Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Vivian Lewin, Spiritual Director in the Diocese of Montreal

“Lord, I want to sit at your feet like Mary, but can you send Martha over to clean my house?” I saw those words on the web image of a fridge magnet.

Immediately after the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and just as that one addresses the nature of authentic compassion (“who is my neighbour?”) this story addresses the nature of authentic hospitality and, I dare say, even Communion.

Luke tells many stories of banquets and dinner parties in his Gospel. Here, we’re taken behind the scenes. Mary and Martha are the sisters of Lazarus—they appear in all four of the Gospels with the same names and the same personalities. Mary (not to be confused with Mary Magdalene) is devout, hungry to hang on to Jesus’ words; Martha is “out there,” freely speaking with and even challenging Jesus.

The pair have long been described in the popular mind as icons of the contemplative and the active lives, even though theologians like John Calvin and Meister Ekhardt decried this reading. Together, Martha and Mary show our full life in Christ. The fact that the story sparks what Annie Lamott calls our judginess… well, that kind of proves that we’re still sinners. Sinners in pews.

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things.” (Lk 10.41).

Generations of churchgoers, and their less observant friends too  (sometimes stereotyped as women but there’s no gender requirement)  Lots of people remember chafing under the implied criticism that their good Martha efforts … so needed, I mean, really needed, to keep the community afloat…were somehow less worthy that the “better part” that Mary seems to embody in this story.

What if we told it differently? What if we said:

“The Kingdom of God is like a house where Jesus comes to visit two devoted followers and finds one complaining to him about the other because they have been given different roles to play in the ministry.” These things can happen.  On earth.

I know that Jesus tells Martha, “Mary has chosen the better part.” But honestly, by showing hospitality, wasn’t Martha, like Abraham, acting upon perhaps THE fundamental tenet of Middle Eastern culture?   I love the reading that story in Genesis (18:1-18a).  “Let me give you a little bread … Hey, kill the calf.” It’s so ample, so more than ample.  Its so overflowingly abundant.

Now, there’s still things pulling on Martha: Don’t you think Mary ever loses her focus just as much?  Mmmm.

I’m speaking to you two and a half days after coming back from a 35-day silent retreat. I was sitting at the feet of Jesus for 35 days, essentially, and I can tell you: sure, I got distracted!  Sure, my brain just jumped all over the place. This is not something that only happens to people who are doing good deeds. It can happen while you’re praying.

I can tell you about that retreat some other time. It was quite the experience. And quite the revelation of how busy the mind can get even when you aren’t talking and when you don’t have the internet.

“Martha, Martha.”

Apparently, the Greek word translated “distracted” in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible literally means pulled in different directions. And that’s the opposite of hospitality, isn’t it?

Eugene Peterson in his translation of the Bible called The Message translates Jesus’ words like this:

“Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up over nothing. One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it—it’s the main course, and won’t be taken from her.”

The main course—what nourishes. What provides. And who IS the host, here? Who’s providing the main course?

Consider, for a minute, our reading in Colossians.

On the surface, that’s worlds away from that little house in Bethany. Paul is writing to a group of mostly Gentile converts to Christianity, and he starts by drawing them in to the central revelation of the faith:

Jesus is the image…

the word in Greek is IKON

of the holy God.

This means that when we gaze upon and through him we SEE the reality of God.

Jesus is the firstborn of all creation.
In Jesus all things in heaven and on earth were created…
In Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…
And through Jesus, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things… making peace through the blood of his cross…  

Speaking about making peace:

When I got back from the retreat I had just about forgotten how to cook. But yesterday I went in the kitchen and cooked up some beans from scratch and some rice, and other things, and made a little bowl of it. And when I sat down to eat it, I just broke into tears. I had just seen and not gazed long upon one of the pictures that are just beginning to appear of the children in Gaza who are starving to death. They’re just skin and bones. The tears were rolling down my cheeks. I didn’t know what to do. Nothing is quite enough.

So I went back to this idea that through Jesus, God is actually somehow reconciling to himself all things.  “Making peace through the blood of his cross.”  Some minister in my past used to say:  “My sisters, this is not cheap grace I’m talking about.”

“What is being claimed is quite simply and profoundly that the divine purpose in the act of reconciliation and peacemaking was to restore the harmony of the original creation . . .”   ^{[Note 1]}

By his incarnation—coming near to us, in time and space, Jesus embodies the capacity of God and humans to draw near to each other. And this term, “drawing near,” is a technical term used in Leviticus for one group of important sacrifices. Sacrifice was understood primarily as a way to come close to God—a closeness God has always desired, from the moment when Adam and Eve were hiding in the garden.

All our scriptures today show instances of drawing near with God: from the first lesson where the three heavenly beings visit Abraham and Sarah; to the psalm, “Who shall ascend your holy hill?”; to the dazzling high theology of Colossians; to the humble home of Martha.

If we have experienced “drawing near”—if we have become aware of this relationship, at any point, really–our job becomes not to “repair” our relationship with God but to live into it– live not the life we aspire to or strive to fix or reform, but the life that is already given to us and that by God’s spirit is sustained and continually renewed.

Dear Martha had the creator of the universe in her house and was fussing about the food. You might see it as a touch of spiritual anorexia, from which she does recover, because Jesus is not being judgey, he’s recalling her to who she was created to be. And he’s calling us, too, to the perspective we need.

Because communion, of course, which we’re about to share, is also a form of sacrifice and a way of “drawing near.”

So, in the words sometimes used before our eucharist:

“Come to this table, not because you must, but because you may. Not because you have all faith, but because you have some faith and want to grow. Come because you love the Lord a little, and want to love more…. Come because all is ready, and we are his Body…”

Thanks be to God. Amen.

The scriptures appointed for this morning, July 20, 2025 [Proper 11 (16) of Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary] are Genesis 18:1-10a, Psalm 15, Colossians 1:15-28, and Luke 10:38-42.

References:

^{Note 1:}  James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 104.

Also consulted:

“Sisters in Adversity: Retelling Martha’s story,” by Loveday Alexander in A Feminist Companion to Luke, Amy Jill Levine with Marianne Blickenstaff, ed., London and New York: Sheffield, 2002.