I don’t know if you have noticed but I think there is a little bit of an assumption in church that when there are stories with women in the Bible, it means they are stories for women. For this reason I guess, whenever we offer a study about “Women in the Bible”, hardly any man ever shows up to the sessions. It’s weird if you think about it, because we would agree that we, men and women alike, all have to learn from the examples (and sometimes counter examples) of, say, King David, Simon Peter or the Pharisees. The characters of the Bible have something to say to all of us, whatever our age, race or sex. And yet, in this passage of the Bible we have just heard, I agree that we seem to deal with a great amount of clichés about feminine issues: Domestic work overload and complaining about domestic work overload;being frustrated about “doing it all by yourself“ and yet not asking for help, at least not directly; blaming it all on the rest of the family;and on top of all of that a little bit of competition between sisters for male attention…It looks like we have the whole package indeed and it can make this story a bit humorous for men and a little irritating for women, especially if we just assume that Jesus’s answer to Martha: “You are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing” is a typical masculine invitation to just “sit down and relax” when there is so much to do around the house.
So how are we to approach the story and understand the spiritual message it has for all?
Well, as often I think we have to start by remembering that most passages in the Bible are better understood if we look at the whole picture. And the first thing we need to be aware of is that Luke, throughout his Gospel, tells us stories about women and it has a well defined purpose. For those of us who can attend Bible study, we have noticed how women received the Apostles in their houses and grew Christian communities from there. Luke makes it clear that they weren’t only helping the communities financially and logistically, by bringing food for example, they were quite obviously “church makers”. So Luke often brings up stories of Jesus and women to talk about their roles and their vocation and also to show them as examples (sometimes counter examples) for all of us. Jesus taught women as much as he taught men, he saw their struggles and their sufferings, he saw their faithfulness and also their sins, he picked them for important tasks like proclaiming the Resurrection (Luke 24). On top of that, we can only acknowledge that throughout the Gospels Jesus never downplayed domestic work and actually took his share in it: One of the last thing he did on earth was to wash his disciple’s feet (John 13) and one of the first thing he did after his Resurrection (John 21) was to cook breakfast for his friends (I like that!)
So today I think we need to understand that this time again, Jesus sees Martha like he saw all the people he met, he sees her faithfulness and also her sufferings. The passage says Jesus tells her she is “worried and distracted“, and by this he does not mean that she is being dramatic or annoying, the words he uses are actually closer to what we would translate in English as “anxious and panicked“. It is the same word Jesus used before when warning the disciples against worrying, including worrying about being arrested, imprisoned and executed, not just “sweating the small stuff” (Luke 12:11). Jesus is not saying to Martha “It’s okay, it’s just domestic stuff“, I think he really sees her distress, he knows for good reasons that serving others is not often rewarding, rather it’s a thankless and endless job.
Then Jesus also sees Martha’s sin: She wants her sister to solve a problem she has herself created by not asking her for help directly and with a little bit of tact. Instead, she has chosen to point out to Jesus what she considers her sister’s wrongdoings, she then tries to bring the attention on herself and her “good works”, and Jesus really hates it when people do that (See Matthew 7:3: Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?)
From there, obviously Jesus starts defending Mary, but as he does so he also shows he wants something better for Martha. Jesus is not defending Mary’s passivity or laziness, excusing her if you will, rather he shows her as an example her sister could follow for the best. When Luke says that Mary was “sitting at his feet and listening“, it does not mean that she is acting like a silly groupie, it means that she was being formed as a disciple. She does what male students did at the time, “sitting at the feet” of their rabbis to listen to the Scriptures, and have the Scriptures explained to them (See what Paul says about that in Acts 22:3). Jesus acknowledges Mary’s thirst for learning and Mary’s spiritual vocation and he says something very important for the early church: Women’s spiritual vocation can be, but do not have to be, fulfilled in their domestic work and family life. Jesus is giving them a chance not many rabbis and spiritual guides, or even prophets, have given them before him. They can be as educated as men. In this, Jesus’s words towards Martha are not words of judgment but words of liberation, or if there is judgment it’s a judgment meant to bring liberation: Martha is anxious and panicked, her mind and soul hijacked by “many things” when really she is meant for better things, the only thing that really counts. Jesus does not say what it is though, and maybe we can decide whether this “one thing” is study or faith or devotion, hearing the word of God maybe? To me I think Jesus is talking about himself. I think that, out of humility, he is not going to say: I am the only thing that counts, but that’s what it is about in the end. God first and last and not just serving God, as Martha tries to do, but also and mainly loving God by just being available to God.
This shouldn’t surprise us. From the beginning Jesus has been calling his disciples to leave the many demands of this world so they can follow him and even more than that, so they can belong to him (John 15). He asked his disciples to leave their occupations, their trade, their office job, their family, would it be only temporarily. We even saw Jesus ask a young man to sell all his possessions (Matthew 16:22), indeed we shouldn’t be surprised he asks a woman to leave her pots and pans, would it be only to spend a little time with him. The message for all of us is that we can certainly please God with our service, in our everyday job, in our domestic work, volunteering and caring for others, and yet we please God even more when spending time with God. Again, does it surprise us? Isn’t it true of all our relationships? We certainly enjoy when people help us, serve us food or give us a ride or send us a gift…but don’t we enjoy above all having friends spending time with us “for nothing”, visiting us, sitting with us, sharing what matters to us. Isn’t it the core of a relationships? And then we help each other when needed? When I was a seminarian, I started to help at a church where they were bringing sandwiches to the homeless and I was stunned to realize that most of them weren’t asking much, they just wanted to talk, to have a little bit of company. So is our God. Jesus does not want us to do just things for him, he wants us.
Today our Gospel is about refocusing on the heart of our relationships with Jesus, to learn from him, grow in faith in order to know him better and to know him better in order to love him even more, for the sole purpose of loving him. To accomplish that we have to leave behind not only what is evil or vain and does not really matter, but we also may have to leave behind what is valuable and needed, at least for a little while.
Then how do we get there?
Well I find it quite wonderful this passage shows up this week in our lectionary when we’re going to talk about “contemplative ways of praying”: Prayer beads with Millie right after the service and then the introduction to Centering prayer Andrea will be offering next Saturday. Like he did with Martha, Jesus is inviting us to leave it all for a little while and sit with him using repetitive words and gestures and even plain silence, just to focus our attention on the one thing, focus on Him. It’s true that our prayers are generally full of good intentions but they can become like shopping lists: we try to say as much as possible, to cover it all and to make sure to get them done. In the end, it may say more about our anxieties than about our relationships with God. Have you ever prayed and felt like you were just talking to yourself about all the things you’re worried about? But a wise person once said: “Prayer is not something we do, it’s something that’s done to us“. And this is what Martha is missing out on when Jesus visits her house. She does not see she is good enough as she is for him, his visit only adds to her list of things to do whenall he needs is her heart and her attention. Jesus still wants to visit us the same way, would it be for 5 or 10 minutes, if we’d only leave behind our occupations and preoccupations. For this, we don’t need to become better Christians, we just need to learn, starting low and slow, how to shift our focus. Kate Bowler, a Christian writer, says that there is a holiness in letting some things be undone or unresolved and just be fine with it. I have been thinking about that a lot this past week and in the end, I find Jesus’s words to Martha very comforting. Maybe you have too much to do, and can’t do it all, maybe you worry about all the things you should be doing, or maybe you are at this stage in your life where you cannot get a lot done, still this passage says that we can all do the one thing that really matters because we can all give our time and attention to Jesus.Indeed, Martha and Mary’s story is for all of us.