Mary and Martha

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July 10, 2016

1 Corinthians 12:4-11

 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

Luke 10:38-42

38 Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42 there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Sermon: “Mary and Martha”

Of course he meant it kindly. I know that.

I know Josh—as well as anyone can know

The Son of God. All the same, he slipped up

Over this one. After all, a Son is only a son

When you come to think about it. And this

Was between sisters. Marty and me,

We understand each other. For instance, when Lazzie died,

We didn’t need to spell it out between us,

Just knew how to fix the scenario

So Josh could do his bit—raising Lazzie, I mean,

From the dead. He has his own way of doing things,

Has to muddle people first, so then the miracle

Comes as a miracle. If he’d just walked in

When Lazzie was ill, and said OK, Lazzie,

You’re off the sick list now — that’d have lacked impact.

But all this weeping, and groaning, and moving of stones,

And praying in public, and Mart saying I believe, etcetera,

Then Lazarus, come forth! and out comes Lazzie

In his shroud. Well, even a halfwit could see

Something out of the ordinary was going on.

But this was just ordinary. A lot of company,

A lot of hungry men, not many helpers,

And Mart had a go at me in front of Josh,

Saying I’m all on my own out there. Can’t you

Tell that sister of mine to take her finger out,

And lend a hand? Well, the thing about men is,

They don’t realise how temperamental good cooks are.

And Mart is very good. Believe you me.

She was just blowing her top. No harm in it.

I knew that. But then Josh gives her

This monumental dressing-down, and really,

It wasn’t fair. The trouble with theology is, it features

Too much miraculous catering. Those ravens feeding Elijah,

For instance. I ask you! They’d have been far more likely

To eat him. And all those heaven-sent fast-food take-aways—

Quail, and manna, and that. And Josh himself

The famous fish-butty picnic, and that miraculous

Draught of fishes. What poor old Mart could have done with

Was a miraculous draught of coffee and sandwiches

Instead of a ticking-off. And the men weren’t much help.

Not a thank you among them, and never a thought

Of help with the washing-up.

Don’t get me wrong. Of course I love Josh,

Wonder, admire, believe. He knows I do.

But to give Marty such a rocket

As if she was a Pharisee, or that sort of type,

The ones he has it in for. It wasn’t right.

Still, Josh himself, as I said—well, he is only

The Son of God, not the Daughter; so how could he know?

And when it comes to the truth, I’m Marty’s sister.

I was there; I heard what was said, and

I knew what was meant. The men will write it up later

From their angle, of course. But this is me, Mary,

Setting the record straight.

This poem entitled, “Unauthorized Version” by English poet U.A. Fanthorpe, shows us that when we think we know a Bible story – like that of Mary and Martha – we might not actually know it at all.  (A helpful note: the Hebrew name for Jesus is Jeshua, so that’s why she cleverly kept saying Josh.)

Martha always comes across in this familiar story as the perfectionist, the over-achiever, the bad gal.  (Which is perhaps why her name always comes last…you never hear this story referred to as Martha and Mary, do you?  Always Mary and then Martha.)

The prompt in our little yellow box of summer sermon suggestions was simple: “Are you a Mary or a Martha?”

We all identify more with one than the other: the doer or the dreamer, the server or the sitter, the laborer or the listener.  Jesus, it would seem, prefers the latter.  At least that’s how it sounded.  But our clever poem reminds us that things aren’t always what they seem (especially hundreds of years and many translations later). 

I don’t think Jesus wanted Martha to stop her hospitable ways – there’s a value in that.  I think he wanted her to stop comparing herself to her sister, and letting that worry and frustration overwhelm her.  And, whether we feel more like a Mary or more like a Martha, we all know what that’s like.

When you can’t actually see Jesus in front of you because you’re too busy trying to please people or earn approval.  Jesus doesn’t need any of our posturing and perfection.  He just needs our time, for us to sit at his feet, and listen to his story again.  Because when we hear that story – one so saturated with grace – we see everything differently.  Like Mary sticking up for her sister Marty in the poem, we extend grace to others.  We don’t compete or compare.  We celebrate the gifts each other bring, and the gift of Jesus’ very presence with us, each time we show hospitality to a wanderer. 

Perhaps we understand this story best when we remember it’s a story of two sisters, and like any family, there was bound to be struggle and frustration.  Jesus happened to arrive on a particularly tense day.  And perhaps he overreacted a little, because all that demon-casting-out and parable-preaching left him low on patience.  But once he left, back to that healing-preaching-forgiving business, those two sisters were still sisters. 

They dealt with their quarrel as sisters do, that most classic of all sibling struggles, that their personalities were so very different.  They loved each other.  They accepted each other’s gifts (eventually).  Early Christian writings suggest they may have been at the cross as Jesus died and the empty tomb when he rose, together. 

Some church traditions have taken Mary’s gifts to be contemplation, and Martha’s gifts to be acts of service.  We need both.  We need the storytellers and the servants, the dreamers and the doers.  And we all need to be able to put the first thing first, that “one thing” Jesus spoke up.  I think that “one thing” is remembering that we’re family, we belong to each other. 

We need to remember our belonging to one another now more than ever.  If we forget that “one thing” – our belonging to each other in this human family – we miss the point of it all.  We miss that chance to sit at Jesus’ feet and hear his story: that he came to this earth as a poor brown-skinned carpenter, to break down every single barrier between us and God, and us and one another. 

Family is complicated; Mary and Martha knew that. 

But that “one thing” of belonging to each other is more important than all the other things we might do or say or argue or defend.  We show our belonging in different ways, because like Mary and Martha, God has given us different gifts.  

1 Corinthians 12 says it best:

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.  To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

What is your gift, the thing that comes most naturally to you?  Dreaming or doing, laboring or listening. Whatever your gift from God, now is the time to use it, friends.  Not just for your own good, or for the good of your family, or for the good of our church, but for the good of all: the common good.  We need Mary and we need Martha, and we need everyone else, to remember that one thing: that we all belong to God and one another, and nothing can take that from us.  Amen.