Martha, Martha...

Thanks to the work of D. Mark Davis, Delmer Chilton, Robert Hamerton-Kelley, and Paul J. Nuechterlein for their insight and scholarship.

Luke 10:38-42

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. 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." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

This is the Word of the Lord.

Our Gospel reading this week takes up right where we left off last week, with the parable of the Good Samaritan. With that in mind, it's kind of confusing that Jesus would go from telling a lawyer to show and receive love, caring, and hospitality to and from all people, to wagging his finger at Martha for trying to show Jesus and his disciples love, caring, and hospitality.

In a historical context, Martha is doing exactly the right thing. We know from elsewhere in the Gospels that Martha and Mary have a brother, Lazarus. It is entirely possible that Lazarus invited Jesus and everyone else to his house. Martha has welcomed Jesus and his disciples into her home, and is very likely making sure the feet of thirteen-plus people (one of them a celebrity) are washed, all their cups are full, and that dinner is on the stove.

In the historical context. Mary is doing exactly the wrong thing. First off, yes she should be helping Martha with the chores of hospitality. Secondly, the very idea that, in that day and age, a woman would sit among men as an equal, sitting at the very feet of Jesus, no less! But sit she does, and no one – not Jesus, not Lazarus, not one of the disciples – thinks a thing about it.

And yes Martha blows up and yes Jesus corrects her and says Mary has chosen the better part. But to just look at this as a sibling rivalry, or a battle between an active life and a life of contemplation, or for a preacher to wag his finger at the congregation and say “take time to listen to Jesus,” then go sit down for lunch without a thought as to how much actual work goes in to preparing that or any other meal... well, I think those approaches either oversimplify or completely miss the point of the text.

First off, let's look at today's reading in the context of last week's reading: it sounds delightful, the idea of spending all of our time and attention “at the feet of Jesus,” listening to and meditating upon the Word of God. Yet a life spent only in contemplation leaves no room for action. The lawyer who challenged Jesus in last week's reading knew the Law, meditated and studied it and memorized it day after day, but he didn't know who to act compassionately toward – he had never really put all that thought and study into action.

So sure, we should understand that balance is necessary to a well-rounded life of faith. We should study, meditate, pray, and we should act. We should help and love and show support and hospitality.

Yet is it not true that there are times when action is vital, when there simply isn't time to meditate and contemplate and vegetate. In last week's reading, the Samaritan didn't pause to ask “WWJD” or remember that he was on a dangerous road or that this guy was a despised enemy. He saw an immediate, pressing need and he acted.

We have seen that kind of response many times in our lives, and relatively recently. I still remember how, on 9/11, people were running from the Pentagon until the word went out that people were trapped in the collapsed, flaming section of the building. As a person the wave of people reversed, and they ran back to help. I saw the same reaction right after the bomb went off at the finish line at the Boston Marathon. Following the April 27, 2011 tornadoes in Alabama, people and money and goods flowed into the affected areas from all over the world, and no one stopped to make sure the recipients of the aid were good people, or were the right religion, sexual orientation, or color. The same is true for Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, and the list really does go on and on and on.

Martha was doing exactly what needed to be done. Aside from the cultural expectations, there is the reality that these people were tired from the road, they were thirsty and hungry, and they were under her roof. If she had done what Mary did, nothing at all would have happened.

I think it isn't entirely my imagination that sees Martha rushing around, frazzled. The Scripture says she was “distracted,” and the Greek there, “perispao,” means to be overly occupied with a thing, to be obsessive about a task and all the details involved; like the bride before a wedding, or a director on opening night of a play. Martha is a flurry of activity, so much so that things are starting to fall apart. There are cooking utensils hitting the floor and the bread is getting burned because she is trying to fill cups and pick up behind the disciples, and her nerves are getting more and more frazzled, and she stares a hole through Mary every time she rushes past, and she is banging plates down on the counter and slamming the oven door – I know, there weren't oven doors back then, but you get the idea – and maybe she is grumbling under her breath about the nerve of that lazy, ungrateful, insolent Mary!

By the time she talks – probably interrupts – Jesus, she is about to blow a gasket. “do you not care that I am working my fingers to the bone while that sister of mine does nothing? Tell her to get up and help!”

