In today’s gospel I think poor Martha is sometimes made to be the foil of the story. We easily remember the ending. Mary has chosen “the better part” and poor Martha is left worried and anxious about many things. In our minds, Mary becomes the model disciple while Martha becomes the woman who just doesn’t quite get it. I think Martha needs to be reconsidered.
“A woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.” (Lk 10:38). Jesus arrives, and Martha opens the door inviting Him in. Before Mary can sit at the feet of Jesus, someone has to welcome Jesus into the house. And there is something wonderfully faithful about that.
Luke is very intentional about the order of things (cf. Luke 1:3). Immediately before today’s gospel Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan sees the wounded man, stops, cares for him, takes him to an inn and pays for his care. Jesus concludes the parable with the admonition: “Go and do likewise.” (Lk 10:37). Turn the page and we find Martha “doing.” Lots of people think today’s gospel is somehow telling us that service is somehow inferior to prayer. He has just told us to serve, so something else must be going on.
The text tells us that Martha was “burdened with much serving.” The word in Greek has the sense of being pulled away, distracted. And therein likely lies the problem. She has become so busy serving Jesus that she is being pulled away from Jesus.
That’s a danger religious people understand very well. We can spend enormous amounts of time doing things for God: a ministry in the parish, teaching faith formation, festival volunteering – the list is endless. And add to that all the enormous amount of time doing things for your family. We priests are not immune from such busyness. We can spend the whole day working for Jesus but very little time with Jesus. It is easy to let all these good things distract us from the reason we are doing them.
Eventually Martha reaches the breaking point. She comes to Jesus and says: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” (Lk 10:40) You have to love Martha’s honesty. She doesn’t break out in a prayer or calculate her words. She tells Jesus exactly what she thinks: Mary is the problem. But then Jesus becomes part of the problem: “Lord, do you not care?”
That question may be more familiar to us than we would like to admit. I think everyone of us can remember a time when we felt overwhelmed and we wondered if God cares. Jesus did not admonish Jesus for asking, nor does he admonish us. He simply says: “Martha, Martha…” He sees what all that doing has done to her: “You are anxious and worried about many things.”
Martha wanted Jesus to change Mary, but Jesus’ response is akin to saying: “Before we talk about her, let’s talk about what is happening inside you.” And notice that Jesus doesn’t tell Martha to stop serving. He calls her back to the center: “There is need of only one thing.” What is that “one thing”? Is it to imitate Mary, in a way become Mary?
Let us pause for a moment and consider the next time we encounter Mary – when her brother Lazarus dies. “When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home.” (Jn 11:20) Martha gets up and goes to Jesus. She’s still Martha: active and direct and still unafraid to tell Jesus exactly what she thinks: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” But something is different. During their conversation, Martha says: “I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” (Jn 11:27) That is one of the great professions of faith in John’s Gospel.
The woman we remember for being distracted by many things has come to recognize the one thing necessary. Or better, the one Person necessary. Martha didn’t need to become Mary. Martha needed to become a deeper Martha.
And perhaps that is what Jesus wants for us. He isn’t necessarily asking us to abandon our responsibilities. Meals still need to be prepared, children cared for, work to be completed, people who need our help, and a parish that still needs volunteers. The Good Samaritan still has to stop beside the road and Jesus forever says, “Go and do likewise.”
Let us do what is ours to do, the good things God has given us to do. But don’t become so busy doing things for Jesus that we lose sight of Jesus.
Martha opened the door and welcomed him into her house. Somewhere along the way, she became distracted by everything that needed to be done. And Jesus gently called her back. Perhaps today he is doing the same for us. Amid all the things that seem so urgent, all the things demanding our attention, all the things we think absolutely must get done, we need to hear the echo: there is need of only one thing.”
Don’t lose sight of the One you welcomed into the house in the first place.
Image credit: “Christ at the home of Martha and Mary” | Charles de La Fosse | Private collection in a castle in Lorraine (France); Galerie Didier Chéreau, Paris | PD-US