Mary and Martha

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Luke 10:38-42

Have you ever had one of those moments, a moment when a stranger surprised you by asking a random question out of the blue, one where a friend or acquaintance confronted you about something that you totally weren’t expecting, one where you were surprised and taken aback, one where you wished you had said and done everything differently when you actually had time to sit down and think about what in the world had just happened? Although I’m pretty sure that I have these moments weekly in my life, one of them in particular always sticks out.

My former church, my first call out of seminary, was a small, lovely, welcoming congregation, and they reached out to me with open arms. I was the first associate they had ever had, and certainly the first woman to preach from their pulpit. I had been there for about 4 years, and the head of staff had just left for another call. Much like I have been doing for the past several months here, I assumed both jobs, preaching, visiting, planning liturgy, attending lots of committee meetings, helping to dream for the future. The interim pastor nominating committee had just completed its work, offering a call to an interim, a call approved and extended by the session. Although I had nothing to do with the process, I was so excited about the committee’s choice—a qualified, loving, thoughtful, and active pastor, actually a childhood friend of mine married to another pastor in town. And, like me, she was a girl.

I’ll never forget the Sunday—I had just finished preaching and leading our first worship service, and I was heading back to my office to decompress for a bit. The church offices were right outside of the sanctuary, and I was walking through our secretary’s office to get to mine when I was, simply put, accosted by a male church member. He started yelling at me, ranting and raving: “Rachel, I’m angry about this (words edited for church consumption). What was the committee doing? What were they thinking? How could you let this happen?” This is when I made the first bad decision of this encounter—even engaging this man in the first place. I should’ve asked him to leave and come back when he could speak rationally. But I didn’t. There was a senior high sitting there and I didn’t want him to see this bad behavior, so I made the second bad decision of this encounter, asking the church member to come to my office with me. My office was small, no window and only one door, so I quickly realized that he basically had me cornered. And let me just pause to thank whatever genius designed my office here—two doors! One to open and one to back out of if needed! But I digress. I asked him why he was so upset with the committee’s choice, tried to explain our polity to him and that I had nothing to do with it. And then it came out: “Because it’s a woman! We can’t have two women ministers here. That’s disgraceful. ALL WOMEN ARE JUST ALIKE.”

Until this point, I had been surprised and scared by all of this, but that’s when I got angry myself. I felt attacked. Shocked. Angry that he would attack like that. Angry that he assumed that we were just alike. Angry that he made stereotypes—about her, about me-angry that he was taking it all out on me. And then came my third bad choice when I said, angrily, shaking: “Um, there are other churches in this presbytery with all male ministers. Would you dare say the same about them.” Yes, it made him more angry and he yelled more. Luckily, one of our elders finally heard all of it and came in to demand that he leave.

I started thinking later about everything I did wrong and about how I would address something like this if it ever happened again. I think that, after asking to come back and talk when he had calmed down, I would have whipped my Bible out and shared our story from today with him—the story of Mary and Martha and Jesus at their home. I think that it’s such a wonderful, rich story about two sisters, two women with very different demeanors and outlooks and actions, a story about the importance of women in Christ’s story, a story about their relationship with their friend and Lord. These two women are nuanced and complex, exciting for me, for all of, really, to think about.

As long-winded as the gospel of Luke can be at times, the story of Mary and Martha as told in Luke is a short one—a short one, but an interesting and very telling one. Jesus and the others have made their way to a village, and we hear that Martha is the one who welcomes them, invites Jesus into her home. This suggests that Martha already has some familiarity with Jesus, a sign on the friendship between Jesus and Martha and her family that we hear about a few times in the gospels. Luke immediately places Mary, Martha’s sister, at Jesus’ feet, quietly listening to him. Martha has other plans, busily working away—it is generally assumed that she is preparing a meal for him, but the story doesn’t give much detail. Perhaps she is cooking, perhaps preparing a bowl of warm water to clean his dirty feet, perhaps cleaning a bit because of the surprise visit, perhaps all of them since the text tells us that she is distracted by many tasks. And, like many of us would if we were doing all of this and found our sister simply sitting, Martha gets a bit agitated: “’Seriously, Lord, don’t you care that Mary is just sitting here doing nothing? Please tell her to get off her rear and come help.’” “’Martha,’” he replies, “Mary has chosen the better part, made the better choice. I can’t take this away from her.” Although we don’t know the tone that Jesus uses with Martha, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that it is a gentle one, a pastoral one, one that is not as harsh as elsewhere in the gospels.

Scholars have suggested many different interpretations of this scene: some suggesting that each character is one-dimensional and polarized by her deeds; others suggesting that the characters represent the abstract types of active (Martha) vs. contemplative (Mary) lifestyles. Some scholars suggests that, when Jesus tells Martha that Mary is doing the better part, Jesus is telling women to sit down and be quiet and stay silent, certain justification for women staying silent in church. On the complete opposite side, other scholars suggest that this story is a manifesto for the importance of educating women as Mary sits at his feet to learn. Still others suggest that this story helps us wrestle with the theological question of justification of works (Martha) vs. justification by faith (Mary).

