As they continued their travel, Jesus entered a village. A woman by the name of Martha welcomed him and made him feel quite at home. She had a sister, Mary, who sat before the Master, hanging on every word he said. But Martha was pulled away by all she had to do in the kitchen. Later, she stepped in, interrupting them. "Master, don't you care that my sister has abandoned the kitchen to me? Tell her to lend me a hand."
The Master said, "Martha, dear Martha, you're fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up over nothing. One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it—it's the main course, and won't be taken from her."
Let me just say right off the bat that this is one of those texts that, in my professional opinion, could have been left out of Luke’s gospel. I don’t like it, and not just because I personally feel the sting of Jesus’ criticism of Martha. I don’t like it because it’s confusing and contradictory. Look back at the very end of the Good Samaritan parable. Jesus asks the religion scholar which of the three men on the road was a neighbor to the injured man. The scholar correctly answers, “the one who showed him mercy;” in other words, the Samaritan. Jesus says to him, “Go and do likewise,” which clearly suggests that a life of discipleship is about doing: doing justice, showing mercy, reaching out to others with compassion, serving others and showing hospitality.
And then, in the very next four verses we have this story in which Jesus seems to say quite clearly and none too kindly that a life of discipleship is about being -- being attentive to the Word of God, coming before Jesus like hungry bird, hanging on every word that comes from his mouth. So which is it? Devotion or service?
In Luke’s gospel, there are all kinds of stories that seem to suggest the answer is service, and not just any kind of service but that particular kind that Martha provides -- hospitality to a visitor in one’s home. Do you remember when Jesus went to Simon’s house and criticized Simon because he didn’t wash Jesus’ feet or anoint his head with oil, leaving those tasks instead to an unnamed woman off the streets? Then, when Jesus sends the disciples off on their own to proclaim the kingdom of God and heal, he tells them that if they enter a house and do not receive a welcome, they are to “shake the dust off [their] feet as a testimony against them” as they leave. Clearly hospitality and service are the most important things.
But, to be fair, there are lots of examples in Luke’s gospel where prayer and devotion seem to be the most important thing. People are healed, not because they serve someone in need or show hospitality, but simply because they exhibit some small measure of faith: the woman who pushes her way through a crowd, convinced that if she can just touch the edge of Jesus’ cloak she will finally be healed; the centurion, who is not even Jewish, but who believes that Jesus can heal his beloved slave, which Jesus does. Then, in the story that follows this one, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray and he gives them the gift of the Lord’s Prayer and the beloved words, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”
So which is it then? Exactly what kind of disciples does Jesus want us to be? Good Samaritans or quiet, attentive Marys?
To which Jesus would certainly respond, “Yes.” (1)
This is yet another story on our journey with Jesus in which Jesus refuses to give us simple answers. It’s easy to read it with all the baggage we have in our culture and in our churches about the concept of “women’s work” and think that Jesus is saying that Martha did the wrong thing and Mary did the right thing. But if we stay with this story a little longer, if we dig into the text a little deeper, it will give us, if not the answers we long for, at least enough to satisfy our hunger.
When I spent a year in Belfast, Northern Ireland as a student pastor in a Presbyterian Church, I experienced hospitality like I’d never known before. I can count on my hands the number of Sundays I didn’t have an invitation to go to a church member’s home for a three or four course Sunday lunch after worship. Fortunately, before I left, a fellow seminarian who had spent time there informed me of two important customs of Northern Irish hospitality. First, when you go to someone’s house, you never show up empty-handed. A simple bouquet of flowers or perhaps a bottle of wine -- it doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but you always bring your host a gift. And if ever someone offers you a cup of tea -- and the custom is that as soon as you step foot in another person’s home you are offered a cup of tea -- you accept it. Over the course of that year, I’m quite sure I bought over a hundred bouquets of flower and drank thousands of cups of tea. Those were the expectations of giving and receiving hospitality in that culture.
In Jesus’ day, there were also certain expectations about hospitality, and at the minimum they were this: when someone enters you home, be it friend or stranger, you offer him is a place to sit and a meal. By welcoming Jesus into her home and preparing him a meal, Martha is simply following the customs of her day. In fact, given the other examples in Luke’s gospel, we can assume that Jesus expected and appreciated her efforts.
