Martha and Mary: Luke 10 v 38-42: ‘Mary has chosen what is better.’
I vividly remember an outing with some friends one Sunday afternoon when my children were young. The nearer we got to our destination the more the rain came pouring down and we eventually had to admit defeat. However the parents of one of our party lived quite nearby so plan B was to knock on their front door. We were made to feel enormously welcome and miraculously, as it seemed, food in abundance was placed before us!
Hospitality was, and still is in Middle Eastern culture, a sacred duty. The house that Jesus visits in Bethany belonged to Martha and she would have felt an obligation to provide a welcome and a meal. So we can understand why she gets a little hot under the collar about her sister spending time with Jesus while she is working hard in the kitchen. Households in which one person does all the chores while others do very little to help don’t tend to be happy ones!
However there is a bit more to this than meets the eye. In ‘sitting at the feet of Jesus’ (v 39) Mary was both occupying a male space within the house (women lived in the more private rooms, such as the kitchen) whilst also assuming a male persona as, effectively, a trainee rabbi. Paul uses the same expression to describe his own rabbinic training under Gamaliel (Acts 22 v 3).
This means that a kaleidoscope of thoughts must have been whizzing round in Martha’s mind. Everything from ‘who on earth does she think she is, we’ll never live this scandal down’ to ‘how many arms does she think I’ve got!’ The result is that she became thoroughly distracted (v 40) and was unable to embrace the moment. Jesus was not going to be around for all that much longer, Jerusalem and a Roman cross await him, and it is Mary who has made the better choice on this particular day (v 42). I suspect that for most of us life pootles along from day to day without the kind of great excitement or drama experienced by Martha and Mary when Jesus came to visit. Yet the message of this passage is that even when life seems uneventful Christians are called to live attentively, sitting at the feet of Jesus with open hearts and minds listening for and to his voice.
Many Christians find a method of reflecting on each day called ‘The Examen’ very helpful in this regard. It is a way of prayerfully reflecting on the day just past and discerning whether God is speaking to us through some of the emotions we have felt, which may include anger, disappointment, love, gratefulness, envy, anxiety or optimism. It also encourages us to reflect on one event that took place that day, examples of which include a significant conversation, a task performed, a change of plan, something that went wrong, a surprise, an opportunity taken (or missed), a misunderstanding or a new insight gained into something. Then, whether the day was really good or pretty lousy, we share our thoughts, including what we might have learned, with God. It may be that we will be giving thanks, saying sorry, praying for somebody, offering praise or asking for God’s help. It’s really about understanding that God weaves his presence through the fabric of our day to day lives and that nothing that happens to us is bereft of meaning. It’s clear that on the day of Jesus’ visit Mary understood that better.
Martha was distracted because of her worry and anxiety (v 41). In today’s world there are many distractions which, sometimes in ways that we are barely conscious of, shift the focus of our lives away from the call to sit at Jesus’ feet. Many today, (myself included!) need to reflect on the amount of times a day we consult our mobile phones and tablets. So, we think, I’ll just check emails, WhatsApp messages, the news, Facebook, the weather app, how many steps I’ve done today and on and on it goes. None of these activities are at all wrong in themselves; it’s great that we can, for example, communicate so easily with one another, share photos and videos and check our fitness levels. During the pandemic the internet has provided churches with the ability to stream services online and Zoom and other conferencing apps have enabled families and friends to keep in touch with one another in ways that would have been impossible a few decades ago. The problem is that not only is it possible for phones, tablets, laptops and computers to gobble up time without us noticing, they can also fill us, along with Martha, with worry and anxiety. It has been well said that the last thing you should do to try and diagnose a medical condition is go on the internet. It reminds me of the opening chapter of Jerome K. Jerome’s comic novel Three Men and a Boat in which the narrator, having been looking through a medical encyclopaedia, decides that the only condition he doesn’t have is housemaid’s knee!
What this kind of distraction does is shift the focus of our lives away from a securely anchored relationship with God. When we are distracted (whatever is claiming our attention) it is very often spending time with God that is the casualty and it won’t be long before a sense of unreality, that God if he’s there at all is a long way away, permeates our being. This is particularly relevant to our use of social media. Facebook and other platforms are not evil in themselves, one Facebook group I belong to is dedicated to old photos of Chester, the city I grew up in, and many of them are fascinating. But it’s clear to many now that they are also being used to manipulate the way people think about important issues by spreading falsehoods such as the allegations of fraud in last year’s presidential election in the USA which, as far as I can see, have no basis whatsoever in reality. If we’re spending hours and hours on our devices and little or no time with God our spiritual lives will inevitably be out of kilter.
But with Martha, there was a further element to her distraction that we have already alluded to. Jesus’ approval of Mary being a de facto trainee rabbi represents an enormous challenge to her worldview according to which this was a role most definitely reserved for men. ‘Martha, Martha’, says Jesus as he encourages her to see how the listening Mary is doing as the one thing needed at that moment (v 42). Being a disciple of Jesus, now as then, involves being open to change in every part of our lives including our beliefs, our lifestyle, our relationships and our values. Change is difficult, especially as we get older, and it is tempting to draw the comfort blanket of familiarity around ourselves whilst looking the other way. Yet we live in a fast moving world that is facing enormous challenges and this will involve new ways of being church, presenting the good news and caring for the planet. It is this need to spend time at the feet of Jesus, learning from him and asking the question ‘what would you have me do?’ that is the reason why, in Martha’s house that day, Mary chose what is better.
Questions: What are things that distract you most and prevent you from spending more time with God? What things do you feel most anxious about and how often do you share your worries with the Lord?
Prayer: Lord, forgive us for being so distracted. Help us to sit at your feet daily and learn more about you that we may better serve you in a changing world. Amen.