I imagine that everybody fell silent when that happened, but everybody there has been around Jesus for long enough to not be shocked at a woman speaking directly or even sharply to Jesus anymore. They are worried for Martha, and maybe a little embarassed that they hadn't lifted a finger themselves to help.

Jesus says, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things...” but I think the Greek for “worried and distracted” carries a stronger feeling than our translation gives it. “Thorubazē” means to disturb greatly, terrify, strike with panic... it also can mean a noise, tumult, uproar, perhaps the noise of persons wailing, of a clamorous and excited multitude, and so on. In Acts 17:5, it means an uproar or a riot. In Mark 5:39 and Matthew 9:23, it refers to those who are wailing in grief. In Acts 20:10, it refers to the alarm that people had over someone who had fallen from an upper story window.

Martha isn't just stressed or distracted. She is in a panic. There is too much to do, too many expectations, too much need, she can't do it all and the walls are closing in on her.

So I think it is a mistake to read Jesus' words to her in a tone of condescending rebuke. I hear real concern in Jesus' voice: “Martha. Martha! Honey you are freakin' out, take a breath...”

Part of the backstory here is that in Luke's ninth chapter, we are told that Jesus “resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” Everyone knows that Jerusalem is the center of power for all those who oppose Jesus, ground zero for the men wanting to see the itinerant Rabbi dead by any means necessary. Jesus knows this, and he knows that he must go there, and nothing will stop him from fulfilling his Father's plan.

When Jesus walks in to the house, I can imagine that Mary realizes something: this is the last time she'll probably get to see Jesus. She is one of those people who knows – knows – who Jesus is and why he came, and maybe she doesn't understand it any better than any other disciple, but she knows it as well as any of them. So she sits as close to him as she can, and she listens, hanging on every word.

We have to appreciate Martha’s position before we critique Martha. What if Martha feels the same way Mary does, and her way of reacting to this terrifying knowledge is to determine to do the best job ever of providing comfort to the King?

And what if the responsibility overwhelms her? She is having what looks like a panic attack. She certainly sees what she is doing as a struggle and she feels completely alone in it. Until we sympathize with the genuine challenge that Martha is facing, the internal ‘riot’ that she is experiencing, then we will only dumb down this story into “Martha, Martha” as a condescending pat on the head.

I want to be careful here, because I think Martha's situation connects to the parable of the Good Samaritan, but I in no way want to paint Martha as a bad person. The man who is beaten and left for dead in last week's parable gets passed up by a priest and a Levite before the Samaritan shows up. One way of looking at why they cross to the far side of the road to avoid him is that they don't want to chance becoming unclean by touching a corpse. Of course the Scriptures compel them to help much more strongly than they compel them to be clean, but their culture expects them to be able to stand in the Temple and make sacrifices and do priest-y and Levite-y things.

They let cultural expectations block out the clear Word of God. And perhaps Martha has let her obsessive attention to the task at hand, her determination to serve Jesus, the noise of the riot and panic in her mind and heart, actually block out Jesus.

In a way, the lawyer who challenged Jesus in last week's reading and Mary are similar: they are deeply invested in experiencing the Word of God. Martha is similar to the Samaritan, in that they are doing important, necessary work, acting as the hands and feet of God in this world.

Both are important, both have their place, and sometimes you can't do just one and not the other, but I think the key is focus. The lawyer, and Martha, let the minutiae drown out the truth.

Perhaps we read this account and want to be Mary, but the reality of our particular life situations, or the persistent noise of living in the twenty-first century, make us far more like Martha – obsessed and busy and in a low-grade panic from time to time. But busy-ness isn't wrong. Jesus never says that Martha is irrational or wrong-headed. He merely says that he will not stop Mary from sitting and hearing.

Mary has chosen the good part out of the many things by sitting at Jesus’ feet and hearing the word. She is entitled to be there and not obligated to leave there – either because of her gender or because of the real, overwhelming work that calls to be done. She has chosen the necessary part. She needs to be there.

I think Jesus is calling on Martha to calm the riot within – to listen as she works, to experience the joy of being near her Lord within her activity. She needs to be there, too.

And we can work, and pray, help, and meditate, love, and listen, too. We need to be there, too.

Broken and Poured Out...

