at Martha’s home. She is the householder, and she is offering
the kind of hospitality that Jesus commends and exemplifies. Jesus said he came to serve, not to be
served. Martha is anxious about her
service – in the Greek, her διακονίαν; what by
Luke’s time is a technical term for a leadership role in the early church: a deacon.
The first hearers of this story
would have identified Martha as the leader of a house church. The text of Luke,
by the way, doesn’t specify the nature of Martha’s service. There is no mention of cooking in the
kitchen. We supply that inference
through our own sexist assumptions about gender roles; maybe, Luke is playing
on that assumption; but maybe, not.
Many commentators note that Mary’s passive listening is
described in terms associated with the role of a disciple, an apprentice to a
spiritual teacher. Perhaps Luke is
hinting at the leadership of women in the early church, but obliquely,
uncomfortably, in such a way as to obscure their agency. Is this a hint, or a cover-up?
Compare the treatment of Mary and Martha in John’s
Gospel. There, the sisters engage in
theological conversation with Jesus; they are not passive recipients of his
wisdom; and they are not rivals.[2] Martha is the first to confess that Jesus is
the Messiah, a distinction accorded to Peter in the other Gospels.[3] Mary
anoints and washes Jesus feet before his arrest, providing the model of
sacrificial love that Jesus later employs in washing his disciples’ feet during
his last supper with them.[4] Imitation is the highest form of praise. This is a discipleship of equals.
Luke downplays all this.
Maybe it is getting too hot to handle by the time he is writing his
Gospel, as the early church quickly moved to accommodate itself to patriarchal
culture by squashing the leadership of women.
Luke seems to want to have it both ways:
signaling the prominence of Martha and Mary, without scaring the horses.
Martha and Mary were just too important in Jesus’ life for the Gospel writers
to simply ignore them; their imprint on the theological imagination of the
early church too significant. So why does
Luke tell us this story?
Recall, as we heard last Sunday, that just prior to his
visit to Martha’s home, Jesus engaged in theological conversation with a
religious leader that culminated in his telling the parable of the good
Samaritan.[5] That
interchange revolved around the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal
life?”[6] This, by the way, is not a question about
life after death. It is about
participation in the life of the age to come, the promised future in which
God’s reign of justice and peace is realized on earth. It is a question about how to live so as to
realize the promise.
When Jesus throws the question back to the scribe, he
responds by quoting the Torah, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength, and with all your
mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”[7]
When the scribe presses Jesus to define the neighbor, Jesus tells the famous
parable of the good Samaritan. The point
is shocking: my neighbor is the enemy, the other, the person I am taught to
despise, who shows me mercy. When I
break through my prejudices about the other and see them as fully human as
myself, as capable of love, then enemies become friends. This is what it means to love your neighbor
as yourself. When we do this, we share
in God’s promised future.
This parable illustrates the second part of the Great
Commandment: loving your neighbor as
yourself. But what about the first
part? Luke tells us the story of Marth,
Mary, and Jesus to illustrate what it looks like to love God out of the whole
of your heart, in the whole of your being, mind, body and soul, and why this is
so important. Tellingly, Luke sandwiches
the story of Martha and Mary in between this parable and Jesus’ instructions
about how to pray; providing the Lord’s Prayer as a model and emphasizing the
importance of persistence in asking for what we need – as did Martha! – concluding
with the startling statement: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good
gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to those who ask him!”[8] Let’s look again at Martha and Mary through
this lens.
Martha is tired, Martha is anxious. She is carrying a heavy burden. It isn’t just the pressure of being a good
hostess. Her service is much more than
that: it is the challenge of loving her
neighbor as herself, of leading a community struggling to resist evil without
mirroring it. In this, she is imitating
Jesus. She has the weight of the world
on her shoulders; at least, it feels that way.
Am I doing enough? Is
it making a difference? What if we
fail? If you’ve ever asked yourself
these questions, if you’ve ever worried about the world your children and
grandchildren will inherit, it your heart is broken with every new post and
tweet, if you are spiraling in outrage with every turn of the news cycle, then
pay attention to Martha, because she has the right instinct. She goes straight to the Source for help, and
she demands what she needs: a sister, a community, to help her realize God’s
promised future.
Is Jesus chiding Martha or identifying with her? “I know you’re worried, distracted by many
things; who wouldn’t be? But keep your
eye on the prize: there is only one
thing necessary. Remember the first part
of the commandment. Ground yourself in
the love of God, and everything else will flow from that. Mary isn’t simply venerating me; she isn’t
checked out or avoiding the work. She is
imitating me too; she is opening herself to the gift of God’s Spirit that
infuses us with the energy we need to love our neighbor by drawing us more
deeply into communion with God, the Source of love.”
Martha, Mary, and Jesus constitute a Trinitarian icon of
love in this story. In the round dance
of giving and receiving that they model we are invited to remember that we are
created in God’s image. Yes, we are
commanded to love our neighbor, but we can only do that in so far as we become
transparent to God, so that love can flow through us from its infinite
Source. If we are trying to save the
world on our own steam, we will burnout quickly or worse: we will do more harm than good.
Martha, Mary and Jesus are a group of friends who help each
other to remember the first part of the Great Commandment when things get
tough. Loving your neighbor as yourself
isn’t an easy way to live, but it is the only way to live well. It takes a community of friends to make it
possible; friends who support our desire for God and God’s promises.
Today’s Gospel isn’t about a choice between Mary or Martha;
contemplation or action, worship or service.
It is about Mary, and Martha, and Jesus – you, me, and God - the
community of love that realizes God’s promises together.
Here is the take away:
unplug from the news cycle. Turn
off your phone. Put the ear buds
away. I’m not asking you to tune out
from the world, but to tune into its Source.
Turn to wonder, to awe, to gratitude to God for this most amazing
life. Allow yourself to rest in God’s love. Take your identity from God – not from mom or
dad, not from work or school, not, God forbid, from your Twitter feed. Don’t let the many distractions tweak
you. Ask for what you need – the one thing necessary – the love of God
which is being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been
given to us[9] –
and you will begin to know how to love your neighbor as yourself, because you
will know what it is to be loved by God.
