Luke 10:38-42
July 21, 2012
Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
Rev. Dr. Tony Cartledge
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I am so grateful to be standing here before a church I have come to love in so many ways. Calvary, as you all know very well, is an uncommon church – a congregation rich in diversity, creativity, community concern, and love for one another. You are blessed with a phenomenal pastor, a gifted and capable staff, magnificent music, meaningful traditions, a worship-inducing sanctuary, a location and context filled with opportunity … so many things. I think of you often, and pray good things for you.
If you find it disconcerting to find a man in the sermon slot today, take note that Pastor Amy assigned me a text about two women – so perhaps it evens out a bit.
So, to the text and the business of listening for a word from God. I begin with a confession. My name is actually Martha. Yes. You note that I am wearing a dress and a scarf, after all. I have known men whose names were Carol, and Leslie, and Connie, and Jan, and Francis … I have a cousin named Toni who’s a girl – so I guess I could have been named Martha. And I grew up admiring my grandmother, whose name was Bubba. Seriously.
You can call me Martha because I am a doer: I identify with that busy woman in today’s text. I see things that need doing, and I do them. All day long. Most nights. That’s the story of my life, most days. I do things. I write, I teach, I counsel students. I e-mail. I blog. I attend meetings. I meet deadlines. I turn in reports. I cook. I clean. I do laundry. I take care of a dog. I pay bills and keep my checkbook up to date. I mow the lawn. I tend flowerbeds and a little garden. I exercise. To relax I do Sudoku puzzles to stretch my brain in a different direction.
I am a doer – like many of you. The D.C. area is full of doers. You can’t turn around without bumping into someone who is in this city on a mission to make something happen.
So I suspect that when we look at this story, I’m not the only one who would have been in the kitchen with Martha.
Now Mary … Mary is different. Mary knows how to be. Mary knows how to live in the moment without seeing every experience as just one more step toward what is next. And I suspect it wasn’t just Jesus who had the power to claim Mary’s attention, though that’s clearly what’s at the heart of this story.
We don’t really know much about Mary beyond this story and a couple of stories in the gospel of John. We don’t know if she was normally task-oriented but able to change gears because Jesus was around, or whether she was typically more contemplative. I have no evidence beyond a hunch based on these few stories and a guess at their family dynamics, but I suspect that Mary typically lived in the present tense, not encumbered by past regrets or future goals. Mary knew how to be.
Let’s exercise a bit of imagination and have Mary and Martha trade in their flowing robes and sandals for kakhi shorts and tennis shoes. Suppose you’ve heard there’s a nice hiking trail to the top of Mount Gilboa, with a stunning view of the Jezreel Valley below.
Take that hike with Martha, and you’ll be packing bottled water and energy bars. You’ll see how quickly you can get to the top and then back down so you can do something else. You won’t be taking breaks because as long as you’re hiking, you might as well keep your heart rate up and get a good cardiovascular workout.
Now, take Mary on that same hike, and you’ll be pausing to look at the wildflowers and mushrooms. You’ll be picking wild berries along the way, and drinking from mountain streams. You’ll stop at the top and sit for a while to enjoy the view and talk about any number of things, even about the wonders of creation or the gift of life or the realized eschatology of God in our world.
For those of us who are more like Martha, that might be a new experience.
Well. Let’s back up a bit and put Mary and Martha back in their biblical dress, back in their modest house with the stone foundations and the plastered walls and the gently sloping roof of packed earth on a bed of rushes.
The story has only three characters: Mary, and Martha, and Jesus. For Luke, Mary and Martha are two apparently unmarried sisters who live together in a house that Martha owns, in an unnamed “certain village” that must have been somewhere in Galilee, because that’s where Jesus was when “he set his face toward Jerusalem” in 9:51, and he was still in southern Galilee when Luke gets to chapter 18.
Of course, scholars often accuse Luke of having a pretty sketchy understanding of Palestinian geography, so he could have been confused about that.
When Mary and Martha appear in John’s gospel, they have a brother named Lazarus and they live in the village of Bethany, about two miles outside of Jerusalem, just beyond the Mount of Olives. If Luke knew John’s version of the stories about Mary and Martha, he didn’t let on, and it’s Luke’s version of events that we’re reading.
And that leads us to wonder if Jesus might have risked the appearance of a scandal when he accepted the invitation to enter the home of two single women and have dinner with them. This possibility bothered the Renaissance painter Diego Velazqez so much that when he painted “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,” he included two older women acting as chaperones, one for each of them.
What would the neighbors think?
It wasn’t kosher for an unmarried woman to invite a single man into her home, even if her sister was there, too. But Martha was a doer. Jesus needed to be fed and cared for. She would do it.