The surprising thing about this text is not that Martha was slaving away in the kitchen. The shocking thing is that rather than doing her part to extend hospitality to Jesus, Mary was sitting at his feet. You see, in Jesus’ day, women were not permitted to assume the status of students, only men were, and sitting at the teacher’s feet was what students -- what men -- did. When the earliest readers of Luke’s gospel heard this story, they would have been appalled at Mary’s behavior, because she is assuming a role available to men.
So the first people to hear this story would have fully expected Jesus to criticize, not Martha for fulfilling her duties as hostess, but Mary for presuming that she was worthy to sit at Jesus’ feet. Instead, Jesus turns all these assumptions on their heads. When Martha has finally had enough of being left alone in the kitchen, she marches out and demands that Jesus set Mary straight. But Jesus refuses, instead scolding Martha and praising Mary.
But listen carefully to Jesus’ words. “Martha, you’re getting all worked up over nothing...only one thing is essential...” Jesus isn’t criticizing Martha for being a good hostess, but for taking the whole concept of roles a little too seriously. And I’m not talking about dinner rolls, here, I’m talking about the roles we all assume, the roles we choose and the roles society gives us.
Frederick is a children’s book by artist and illustrator Leo Leonni that tells the story of a family of mice. During the summer and fall, the mice get ready for the winter, when they will retreat into a stone wall with all the food they collected when the weather was warm and the nuts and grains were abundant. The problem is that Frederick never does anything to help. While the other mice gather food, he suns himself on a rock. When they ask what he is doing, he says, “I’m gathering sun rays for the cold, dark winter days.” Another day, he claims to be gathering colors and another day, words. But to the hardworking mice it looks like he is simply lazy.
Then, winter comes, and the mice retreat into the wall. Gradually they eat their stores of grains and nuts and tell all the stories they can remember. They fall into a cold, depressed silence. Then they remember Frederick. “What about the sun rays, and colors, and words?” they ask. He tells them to close their eyes and then, with his words, he begins to paint beautiful, vivid pictures for them, so real that they can feel the warmth of the sun on their skin and see the bright colors of the flowers and birds and trees as if were summer again. When he is finished, they open their eyes, astonished. Why, he really was doing something when it looked like he was just sitting around! “Frederick,” they say, “you are a poet!”
To which Frederick just smiles shyly and replies, “I know it.” (2)
This wonderful story reminds us that we all have different gifts. It also suggests that we all have different roles to play, and, of course, there is truth to that. It is that same truth that causes this story about Martha and Mary to resonate so deeply within us, because we all have roles, some we have chosen, some that have been heaped upon us, and we have all had times when we resented our roles, when we would rather be the one making conversation with the guest in the living room while someone else fixes the meal, or vice versa.
According to the roles given them by their society, Martha is the one in this story doing the “right” thing and Mary is the one doing the “wrong” thing. The problem is, Jesus isn’t interested in right or wrong. And thank God for that. Jesus doesn’t care that the centurion or the woman who touches his cloak weren’t Jewish or didn’t wait their turn before they came up to him and demanded his healing. They had faith, and that was enough for him. Jesus doesn’t care that a Samaritan isn’t supposed to interact with a Jew. The true neighbor is one who shows mercy and compassion to someone in need. Jesus doesn’t say that we have to ask for things in just the right way to receive them: ask and you will receive, search and you will find... As far as Jesus is concerned only one thing matters, as he tells Martha, there is only one essential thing, and that is...
Well, the final infuriating twist to this story is that Jesus doesn’t actually explain what the “one essential thing” is. But I can’t help but wonder if it has something to do with the fact that there is no one right way to be a disciple. The Bible is quite clear that at times we are to go and do and at times we are to sit and listen and there isn’t one of us here that can live a life of true discipleship if we only do one or the other...no matter what we feel our particular role is in the church or on this journey of faith. And if we spend our time judging the way other people live as disciples and getting worked up because they’re not doing it right, then we can be sure that we have gone off in the wrong direction.
There is no one right way to be a disciple. And there is no one role in life that we must fulfill at all cost. In the end, there is truly only one role that matters on this journey, and that is the main course of which Jesus speaks, our truest, most important identity: we are the beloved children of God, the faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. “Martha has chosen the main course and it won’t be taken away from her,” Jesus says, reminding us all that when we claim our one true role, not the one society gives us or the one that comes from our job or social status, but our fundamental identity as children of God, once we claim that, then no one -- not even we ourselves on our most judgmental and resentful days -- can ever take it away. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Fred Craddock makes this point in the commentary Luke (Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching), WJK Press, 1991.
2. Leo Leonni, Frederick, Dragonfly Books, 1973.
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