Being Martha
Nestled between the parable we call The Good Samaritan and the Lord’s Prayer, in a section of Luke’s gospel focused on hospitality, is this brief story about two sisters in Bethany, a village just outside of Jerusalem (Luke 10:38-42). It only occurs in Luke’s gospel, which paired with his volume 2, The Acts of the Apostles, seems in part to be a guide for how Gentiles might be incorporated into the Jewish world of Jesus, and his Father’s “kingdom of God.” A world in which hospitality toward strangers, wanderers, and even resident aliens is a hallmark of what it has meant to love God and love neighbor all the way back to the nomadic days of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses.
It is an odd little story, and can seem out of place coming after the extravagant and generous hospitality of the Samaritan in the previous story, and the forgiveness of sins and debts we pray for in the Lord’s prayer following. Most of us have heard it interpreted from a protestant reformation point of view, extolling the devotion of Mary, reclining at the feet of Jesus listening to his “word,” his proclamation of the need for repentance and accepting the invitation to enter into the life of his Father’s kingdom, while demeaning the “works” of Martha preparing a meal for Jesus and his disciples as wrote, routine, tradition, and devoid of true faith. “Faith, not works!” proclaimed reformers like Martin Luther. Luther, who wanted to rip the Letter of James out of the New Testament – a letter that loudly proclaims that Faith without Works is Dead.
This despite the fact that the only other mention of the two sisters occurs in John’s gospel. They call upon Jesus to come to the aid of their ailing brother, Lazarus. Jesus is delayed. Lazarus dies. The women are sitting shiva, neighbors are visiting, when word comes that Jesus is at the edge of town. Martha jumps us, marches out to meet him half-way and chastises him. Had you come when we called our brother would still be alive, she says. Jesus assures her that her brother will rise again. Not impressed, she says, oh yes, on the Day of the Resurrection of all faithful people, but I mean now. “I am resurrection and I am life,” says Jesus, “Do you believe this?” At which moment Martha becomes the first person in John’s gospel to confess, “Yes, Lord, I believe, you are the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One who is coming into the world.” A much more powerful, more assured declaration than Peter’s confession at Caesaria Philippi. How could this same Martha be saddled with a reputation as the least spiritual of the two sisters? How could her confession not be the preeminent confession of all the New Testament?
One needs to sit with the stories in Luke and John and listen to them over and over again before being able to hear what is going on that day in Bethany. It is Martha who invites Jesus, we are told, “into her home.” Yes, women could be successful businesswomen. Yes, women could own their own home. Mary, we are told, reclines at Jesus’s feet listening to him. Martha is busy with “her many tasks.” She asks Jesus to send Mary to help her. This prompts Jesus’s strange reply, "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."
Strange, that in a world in which hospitality was a cardinal virtue, and just after a parable in which generous hospitality is championed, that is doing many things for the strange man lying by the side of the road, doing “works” to insure that the stranger might live, Jesus appears to be saying that Mary is doing the “one thing,” “the better part,” suggesting that Martha has chosen a lesser set of tasks and ought not be worried about her sister. And in teaching the Lord’s Prayer after this episode, he tells a story that says if someone knocks on your door in the middle of the night asking for a few loaves of bread, no matter how inconvenient, you ought to get up out of bed, open the door, and provide for that person’s needs. What is Jesus up to? Or, what is Luke up to?
Sitting with the story, we notice that Jesus does not tell Martha to come sit down and listen to him. Nor does he tell her to stop doing her household tasks – literally deaconing, serving, waiting on other’s needs. Luke simply does not tell us what happens next. It is possible that Jesus recognizes that Martha understands that these are unusual times, given the Roman occupation, roads lined with crucifixions, taxes at an all-time high to feed the empire, the rich and the greedy who need more and more pairs of shoes as Amos proclaimed some seven centuries before (Amos 8:1-12). And he can see that Martha has a full grasp of the kind of hospitality he encourages toward all newcomers, outcasts, and even dreaded enemies like the Samaritans and Gentiles. In fact, she does not appear to be trying to curry his favor. She is not trying to earn God’s favor. Martha seems to understand it is not her hospitality at all, but it is God’s hospitality she enacts with no expectation of reward or thanks.
Indeed, some thirteen hundred years later, the Dominican Meister Eckhart when preaching on just this story suggests that when Jesus addresses saying her name twice, “Martha, Martha…” it is not out of exasperation, but in recognition of her seeming spiritual completeness: the first ‘Martha’ recognizes her temporal completeness providing for the needs of all, and the second ‘Martha’ refers, suggests Eckhart, to her relationship to eternity, not some sequential future eternity, but what he calls the “equal eternal Now.” Martha lives comfortably in both worlds. She is at home in God’s kingdom, which Eckhart calls “the circle of eternity,” and in this world of daily needs. Martha already seems to know that the ‘way to God’ is not a ‘way’ at all. It is not a destination, but rather a way of being – a way of being home in God. Her actions, her works, her activities are without a “why.” Friends of God like Martha have nowhere to go and need no means of getting there because they are already Here and in the Now: she lives out of an already-arrived-ness which involves no means, no why, no reward, no return.
“Now listen to a marvel! How marvelous to be without and within; to embrace and be embraced; to see and be seen; to hold and be held – that is the goal, where the spirit is ever at rest, united in joyous eternity.” (Meister Eckhart Sermon 86)
Eckhart goes so far as to translate the opening of the story from the Latin Vulgate, “Our Lord Jesus Christ went into a little castle and was received by a virgin who was a wife.” By ‘virgin’ he means one who is “free of irrelevant ideas, as free as he was before he existed.” And by ‘wife’ he means someone who is free and unfettered in affections, near both to God and to self, who brings forth much fruit every day (works of faith) one hundred and one thousand-fold. Thus, a virgin wife bears fruit out of the ground of God’s eternal Word – which is, Jesus Christ. Christ who lives in the “little castle” of our soul.
So it is that in the medieval church, Martha became the very
icon of the living Christ, patron saint of hospitals, doctors, nurses, women’s
communities and all who serve God by serving others. Concludes Meister Eckhart:
What I have been saying to you is true, as I call on Truth to bear witness
and my soul to be the pledge. That we, too, may be castles into which Jesus may
enter and be received and abide eternally with us in the manner I have
described, may God help us! Being Martha is being at home in God with Christ.
Amen.