(Audio)
Jesus entered a village
where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary
who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
The story of Mary and Martha isn't an excuse for laziness or a reason for us to avoid hospitality. The work Martha did was important. But the way she related to it in her spirit was problematic. The thorns of worldly anxieties crowded the seed of the word of God and fought with it for her attention. Not that the work of hospitality and welcome didn't need to be done. They did. But for her they were so all consuming that had the potential to become disruptive and undermine the good they were meant to enable. Insofar as her actual actions went, did she actually do anything wrong? It is unclear if she could have also sat at the feet of Jesus before beginning her work of serving without in some way failing to meet her obligations. Perhaps she too could have first come to Jesus and only then proceeded with her work. This seems to be the desirable sequence when it is possible. But where things became more obviously problematic for Martha was when she began to compare and complain. She compared her level of effort and engagement with the apparently lazy Mary who seemed to be shirking in her own obligation to be hospitable to guests in their home. Martha disrupted the whole moment of those receiving teaching from Jesus to protest about how this was unfair.
The Lord said to her in reply,
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her.”
Martha no doubt wanted to reply that there were some other things that were also important, things that they would miss if she ignored them. But Jesus hadn't actually said that she ought not do anything that she had done. Mary had chosen the good not so much because she was not presently doing housework but because her heart was centered on Jesus. It was impossible for a heart like that to have its reward taken from it by the thorns of worldly anxiety. But Martha's heart was not fixed on the one for whom she ostensibly worked so hard. It was fixed on the things themselves. It seems to us that if she had simply done these with a different perspective and state of mind it would not have experienced service as a burden but as a privilege. She would have realized that at some times people sit at the feet of Jesus and at other times people are active in service. But it wasn't her job to figure out who should do what when. If her own relationship to her service felt less like a burden she would not have even thought to try to take the moment Mary was experiencing away from her.
We tend to fight for Martha because we similarly recognize the necessity of our work. But if we always insist on our own actions as the absolute priority we will never make time to come to Jesus and receive. When he is not the center we have no center. We are pulled from this to that to the other thing with ballistic violence. It is like this with all of our resources, whether time, talent, or treasure. If we use our treasure to do good things like feed the poor we may never support our local church community. Jesus doesn't demand all that we have. He just demands the best and the first of what we have, which in turn sanctifies our other offerings.
It is not for us to judge Mary's decision, especially since Jesus did not judge it. But her moment with Jesus does not give us a free pass to avoid jobs we dislike or would prefer to avoid. She instead reminds us that we will do such things better, with a better spiritual and even emotional disposition, when Jesus is central and first. When we seek first the Kingdom, which in a real way is Jesus himself, we get everything else as well for the bargain.
where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary
who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
The story of Mary and Martha isn't an excuse for laziness or a reason for us to avoid hospitality. The work Martha did was important. But the way she related to it in her spirit was problematic. The thorns of worldly anxieties crowded the seed of the word of God and fought with it for her attention. Not that the work of hospitality and welcome didn't need to be done. They did. But for her they were so all consuming that had the potential to become disruptive and undermine the good they were meant to enable. Insofar as her actual actions went, did she actually do anything wrong? It is unclear if she could have also sat at the feet of Jesus before beginning her work of serving without in some way failing to meet her obligations. Perhaps she too could have first come to Jesus and only then proceeded with her work. This seems to be the desirable sequence when it is possible. But where things became more obviously problematic for Martha was when she began to compare and complain. She compared her level of effort and engagement with the apparently lazy Mary who seemed to be shirking in her own obligation to be hospitable to guests in their home. Martha disrupted the whole moment of those receiving teaching from Jesus to protest about how this was unfair.
The Lord said to her in reply,
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her.”
Martha no doubt wanted to reply that there were some other things that were also important, things that they would miss if she ignored them. But Jesus hadn't actually said that she ought not do anything that she had done. Mary had chosen the good not so much because she was not presently doing housework but because her heart was centered on Jesus. It was impossible for a heart like that to have its reward taken from it by the thorns of worldly anxiety. But Martha's heart was not fixed on the one for whom she ostensibly worked so hard. It was fixed on the things themselves. It seems to us that if she had simply done these with a different perspective and state of mind it would not have experienced service as a burden but as a privilege. She would have realized that at some times people sit at the feet of Jesus and at other times people are active in service. But it wasn't her job to figure out who should do what when. If her own relationship to her service felt less like a burden she would not have even thought to try to take the moment Mary was experiencing away from her.
We tend to fight for Martha because we similarly recognize the necessity of our work. But if we always insist on our own actions as the absolute priority we will never make time to come to Jesus and receive. When he is not the center we have no center. We are pulled from this to that to the other thing with ballistic violence. It is like this with all of our resources, whether time, talent, or treasure. If we use our treasure to do good things like feed the poor we may never support our local church community. Jesus doesn't demand all that we have. He just demands the best and the first of what we have, which in turn sanctifies our other offerings.
It is not for us to judge Mary's decision, especially since Jesus did not judge it. But her moment with Jesus does not give us a free pass to avoid jobs we dislike or would prefer to avoid. She instead reminds us that we will do such things better, with a better spiritual and even emotional disposition, when Jesus is central and first. When we seek first the Kingdom, which in a real way is Jesus himself, we get everything else as well for the bargain.
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