I think that all of these are very interesting interpretations and suggestions, but I also resist the temptation to polarize Mary and Martha. I think it sells these two women short. I think these two faithful, active, nuanced women of faith tell us a lot about what it takes to be a Christian, a true follower of Christ, that to be followers, we have to be both listeners and actors, people who sit at Jesus feet to hear the gospel and then get on our own feet to share it.

In our worship and Sunday school time together, at our conferences and camps, and in our fellowship and mission time together, we talk about how vital it is to go and spread the story of Christ, share the love of Christ to all of those around us. We talk about how important it is to be hospitable and welcoming, to feed and reach out to those in need, to love as Christ loves. And I think that is what Martha is doing in our story—cleaning and cooking, preparing and making a space ready for Christ to come in, trying to show her love for him. But as we watch Martha’s frustration grow that Mary is simply sitting at Jesus’ feet, Jesus rightly reminds her that we can’t get on our feet to share the story until we have sat at Jesus’ own feet, until we have closed out the world around us to listen to what God is doing in our midst, to be reminded of the reason we are called to go out into the world. If we don’t know the gospel story before we rise to our feet to go out and share it, then what is the point?

You know, when people ask me why I love Montreat so much, I think of this story, of Mary in this story, of how she sits and listens and learns at the feet of Christ. It was so lovely last week to watch our senior highs, teenagers who are normally so busy with honors classes and dance, with band and show choir, with work and hanging out with friends, simply sit and play and wonder and pray explore and listen at Christ’s feet. They took a week out of their busy, crazy worlds, their worlds that move so fast, to simply be still and be renewed, to hear the story of Christ in a new and fresh way. And as incredible as it was for them, it was for the adults who were with them. One of us was walking through the grief of losing a friend, another in the midst of transition from college to a graduate intern program in nutrition. And one of us had spent the last few months working two jobs and running around like a crazy woman. All of us needed to get away from Martha’s distractions of the world and simply stop and sit like Mary did, to listen and pray and worship and be renewed in the story of Christ. Montreat allowed all of us to stop in the midst of our crazy worlds, in the midst of our distractions, for a while to sit at Jesus’ feet, to be like Mary, to listen and be refreshed and hear the story. We all wanted to stay in that place, but as much as we all would’ve liked to, we had to leave that lovely and beautiful part of God’s creation. We had to embrace the good of what we had just learned as Mary before we could go out into the world like Martha to act and prepare and love—because, as we were reminded on our final day, being a Christian is a thing of nuance, of being both a listener and an actor, of being someone who is called to sit at Jesus’ feet and then go out and be his feet in the world.

One theologian suggests that the word for “better” in this story is best translated as “good,” that Mary has “chosen the ‘good’ part, meaning she has chosen the connection to God who is good. That this story should be seen

…not as reinforcing a Martha-Mary dichotomy but calling for a recognition that God is both inside and outside, sustaining us while summoning us to work and, through our service, to bring about a world of justice, mercy, and peace. It is not an either/or message but a both/and message (Feasting on the Word).

Indeed, it is that—a recognition that God moves in and through us, inside and out, in amazing ways; that we are called to the good part to learn about a good God who inspires us to do many things in the world through service.

As you can probably tell, I love this story, these women, their love for their friend and Lord.  And I really love that Luke gives us an incomplete picture of Mary and Martha. It is so tempting for us to stop reading here, stop learning about these nuanced and complicated and different women at verse 42, where Luke stops. But there’s more. John sheds a new light on these women in his gospel. In the 11^th chapter, we find Martha and Mary grieving over their dear brother, Lazarus, who has passed away. This story sheds new light on Martha and Mary, as sisters, as prophets who both find a new way to proclaim the gospel.

After hoping for a miracle and then mourning terribly, Martha approaches Jesus, and in her pain says to him, “’Lord, if you had been here, he wouldn’t have died.’” Martha makes a Christological statement as she foreshadows the coming death and resurrection of Christ: “’I know that [Lazarus] will rise again in the resurrection on the last day…[and] Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” And after Jesus performs a miracle by bringing their brother back from the dead, Mary makes a Christological statement of her own, in her very own way. As Martha makes the dinner for Christ that she didn’t make so long ago, Mary takes a pound of perfumed ointment, takes Jesus’ feet in her hands, anoints them, and wipes them with her beautiful hair.

Mary and Martha, Martha and Mary, are fascinating, nuanced, smart, and savvy women. They are certainly very different in the way that they approach and live their lives, but alike in this: that Christ is their friend, their brother, their Lord. Through their encounters with Christ, they help us remember that it is so easy to get distracted by the things of the world, and help us to know that we must sit at Christ’s feet to hear the story of love, the story of grace, the story of resurrection. And Mary and Martha help us know and celebrate that we are called to share that story of Christ in the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.