Worship

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Sunday July 18, 2010
11:00 am - Saint Thomas Church
Preacher: Fr Daniels

Luke 10:38-42

Martha and Mary

In the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The sisters from Bethany, Mary and Martha, are friends of Jesus – so the gospels tell us. It was a family affair, too; Mary and Martha had a brother named Lazarus, who we remember for being raised from the dead, after the persistent requests of these his sisters – this, from the Gospel of John. It was a family, in other words, that had formed personal relationships with Jesus of Nazareth. While we don’t know too much about Lazarus personally, Mary and Martha we hear more about, from Luke and John. And from these two gospels a portrait emerges of these two women.

Martha, we see, is a do-er of “many tasks,” “distracted with much serving,” and complainer about her sister; patron saint, perhaps, of sibling rivalry. It was Mary who sat with Jesus, listening to him; Martha who cooked the supper. Mary, who took a pound of expensive perfume and rubbed it on Jesus’ feet; Mary who then dried them with her hair. So Mary of Bethany: personally attentive; perhaps lax where the household was concerned; generous to a fault. And Martha: fastidious, anxious, responsible. I’d be shocked if Martha wasn’t the older sibling, though the gospels don’t tell us.

And, like the older sibling in the story of the Prodigal Son, it is the responsible one who gets the short end of the stick here, the responsible one that comes up short in the Gospel accounting.

But fine, fine. We know the story: Mary was generous; Martha was stingy. Mary was focused on Jesus; Martha was distracted by other things. Mary represents grace, Martha represents law, and it is Mary who has chosen the better part. And so on. But this, it seems to me, isn’t the most disturbing part of the text. The worse problem, as I see it, is Jesus’ truly poor behavior, his ingratitude toward Martha, his utter lack of appreciation for her work. “Martha,” he says, “you are anxious and troubled by many things…” Your sister, on the other hand, who is yet to lift a finger, she is doing the right thing, she has chosen “the good portion.” We can guess Martha’s response: “Troubled by many things? Oh yes, many things: things like giving you dinner tonight! Things like being hospitable, like helping out my friends! Talk about biting the hand that was about to feed you! Poor behavior, Mr. Itinerant Preacher; to come into my house, and then treat me so – I don’t care how good of friends we are.”

It grates on our sensibilities. And there is a temptation here to find excuses for Jesus; to explain how what looks like impolite behavior is actually quite gracious, seen with the eyes of faith. A temptation to say that it isn’t offensive, just cryptic; or to say that Martha somehow deserved it. I want to resist that temptation – perhaps because I’m an older sibling, too. Instead, perhaps we should read it exactly from Martha’s point of view, and, with her, rightly take offense.

To put it bluntly: Jesus was unjustifiably rude.

He was rude, and facing that rudeness head-on means not missing out on the jarring experience of the event – it means not missing out on seeing that this is an example of Jesus disobeying even common social cues, normal rules of graciousness, protocols of hospitality—protocols which don’t involve insulting the host. Sure, there are plenty of other examples of Jesus transgressing social boundaries that we see in the gospels, most of which we’re familiar with: inviting to supper the most sinful people around; spending time with the most disreputable members of society; touching the untouchable and loving the unlovable. With these we are familiar, perhaps familiar enough that they fail to shock. But this, with Martha – it’s not just a matter of loving the bad, he’s insulting the good! This is the opposite side of the same coin, but what an unpleasant coin it’s turned out to be!

We must resist the temptation to make excuses for him. Jesus’ rude behavior here is a flashing neon light, making explicit the lesson of all those other examples, too: my ways are not your ways; what I value is not what you value; my kingdom is not of this world. It makes explicit that the stability of the world is exactly what Jesus came to explode. Our usual rules and procedures; our well-ordered ways of life; our reliance on social acceptance; a trust in our own abilities and our own wisdom. We are shaken out of this confidence by a man who insults the person feeding him dinner.

If in that insult we feel a sting, it may be because, in the story of Jesus of Nazareth, those well-ordered ways of life that support our views of the world are revealed as idols, as false gods themselves; idols at whose feet we all too frequently worship, using all the perfume we can get our hands on; and these idols are revealed in the crucifixion as idols we will defend no matter the cost.

There are many ways we can try to domesticate Jesus, to smooth out the rough edges; making excuses for him is only one of them. But Jesus refuses to be domesticated, refuses to play by our rules. On the contrary: There is a sweet Jesus, and then there is a Biblical Jesus. There is a safe Jesus, and then there is the Jesus of the Gospels, turning the world upside down. After all, the tomb was empty; even in death, Jesus refuses to stay where we put him.¹ Even then, he remains wild and untamable. He is not the dead founder of an ancient religion, whose teachings we study and whose death we mourn; he is a living presence, constantly undercutting our certainties, and transforming our lives. The Word never stops speaking.

It makes our lives risky, when being a disciple of Jesus is not a matter of following a set list of rules or conventions, but participating in the life of the resurrected Christ, the life of the living God, who is always doing “a new thing,” doing the impossible: making the dead live. Shattering our complacency, and slipping out of our hands every time we think we’ve pinned him down. The Christ of Christians is a thorn in our side; a challenge to every one of our established orders; insulting us when we think a little gratitude is called for; and drawing us into his open arms when we thought we had finally strayed too far.

I don’t think that the message of today’s Gospel is that we should go around insulting people. Rather, it may be to recognize that our true host is not Martha, or Mary, or you or me; our host is the untamable Jesus Christ himself. It is he who sets the table, he who invites us to the feast, and he who is the meal. When we become one with the Host, we can’t be sure what we’re getting into. It can be hard being friends with Jesus: nobody knows that more than Martha.

In the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.

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¹From Rowan Williams, Resurrection, pp. 71-72.