Luke 10:38-42 This one is short and it stings a little, Read it quick and let’s chat!
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2010%3A38-42&version=NIV
Interesting that this story follows a discussion of loving God as the number one priority in our lives. I think Luke did this on purpose. Martha and Mary pop up throughout Jesus’ life. They, and their brother Lazarus, will become his dear friends. He stayed with them frequently, but this may have been their first visit. We are told of a woman named Martha who welcomed him into her home.
Full disclosure, I don’t love this story, because I am a Martha. I love having a houseful of people. I love feeding people. And I spend the whole time they are in my house running around making food and doing stuff. I can host a family holiday party that starts at 2pm and ends with the last people leaving at 10pm and not have a single real conversation the whole time. This isn’t all bad. People love coming to our house. They feel welcome and they eat well. My family and guests just kind of entertain one another, and it’s always a happy time.
I even understand how Martha was frustrated by the lack of help from Mary. They were sisters. Feeding family and guests was a primary role of women in the culture, and a party had just landed. Jesus nearly always travelled with an entourage, so she wasn’t just making grilled cheese and tomato soup for one or two guys. I think it’s safe to guess that the menu and the guest list were both significantly larger. Jesus was well known by now. Tomorrow the whole town would be talking about what she served. The pressure was on, and she wanted to make this a memorable occasion. A little help would have been nice.
Mary is the woman I want to be, sort of. I still want to feed everyone and I would like them to notice that my cinnamon buns are second to none. But I would like to have my priorities straight. I would like to be so focused on my Jesus that I lose track of other people’s expectations and my own preconceived ideas of who I should be and what I should be doing. I don’t like hearing Jesus’ response to Martha in this moment. I want to defend her. Somebody has to feed you guys, unless you just want me to hand you a loaf of bread and a fish and you can feed everybody! I’m just trying to show my love by offering you a nice meal. I love with food, what can I say? She was trying to love him well.
I think Jesus knew Martha loved with food. And I suspect he loved her cooking and appreciated her hard work. But I wonder if he wanted her to stop working so hard at loving people so that she could experience being loved. Jesus pointed to Mary and said that she chose the most important thing. All she was doing was sitting at his feet listening to him. No doubt Mary deeply loved Jesus, but I think her love came from a place of knowing she was loved. I mean, in that culture a woman just sitting listening to a teacher when dinner was not yet on the table would have been judged by more than her sister. But it’s like she didn’t notice. She was sitting at the feet of someone who loved her. She was listening to what he said. She was so focused that it really didn’t occur to her to wonder what anyone else was thinking, because she knew that his thoughts toward her were love.
I don’t know Martha’s heart, but I know my own. I know that sometimes my heart is motivated to love people because I want to be a loving person. But what if I loved people just because I knew I was loved so well that I couldn’t even stop myself? The difference isn’t as subtle as it seems. Martha was worried and upset. She was doing the loving thing, but she couldn’t possibly do it with all her heart, because her heart was full of anxiety. Mary was just sitting there. Her love was just a reflection of the love she was receiving. I’m betting she helped with dinner or maybe with cleanup after Jesus and his friends had left, but when it mattered, she chose the better thing.
