Martha, Martha, Martha

Scripture: Luke 10:38-42
Now as they went on their way, he 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.”

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“Martha. Martha. Martha.” If you Google Mary and Martha coloring sheets, you will find almost every image contains woman so frantic she hasn’t the time to set down her mixing bowl before bursting into an otherwise calm room. Mary looks so sweet and calm, quiet and attentive. Martha looks like an irate Julia Child, flour dusting her hair as she demands Jesus send her sister to work in the kitchen. Well that’s what we assume anyways. This passage comes with generations of stereotypes and assumptions. Martha is demanding and bossy—or maybe that other word that starts with a B. Martha and Mary play into our narratives about women leaders; how girls cannot support girls; how we should be weary of women with authority or power or intentions and goals. Martha is always painted as trying to keep her sister down and Jesus, the great feminist liberator, says no, Mary gets to stay and learn. Mary gets to be in the presence of God; she has chosen the better part.

In art and in the bulk of Christian teaching over the past 2000 years, Martha’s busyness has been held in contrast to Mary’s quiet learning. Martha is busy with the flour dusting her hair, the tables to be set, and the chickens to be plucked. Mary is quiet, learning, listening and Martha needs her help, or demands Jesus send Mary to help. Pastors have often preached this message as a reason to listen to the sermon or participate in Sunday school, but the Marthas in the room were probably setting up the fellowship meal and or weeding the church lawn.

In one of the first sermons on this passage, Origen, invited Christians to see Mary as the example of reflection and Christian discipleship. Later Protestant folks, like John Calvin, would move the model of discipleship away from a life of contemplation towards one of service and practice. In their preaching they acknowledge the importance of Martha’s work (even if they want to stay as far away as possible from works righteousness). The tender balance invites us to honor Martha just a little more. It makes sense..the “Protestant Work Ethic” had to start somewhere and it must have started with Martha.

When I hear the story of Mary and Martha, I hear it through a long line of Marthas. I hear Martha in my great grandma’s stories. She was the oldest daughter of 13 children and she worked, every day of her life setting the table, making the meal and welcoming guests into her home. Once while washing dishes, she shared the story of how her younger sister, my great aunt Lou, always managed to go to the outhouse when the work in their childhood kitchen got busy. Which, I think is a lot of dedication to getting out of work. But I understood the point of her story, hard work is what we value.

Leaders like Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and more recently Mary Stromer Hansen have invited us to look again at the work in which Martha is engaged. If we look closely at the Greek language of our text, it raises the question of why do we always put Martha in the kitchen? And worse yet, make her the woman trying to keep her sister in the kitchen and out of the classroom. Maybe we don’t have to pit them against each other. Maybe there is something more to their work then we imagine. Perhaps we have been the people that put Martha in the kitchen rather than the Gospel of Luke.

The language of welcome that Martha offers to Jesus, is the same language used in Acts 17:7 when the disciples welcomed by a man named Jason. The language of welcome connected to Martha is the same as the language used later in the Gospel of Luke when Zacchaeus (Luke 19:6) welcomes Jesus into his home. We might remember Zaccheaus as the vertically challenged tax collector that is transformed when Jesus joined him for dinner. For some reason, we never imagine Zaccheus or Jason, running around baking a souffle and setting the table. We don’t imagine them checking in on the disciples, managing food preferences, and making a list: Andrew, James, and John are pescatarian; Mary Magdalene is on the Keto diet; Judas and Peter are gluten free. No, we never expect that when a male head of the household extends the welcome. Perhaps it is hard for us and our historic cultures to imagine Martha in ownership and authority, especially when women’s ability to own property and take authority has often been so limited. Martha’s welcome into her household is sacred hospitality. It harkens back to the scriptures that Jesus and Peter, Mary, and Martha would have studied, where Abraham entertains three strangers whom turn out to be angels offering a divine blessing. Abraham leads the work of hospitality and we never imagine him doing all of the work alone. He enlists help, Sara makes cakes, servants prepare a calf, and he entertains the guests with curds and milk. This is the sacred work of hospitality, and we find Martha’s story in the current of this ancient work. Perhaps she isn’t keeping her sister down as much as she is including her in the sacred work.

Maybe we don’t have to put Martha in the kitchen. The work or service the Bible names of her is named in other places. We might translate the Greek into service and work, but it is a term for faith community leadership, it is ministry. The disciples use this word when they talk about replacing Judas and finding a new apostle in the book of Acts. Martha is busy. She is busy in ministry, busy in service is of word and table. She may be using her hands to prepare bread, but she might also be breaking it. She might be using her hands to touch the untouchable and heal people longing for wholeness, just like Jesus taught her. She may be teaching and preaching and organizing, just like Jesus taught her. And that work can be overwhelming.

This is where Martha names her need for help. This is where Martha names that she needs some support from her sister. Perhaps they are a team, setting the table together since they were children, but perhaps now they are a team in ministry. Perhaps they were a part of the 70 that Jesus sends out in the verses before. Maybe that is why Martha invites Jesus to her home. Perhaps she had learned what it felt to be welcomed or rejected by strangers. Perhaps Martha has been so inspired by Jesus that she has a two year strategic plan for ministry in her home town of Bethany and beyond. When the Bible says “Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet” it could also say, Mary who also sat at the Lord’s feet. Perhaps Martha was in the session and stepped out to care for some ancient Mediterranean “email” about an upcoming event. We are left to imagine what is keeping her busy. But it is clear that she is feeling the pressure of the work in which she is engaged. Which brings us to the response Jesus offers. “Martha, Martha you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing…” This is not the only time the Gospel of Luke places this phrase on the lips of Jesus. In Luke 18:22, Jesus encounters a figure we often call the “rich young lawyer.” This young man seeks Jesus out, names all the successes he has had in following the commandments since his birth and then seeks assurance that his good living will get him into the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus responds, ”you have need of only one thing” or “you lack one thing.” His prescription for the rich young man is to sell everything he has, give the money to the poor, and then follow Jesus. The young man goes away grieving.

Martha prescription isn’t named in her passage like the rich young lawyer’s. But, it is clear that she found it because she journeys with Jesus to the end of his earthly ministry. It is also apparent that Jesus makes her home in the city of Bethany his home base — as much as he makes any place his home. The narrative says Martha is worried and distracted, but this language is different from being unable to focus (like look, squirrel!). It refers to an ongoing state of being overburdened, being pulled away. Perhaps Martha has forgotten the one thing because she relied on her own labor, her own production, her own drive rather than pausing to refresh in God’s presence. Perhaps she, like many of us, thought one more message, one more conversation, one more email needs to be sent, one more spreadsheet, one more...and then realized there was no time to center, study and recharge. Maybe she looked around at the folks in the group and thought, Peter keeps messing up, James and John aren’t much better, I’m the only one that can get this done. And so here she has a moment of real discipleship with Jesus. Jesus models again and again to pause with action, to center, study and pray before and after serving, working, listening, and leading. Jesus pauses, with Martha. He teaches and re-teaches her just like he does with Peter, James, John and the rest; and so we are asked, with Martha, to find the one thing.

The gift, of course, for the Martha in all of us is that we don’t have to seek after that one thing we lack alone. We gather and pause. We gather and listen. We gather to be Martha and Mary on a journey together. We gather in this place to be honest about feeling overwhelmed and to receive honest feedback that maybe this feeling isn’t Mary’s fault but something we must own. We gather to honor the diversity of gifts and possibilities that we can unleash when we find, follow and explore the "one thing.”
May it be so. Amen.