Martha and Mary

Today we have the story of two sisters, Martha and Mary.  Two women as different from each other as night and day.  Each with her own gift and talent.  Each with her own ability to bear fruit for the gracious kingdom of God . 

Traditionally, there has been a tendency to read this text on a shallow level and to assign Martha to the realm of the distrustful busybody who misses the point.  Mary, on the other hand, tends to get depicted as an overly pious sort of Jesus devotee.  Neither caricature does justice to these two sisters.

First, as Biblical scholar Elizabeth Moltmann-Wendell points out, Martha and Mary are well to do.  It is clear they are not impoverished.  They, and their brother Lazarus, are some of Jesus’ dearest friends.  In John’s Gospel we have a long narrative about these three which tells us much about their connections to Jesus.  Luke doesn’t give us as much detail, but what Luke does tell us is this: Martha was a landowner.  She welcomes Jesus into her home.  She apparently managed an estate.  This is a woman with managerial ability.  She is a woman who could run a business. 

In this story we have this morning, Luke puts us in the world of women’s concerns.  Jesus is not with the all male band of disciples.  He is with two women friends; he has come to dine at their house.  Martha welcomes Jesus into her home.  She offers him real hospitality, a place where he doesn’t have to be “on” as teacher and rabbi.  She offers him a place where he can be at ease.

Mary does not seem to be the kind of woman who enjoys running the ranch, heading up the academic department or being bishop.  She has a different gift.  It is a mistake, I think, to see her as sort of a Jesus-groupie.  My hunch is that she was a woman who loved to learn, and who realized that Jesus is a teacher above all teachers.  She also had figured out that one tends not to learn if one does not listen.

What we have in the story of Martha and Mary is a story of difference, not necessarily a story of opposition.  Martha is distracted and worried.  It is often the case that when a person is in charge–whether as rector, as CEO, as principal of a school, any job that has a desk that could have a plaque reading “the buck stops here”, a job with responsibilities,–it is easy to become distracted by the various cares and worries of the day. 

Martha, in her frustration, goes to Jesus and says, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?  Tell her then to help me.”

She does two things that she may not even be aware of.  Martha indirectly asks for help.  Though she falls into the problematic behavior of trying to entangle Jesus in her irritation with her sister, she nevertheless voices the state of her spirit.  She feels like she is doing it all by herself.  She is weary and fed up.  And she would love for someone, maybe Jesus, to rescue her from this situation and straighten things out.  He deftly deflects that request and hears what she is saying underneath the question.  He hears that she is drowning in responsibility.  I invite you to imagine this: that Jesus knows Martha as capable, managerially adept landowner–not kitchen queen.  I invite you to imagine a tone of compassion, which perceives that the responsibilities have caught up with her.  “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.”  It is not that he is judging that.  He is bringing Martha to conscious awareness, helping her to see what is underneath her distress.  For centuries, Martha has been regarded as something of a whiner or as a woman whose only gift is being overly busy.  That sort of interpretation misses what Jesus is pointing to.

Father Thomas Keating notes that Jesus does not say to Martha, “Mary has chosen the best part.”  Jesus says, “Mary has chosen the better part.”  Keating’s take on this is that as we grow in the spiritual journey, the best part is a life marked by both the devotion of prayer and the life of ministry.  Both are dimensions of a life solidly grounded in Christ.  It is not a matter of Martha OR Mary, speaking of them symbolically.  It is a matter of both ways of being.  For those in the church who have tended to be overly responsible, their spirits may be in need of solitude, of quiet, of listening prayer.  For those who have had an innate inclination to prayer and devotion, their lives may need the embodied reality of working at Christian Assistance Ministries or Habitat for Humanity or Good Samaritan Center. 

In John’s Gospel we discover a Martha who has taken Jesus’ counsel seriously.  In that story, Jesus is summoned by these sisters to heal Lazarus, who is dying.  Jesus takes his time going to Bethany , and by the time he got there, Lazarus had died.  Martha ran to meet him, and Mary stayed at home.  Clearly these sisters have different gifts.  Martha took Jesus to task–not surprising, given what we know of her personality.  She said to Jesus, “Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  She has the chutzpah to scold Jesus.  This is not a woman who does nothing more than lose herself in trivialities.  This is a woman who speaks the truth.

Jesus, no doubt sad and stunned, says to Martha, “Your brother will rise again.”  Then he reveals himself to Martha–her honesty and self disclosure are met by Jesus revealing his true self.  “I am the resurrection and I am the life,” he says.  Imagine that you are Martha, and your dearest brother is dead.  He’s been dead long enough that the body has been anointed and shrouded.  You have begun your own journey of grief, yet Jesus is saying, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Martha’s response is amazing.  “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”  Martha’s confession is equal to Peter’s.  Martha has been freed of the captivity of anxious responsibility and has somehow embraced the better part.  In her we see a woman in whom  prayer and action are of a piece.  In her we see someone who is teachable, who has responded to Jesus’ frank estimate of spiritual state with a desire to deepen in faith. 

Later in the story, Mary also chastizes Jesus.  She too says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Mary has learned something from Martha.  She is taking some responsibility, speaking up, encountering Jesus with her real feelings and grief.  Martha AND Mary.  Action AND contemplation.  Ministry AND prayer. 

From the medieval church we receive a tradition that Martha, continuing to grow in her own ministry and vocation, did not collapse into a heap after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Meister Eckhart, a 14^th century mystic and Dominican monk, perceived that Martha learned to sit at Jesus feet out of a desire to be with him as friend, rather than out of a desire to advance in the spiritual path.  In other words, she enjoyed being in his presence.  She enjoyed being with him, so she could be with him without expecting to get something out of it.  As a result, Meister Eckart notes, Martha is a strong woman who cares about the concerns of the world, who can act responsibly, and who can get a kick out of being alive.

In the middle ages, following traditions received from the Church Fathers such as St. Jerome , a legend emerged that Martha and Mary had left the Holy Land after the Lord’s resurrection and had made their way by boat to Marseilles in present day France .  There Martha supposedly founded a community of sisters who followed a rule of life and cared for those in the surrounding countryside.  One day, Martha  came to the aid of a village being besieged by a dragon.  Unlike St. George, who reputedly killed a dragon, Martha subdued the beast.  Even today, on votive candles found in your local San Antonio grocery store, you will encounter images of Martha with a dragon on a leash.  

These medieval stories also tell us that Martha was a powerful preacher whose words had the power to convert many to Christ.  She was also reputed to be a healer, who even raised a man from the dead, calling on “Adonai, our Risen Lord Jesus Christ” who had raised Lazarus from the dead.

While the medieval stories are no doubt embellishments, they do help us to realize that how Martha and Mary have been seen through the years has varied.  That in and of itself leads us to the question of interpretation of a scriptural text.  I for one have a real suspicion of easy interpretation that simply says, “Martha’s work isn’t important and Mary’s is.”  I wonder what sorts of cultural norms are being upheld by that. 

Taking a long look at the history of interpretation of this passage, one discovers that some of the most grumpy curmudgeons among the Church Fathers had real respect for Martha and Mary as leaders and as women who were able to preach and heal. 

Listening deeply to this text invites us to let go of shallow interpretations of scripture–and one another.  Letting this text work on us calls us to remember that Christ listens to not only what we say; Christ listens to our deepest yearnings, and invites us to risk becoming fully human.  Amen.

Proper 11C

The Rev. Mary C. Earle

Copyright © Mary C. Earle