The things we do for love.
The story of Martha and Mary only appears in Luke, and these 6 little verses somehow draw us into quickly choosing one sister over the other. Usually, we reckon it’s Mary who’s the good one; Mary who gets the gold star and the heffalump stamp. “Mary has chosen the better part.” There, the Master says so, so it’s got to be right and there’s an end to it … or is it?
Surely both have something to teach us.
It is Martha who opens the door to the Master and his potpourri assortment of disciples. And all the domestic things that she does that surely do need to be done. Like scrub the loos, vacuum the floors, put the roast lamb on, decant the wine, peel the spuds, put out the hummus, olives, figs and pomegranates and put a posy of flowers on the table. Then make sure the dog is outside, watered, fed and done its business so it doesn’t do whoopsies on the carpet in front of the guests.
Martha surely does get an A = for Home eco and just as importantly hospitality. She knows who it is that is coming over the threshold. Not all of us do, all the time.
And Mary also has much going for her. The ability to just sit still and listen is not easy. To be focused and let your guest's presence just wash over you, calm and soothe you, without being distracted, can be tricky. Listening can be jolly hard sometimes… a lot of the time.
But these girls are sisters and growing up in a family of four and then spending a little time in a blended family, I know that it is not always sweetness and light and sugar and spice. Sometimes it is frogs and snails and puppy dog tails.
If I read it right, The Master doesn’t tick Martha off for doing the household chores, but it is that the angst and the fretting of doing the laundry and carving the roast take away from the joy of having a house guest. Doing all those lovely, necessary things with joyous expectation is the way to go. Not thinking ‘Wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier if Jesus and his cronies phoned ahead and let me know that they had got a better offer?’
And there may be other things slushing around here. One is that they might see their reactions to the house guest in a transactional way. If I do this, then my good friend Jesus will love me more. I’m sitting quietly at his feet … or I am doing all these tasks so that, so that, I might win his favour. And the good news is that we don’t have to try that hard, and probably the most important thing and therefore often the hardest thing, is to just open the door. It is often difficult and very risky because when we open the door, invite Him to step across the threshold and into our lives and maybe even make a few polite suggestions, we make ourselves incredibly vulnerable. And once he has stepped inside, He can irritate and enthral, disquiet and infuriate: He can be quiet and evasive and so we miss Him all the more and long just for the whisper of his voice. A nudge, a look, a smile, heck, even a frown.
Do we fluff and faff around, or do we sit up and shut up? And when and how will we ever get the balance right?
One other crazy Fr. David thought. To my shame, there were times when I was growing up when, consciously and deliberately, I chose to push my siblings' buttons. I did something or didn’t do something that I knew would exasperate and anger my brothers and my sister. Now I’m sure that has never happened to you, but knowing families as I have done and do… is it not possible or even probable that Mary and Martha have both chosen to do things that they know will infuriate the other? And in yet another wild, completely unsupported and unsubstantiated theological heresy, what if they had set this whole thing up as a kind of competition? You do this, Mary, and I’ll do that, and we’ll see which one of us he likes the best. You’ll see that I was right and you were wrong. So there, rudely poking out her tongue.
Like that game has never happened before. Sorry, but clergy are very good at it, and we didn’t even have to have a lecture about it in college.
Mary, Martha and their brother Lazarus are good friends of Jesus. Some suggest that their home was the Master's bolt hole. His safe place or safe house, where the crowds couldn’t get to him.
He would have known his hosts' games and trickiness long before he came to them on that day. Perhaps the good news is that, like Mary and Martha, he still chooses, wants to knock on the rough, gnarly, knotted door of our hearts, step across the welcome mat and come and drink with us. Even though we might be fizzing or sullen, buzzing or resistant. Still, he determines to visit and longs to stay.
Even when we are Martha and Mary… even when we are being our truly mucky selves. The Things we do for love. Even so, come Master Carpenter, wash our feet, bless our bread and wine, drink and eat with us, love us, even as we love you.