This is in large part a flight of fancy, a narrative. We aren't told, and I cannot speak with authority upon, what Mary, Martha, Lazarus, or anyone else there (save Judas) was thinking, what motivated their words and actions.

But I know how I would feel.

(Many thanks to Kathryn Matthews Huey for her insight into this passage)

John 12:1-8

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

This is the Word of the Lord.

There are a couple of accounts in the Gospels where Jesus’ feet are anointed with a costly ointment or perfume, and dried with a woman’s hair. In Luke’s Gospel, the event takes place in a Pharisee’s house, and the woman doing the anointing is called “a sinner.” Today's reading finds Jesus among people who love him. Jesus and the disciples travel to Bethany and have dinner with Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha.

What a strange sight it must have been, even after so many days, seeing Lazarus lying there on that couch, eating with his friend Jesus. Laughing, conversing, listening, engaging the other disciples in discussion... you know, just being Lazarus, same as he had always been Lazarus. Look at him, telling that same old joke he always tells about the peddler and the housewife, laughing at the punchline as if he'd never heard it before!

Everyone else always laughs, not because the joke is still funny, but because you can't be around Lazarus and not laugh, not enjoy life just a little bit more.

Mary stood in the corner, ostensibly to be close at hand in case one of the dinner guests needed anything... but in reality someone could have shattered dinnerware at her feet and she wouldn't have flinched. Martha, busily serving the dinner, once complained to Jesus about having to do all the work while Mary gawked at him, but she no longer minded. Truth be told, Mary would rather have dropped everything and spent all her time clinging to her brother Lazarus, just to experience him being here, just to remind herself that it was real.

Lazarus, their brother, had been dead. Not “dead” as in “spiritually lost,” like the Prodigal Son, no. Really, permanently dead.

I imagine that the three of them, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, they had known for awhile, to some degree, who Jesus was, and understood, to some extent, why he had come. When Lazarus fell ill, the first thing they did was send for Jesus, to ask him to come and heal his friend.

It still made Mary’s skin go cold to remember that time. Days passed, and no Jesus. Then, no more Lazarus. Just like that, the anchor that kept Martha from working herself into the ground and kept Mary from spinning off like a top, gone. Entombed. Dead.

For four days Mary and Martha had moved around their house like ghosts, like zombies, doing what had to be done, but feeling nothing. At some point, through the fog, Martha told Mary that Jesus was here, and was asking for her. Mary remembered weeping at his feet. She remembered Jesus' tears.

She remembered the stone being rolled away, and everyone recoiling at what they expected to smell.

She remembered Jesus saying the silliest thing she'd ever heard, yelling at an open tomb, “Lazarus, come out!” and even now, her heart pounds in her chest as she relives, in her mind, the impossible, the unbelievable, the overwhelming joy of Lazarus doing just that!

Deep down, she knew what that act had cost Jesus. Even now, the Temple leaders were plotting his death. Such a display of authority over death meant that many Jewish people were now following Jesus. The Temple elite felt their stranglehold on power weakening, and this, coupled with the knowledge that if they lost control, Rome would swoop in and take control by bloody force, meant that Jesus must die, and the sooner the better. Word had it that the Temple leaders were even plotting to kill Lazarus!

And now Jesus was less than two miles from their power base, Jerusalem. As relaxed and joyful as this meal among friends and family was, there was no ignoring the underlying tension, the knowledge that Bethany was the last stop before Jesus entered Jerusalem. She had overheard Lazarus making sure that Jesus knew what it meant, this trip to Jerusalem.

He was signing his death warrant; he was walking right into the jaws of the beast.

Of course he knew. Jesus had known what it would mean the day when he commanded the stone rolled away from Lazarus’ tomb, but he did it anyway. And, Mary thought, because of Jesus, she had Lazarus back.

And yes, perhaps Jesus had always said he would die at the hands of the powerful, but, in Mary’s mind, this miracle that restored her family made this a certainty. Jesus gave up his life to give Lazarus life.

How do you say “thank you” for something like that? Oh, she had said the words, over and over so many times. But she owed him more than thanks. She owed him everything.