And Jesus, as we know, never let the threat of scandal get in the way of building relationships with people.
But what about the 12 disciples? Where were they? They left with Jesus in v. 1, but Luke says “he” entered a certain village. I doubt Jesus left them at the “Village Limits” sign. That’s probably just Luke’s literary way of dismissing the 12 to the background. Whether they were present is not central to the story, though 12 dirty men with empty stomachs and no bedrolls could have had a lot to do with why Martha was so worried and distracted with many tasks. So they were probably there, too, sitting and listening to Jesus – and maybe wondering why Jesus let Mary sit right there beside them.
You may recall that this sermon falls in a series that Pastor Amy has entitled “Power Play,” and this story has power dynamics written all over it. The trouble is figuring out how they work: On the one hand, some interpreters note Luke’s portrayal of Mary’s devotion to Jesus, her place as a learner among the male disciples, and Jesus’ affirmation of her as a clear indication that both Jesus and Luke were endorsing the full equality of women as disciples and participants in God’s work.
On the other hand, Martha’s insistence that Mary get back in the kitchen where she belonged might be seen as reinforcing traditional views and undermining the role of women and putting them in their proper place as cooks and cleaners and people who look after the needs of men.
I think we could all agree that the first interpretation is both more palatable and more likely to fall in line with Luke’s point of view. All through his gospel, Luke shows a special concern for women, for the poor, and for others who might have been marginalized by society. He brings them to the fore in his choice of stories, and gives them their due.
But, as interesting as that might be, we will miss the point of the story if we get too caught up in gender roles and power dynamics.
Mary and Martha were both women, both friends of Jesus, both supporters of Jesus’ work. The primary power shift in this story is one of spirit and focus and maybe even time management.
The story shows us just a glimpse into these two women’s lives, and in that glimpse we see different ways in which Mary and Martha went about showing their love for Jesus.
Martha was a doer. Mary was an embracer.
You will observe that Jesus did not criticize Martha for being about her many tasks and serving in her own way – Jesus knew that people need to eat and houses need to be cleaned, but no amount of food or cleanliness can overshadow the importance of knowing and living in relationship with God. When Martha told Jesus to tell Mary to get up and help her (take note that not many people told Jesus what to do!), Jesus wouldn’t do it. “Martha, Martha … you’re worried and distracted by many things,” Jesus said, “but there is need of only one thing.” Jesus didn’t spell out what that “one thing” was, but perhaps it was his way of saying that many things are important but one thing – the time we spend with Jesus – is essential. “Mary has chosen the better part,” Jesus said, “and it will not be taken away from her.”
Mary had chosen to take what opportunity she could to spend time with Jesus – to just be and to listen and not do – to grow spiritual roots rather than doing physical things.
That can be hard for us Marthas – sitting still long enough to focus on spiritual matters, giving attention to the presence of Christ in our lives. We may accomplish many things, but we run the risk of remaining shallow in our souls, not fully grounded.
Mary may not have been as driven or productive, but her roots grew deep.
The trick, it seems to me, is to find a way to appreciate both women, and the power they both exercised, and perhaps to emulate both: to be so well grounded in our faith and love for Jesus that even when we are actively doing, our soul doesn’t forget to be – so that material tasks and spiritual growth aren’t mutually exclusive – so the “better part” becomes so ingrained in us that it is never taken away.
You may recall that I mentioned my grandmother, whose family nickname was Bubba (my Uncle Tom couldn’t say “Mother,” so she became “Bubba”). I think my grandmother knew this secret. Bubba knew how to do things: she worked most of her life on the farm or in a spinning mill. She was active in her church. She looked after my great-grandmother until she died, and then lived alone and tended a garden until she was 90 years old and finally had to move in with my parents.
But, Bubba also knew how to be. She could sit in a rocking chair in the living room of her old house with the walls made of painted pine that had been cut and milled from trees on the property – she could sit there by the window and watch the birds who came to the tray of seed and bread crumbs that she left in the old peach tree there – and she could do it for hours, often with a Bible in her lap, and a glass of water on the table beside her.
Bubba knew how to do, and she knew how to be. She knew to remember what is most important, and her life was rich.
So, where do you find yourself in Luke’s story, and is there anything you might take from it? I confess that I’m not ready to throw off all my Martha-isms and stop doing things that I think are important. I suspect most of you are not, either.
Still, this story suggests that we can learn something important from Mary. We can learn the importance of being – of being in the moment, of enjoying the people about us, of appreciating the presence of Christ’s spirit in our lives that binds our hearts and gives us a sense of union with Christ.
Can we learn to be grounded and rooted, yet movable and productive?
What do you say, Martha?