I remember hearing a sermon on this text one time with my mom. The sermon talked about how Mary was doing the better thing by studying and listening to Jesus rather than doing the work that Martha thought needed to be done in order to be a good hostess.
After church, my mom and I came walking out, got in the car, and she sat there for a moment, a rather perturbed look on her face, and went, “Hmmph. I guess you’re the Mary and I’m the Martha.”
I wasn’t honestly sure how to take that comment… as I don’t think it was totally meant as a compliment – despite what the sermon had said. The sermon unfortunately fostered a lot of resentment – that my mother’s gifts of organization and cleaning, etc. were somehow being shot down and pushed to the side as less meaningful and less necessary gifts than the seemingly more “lazy” Mary who just sat at the feet of the Jesus and listened. Now I’ll grant you – it’s obvious Mary and Martha had different priorities. My mom and I frequently also had different priorities – but was one priority more pressing than another? Should Martha have not been a good hostess and cleaned her house, made food, etc. for her guests?
The temptation we have with this text is to chastise Martha for being so busy with all the cooking and cleaning. I’m sure there are all kinds of women out there in the congregation today who identify more with Martha than with Mary. And we find ourselves a bit offended by Jesus’ words. After all – Martha was just trying to be a good hostess.
I mean, hospitality is an integral part of the Christian life. The story of Abraham greeting the three men is all about hospitality. It’s why later, Abraham will be called a “friend of God,” because he showed hospitality to them when they came near.
And Jesus chastises one of his earlier hosts, Simon the Pharisee, for his LACK of hospitality when it came to the woman who anointed his feet.
So – what on earth is up with Jesus? Why the bad manners and always criticizing his host or hostess?
What we want to do here is to somehow pit Mary against Martha – that Mary’s doing something better than what Martha is doing – that Martha’s activities are secondary and of lesser importance. But I think that misses the point of the story.
The issue had more to do with the fact that Martha allowed her work to not only interfere with her opportunity to learn from Jesus while he was there with her, but she also attempted to triangulate Jesus in the middle of a family dispute. “Jesus, make Mary help me!”
“MOM! My little sister isn’t helping me! Make her do it!”
I don’t know about you – but whenever I’ve demanded God do something for me – it doesn’t usually happen. Jesus is no doubt not real thrilled to be thrown into the middle of a family argument. Martha is attempting to put her sister down and shed her sister in a bad light. Can’t ever imagine that happening between siblings.
So the point is not about whether Martha is a good and gracious hostess. There is nothing wrong with what Martha is doing – there is nothing wrong with wanting to see to it your guests are served and their needs taken care of.
Martha’s problem is that she gets so consumed with what she is doing, being the hostess – that she misses the opportunity to enjoy her guest! She’s made Jesus’ visit more about herself and how everything looks and is presented than she has about the person she is supposedly serving.
How many times have we done this in our lives? Invited guests over, then spent so much time trying to make sure everything is just right, or just so – that we wind up neglecting the actual guest? People come to our homes usually to spend time with the person, to enjoy their company – to talk with them and pay attention to them – not to be fussed over to the point that the whole purpose for the visit is lost.
And for Jesus – he knows his time is short. He won’t probably be visiting Mary and Martha’s home again as his face is now set for Jerusalem. He’s making a journey that he will not return from. He will not be with them, will not physically be present with them again. So this is their last opportunity for discipleship – to sit at the feet of the master and learn and to spend time with him.
So it’s not a matter of what Martha, as the hostess, was doing wrong by being the hostess – the problem was she failed to recognize the guest she had in her midst, the opportunity she had that would soon be gone – and she sought to draw Mary away from that opportunity as well. Jesus is proclaiming the Kingdom of God is near – and Martha’s complaining that she’s having to do all the work herself.
She made Jesus’ visit all about herself. “Lord, don’t you care that I’m doing all this for you? That I’m doing all these things, and I have to do it ALL BY MYSELF? Don’t you see the things I’M doing for you? And how lazy my sister is for not helping me?”
So the issue was not that Martha should not have been trying to be a good hostess – the issue was where Martha’s focus was. Martha’s focus was on herself and her work – and not on Jesus who was in her midst. Martha had forgotten… hospitality is ultimately not about the person who is hosting – but hospitality is about the guest.
We too suffer greatly from this problem. The temptation we always have whenever we’re doing work is to want to put all the praise and glory upon the person who has gone the extra mile, dotted all their i’s, crossed all their t’s and to say what a wonderful worker that person is. Now… don’t take that to mean that there’s anything wrong with a little praise to keep people feeling appreciated. In fact, it’s necessary so people know that what they do matters.
But when we start doing the work BECAUSE we want the praise – because we want people to sit up and take notice of what WE are doing… that’s when we have a problem. When I start doing something because I want people to praise me, to say how wonderful I am – then my focus is all wrong, and I am most certainly not doing the better thing – my focus is not on that “one thing” that is needed.
I don’t know how many of you remember the movie City Slickers – it came out back in the early 90’s and starred Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Bruno Kirby and Jack Palance.
The overarching point of the movie is that Billy Crystal’s character and his friends think they’ve lost their focus on what is important in life – and it’s affecting their marriages, home life, work, etc., and decide to go be cowboys for a little while to gain a new perspective on life.
Along the way they run into the character of Curly, played by Jack Palance. He tells Billy Crystal’s character the secret of life – he holds up his finger and says: “this one thing” – and without that, nothing else means anything. Billy’s response is “That’s great – but what’s that one thing?”
Curly’s response is rather enigmatic and just tells him he has to figure that out.
I don’t know if the writers of City Slickers knew they were pulling on scripture or not – but as Christians, we are told what that “one thing” is… that “one thing” that is needed in our lives and should always retain our focus… and that’s Christ. Everything else we do is meaningless if we lose that focus – if we forget WHY it is we are doing the things we’re doing. Our marriages, our families, our work – if they lose their focus on Christ, then those things have lost their meaning and purpose as well.
And Jesus was not saying that we should spend every waking hour studying and sitting and doing nothing but sitting at Jesus’ feet 24/7. That would be taking Jesus’ point here to an extreme and down a path it wasn’t meant to go down. Now, I’ll admit, there’s a part of me that would probably be very happy to just spend all my time studying and learning… but I also recognize that all that studying and learning doesn’t serve any purpose if I don’t then use it in some fashion to further the Kingdom of God.
If I’m not out in the world then DOING something with what I’ve learned - then what was the point in learning it? Jesus fully expected his disciples to go out and spread the gospel – to do the work of the ministry – not to sit around and just navel gaze at ourselves.
So there is a balance between being both a Mary and a Martha. There is a time for sitting at the feet of Jesus and learning, and a time to be working as Jesus’ disciples, to do the work of God in our communities. There is a time for recognizing the importance of God in our midst and paying attention to that – which means sometimes putting aside the duties and things that consume us from day to day. To carve out that time to build relationships that are centered around God.
That doesn’t mean we stop doing our daily activities all together, that we neglect doing the things that NEED to be done – that we don’t do the work of a hostess when people come over to visit. It simply means to recognize when those daily activities need to be set aside for a moment in order to pay closer attention to what God is trying to tell us. To not get so consumed by those things that we don’t hear His voice anymore and don’t hear His teachings.
To not ignore the guest when He arrives because our focus was too turned in on ourselves.
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