The idea grew slowly, budding like a young plant in her mind. A few weeks back, in a daze of grief, she had bought a pound of spikenard to pour on Lazarus' body, but she had moved too slowly, and the tomb had been sealed. It was just one more disappointment in a sea of grief. She had hidden it away in her room, thinking that sooner or later she could sell it and perhaps make some of her money back.

But now she knew what to do, and she wouldn't be too slow this time.

She walked to her room, and returned with the jar of spikenard.

Made from an extract of the roots of a plant which grew only in the Himalayas, spikenard was stunningly expensive – the jar held enough to pay a years' wages to a common laborer. Thousands of dollars, but Mary didn't hesitate. Money meant nothing in the light of the gift that Jesus had given her.

As she entered the dining room, she did something that women never did in public: she let down her hair. In my imagination, this act startles Lazarus, who begins to stand up. Martha happens to be near him, and she sees what Mary has in her hands and instantly understands. With a hand on his shoulder and a reassuring nod, she lets Lazarus know to let Mary be.

I would think that the Twelve were intrigued, but not scandalized. They had seen lots of people do lots of things that were out of the ordinary, and a woman letting down her hair in her own home, even if it was in front of men she wasn’t related to? Not all that big a deal, thanks.

Her face already wet with tears, Mary walked around the table, behind Lazarus and Martha, and knelt behind Jesus’ couch at his feet. She broke open the jar with a snap, and poured the contents on his feet, wiping them dry with her hair.

The weight of the silence in that moment pressed in on her. No one, not even Lazarus or Martha, understood the depth of her gratitude, the compulsion to worship at the feet of the One she knew – she knew – to be the Messiah.

Jesus sat up and looked at her. The fragrance of the spikenard filled every corner of the house, thick enough to cut, as she looked into his eyes – another bold act, something women in that day never did, but there was nothing left of propriety now, was there? Money meant nothing, dignity meant nothing, propriety meant nothing, not in light of the gift that Jesus had given her. Someone was protesting, and loudly. One of the Apostles. It didn't matter, the only thing that mattered was what she saw in Jesus’ eyes. He understood.

Mary washed Jesus’ feet with that perfume in a home that was less than two miles from the gates of Jerusalem. Less than two miles away, a few days later, Jesus will himself wash the feet of his disciples – all of his disciples – even the feet of Judas. Less than two miles away, after the towel is put up and the Passover meal is eaten, Jesus will sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. Less than two miles… two miles from the trial, from the torture, from the scourge, the crown of thorns, the cross. Less than two miles from the cold, dark, silent, airless tomb.

And in Mary’s heart, all of it would be for her.

Honestly, Mary probably didn't understand what Jesus' death would mean for humanity. She didn't have the benefit of being taught any of the six or more doctrines of atonement that Christians fight over, she didn't understand the weight of sin that Jesus would bear on that cross, and she probably had no concept, even with Lazarus sitting right there across the table, that Jesus would conquer death once, for all.

Mary didn't know that the redeeming work of this man, whose feet she knelt at, would permeate every nook and cranny, every time and place of creation like the perfume that still hung in the air of that house. All she knew is that no amount of money, no level of dignity, no expectation of social propriety, nothing was as important as this man, this teacher, this Lord, this Messiah.

Mary had seen what salvation looks like. She had seen salvation as it walked into the sunlight from the open tomb door. She had seen the face of salvation when her trembling fingers loosed the rag over Lazarus' eyes.

Jesus’ ministry began in Cana, lavishly, with wine in wash-pots. It ends here, at a dinner table in Bethany, lavishly, with the fragrance of expensive perfume hanging thick in the air.

This is a picture for us of the love of God, the breathtaking, extravagant, lavish love of God in  Jesus Christ… a love that caused Jesus to empty himself for all creation – all creation – in the same manner that Mary emptied that jar on his feet. Quoting from the Epistle to the Philippians, “…though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.”

Not too many more minutes, and Jesus will slip his sandals back on those anointed feet, and stand and walk out the door and down the road into the belly of the beast, through the gates of Jerusalem. Now, we turn with Jesus toward the road to the cross. May our vision be clear and our hope fixed on the one we follow. And may we loose the rags that bind us and blind us and see the face of salvation, and know, like Mary, that nothing – no amount of money, no level of dignity, no expectation of social propriety, nothing is as important as this Lord, this King, this Savior, Jesus Christ.