At the Feet of Jesus

Oh how I used to tease my mom about being like Martha - such a busy body, clean freak - when I wanted to get out of making my bed or vacuuming. But Martha is actually being faithful to a tradition of hospitality we read in our OT lesson this morning when Abraham welcomed three guests into his tent, and asked Sarah to help with preparations (Gen 18:1-10a). So it’s really not unreasonable for Martha to think her sister Mary should follow in Sarah’s (and probably millions of Jews after her) footsteps of prepping the house to take care of the gifts. This is the received wisdom about how to welcome a messenger from God.

Mary however, doesn’t follow in Martha’s footsteps of making herself busy to prep the house. Instead, she sits at Jesus’s feet and listens to what he’s saying. Martha, who is preparing not just for Jesus but for his disciples too, gets pretty ticked off at Mary, even complaining to Jesus: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.”

So we have two major issues here! It’s not just that Mary isn’t helping, it’s that Mary is taking the position of a disciple (sitting at Jesus’s feet), which is traditionally only open to men in this culture. Sitting at Jesus’s feet is utterly shocking for this time. Mary, a woman of lowly means, following a man with a questionable reputation, is a wild declaration of intent to become what the teacher is; of becoming, that is, who Jesus is. 

All of Martha’s assumptions about the tradition she’s received and how to be faithful to them are being challenged first by Mary, and then in Jesus’s own response: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed--indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

Unlike me responding to my mom, Mary doesn’t deny Martha out of laziness. In fact, far from it. She has intuited something in following Jesus that causes her to break with the tradition she’s received, to believe that she was not defined by her past, or her culture or upbringing first and foremost. Her desire to sit and learn to become like Jesus pressed her to take the courageous step of breaking with her past so that she could receive this disruptive, disorienting Word that was reshaping not just her world, but all the world.

The good news we proclaim today is that Jesus the Incarnate Word of God is present among us right and here and now, overturning not just social conventions we have received, but also the things that we cling to about who and what we are, the value we have or don’t have, the ways that we often knee jerk react to things. 

This word is reshaping the world in the goodness of God, but as it does, it disrupts our anxious clinging to preconceived notions about God wants and how to be faithful. Mary serves as a sign of what we are called to do. And Martha serves as a reminder that most of us too often get stuck in old patterns of living, working, thinking about and responding to situations around us. 

Jesus’s response to both Mary and Martha signals that wherever we find ourselves - open and willing, or anxiously toiling away to preserve what we’ve received - we are invited to sit at Jesus’s feet and receive this disruptive, renewing word, and allow it to reshape our lives. I will provide for you, Mary, Jesus will say. Drop your anxious clinging to preconceived notions of faithfulness and seek how it is that God might be challenging you to see him at work in new ways in a given situation. This is the one thing needed, as Jesus replies to Martha. Will you choose the better part today?

Ultimately then, this passage isn’t primarily about housework or contemplation or even laziness. Jesus uses this situation of hospitality and housework to show us a much deeper meaning about God’s presence: do not allow your preconceived notions about how God will show up in his myriad of messengers we encounter throughout life, to cause you to cling anxiously to what you already know. Open yourself to the disruptive, challenging, bracing, Word that is blowing away the chaff of your life, so that you can become more like Jesus in this world.

If you tend to be a Martha in this world - retreating into old habits and patterns of thinking and understanding, becoming anxious and agitated when you are challenged - ask yourself: where is God in this. Stop running around like a chicken with your head cut off, or evading with some sort of distraction. Seek and listen for God’s voice. Become curious about what God is doing in the midst of your struggle: what is he challenging you to see, to understand, to learn, or to do (or stop doing)? 

I leave you with a prayer by Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Baltahasar: If we want to live in God’s light, we must listen to God’s Word, which always addresses us personally, which is always new, since it is always free. It is impossible to deduce this word from some prior word that we have already understood and put into stone: clear and fresh, it pours forth from the wellspring of absolute, sovereign freedom. The word of God can require something of me today that it did not require yesterday; this means that, if I am to hear this challenge, I must be fundamentally open and listening. AMEN