Luke 10:38 – 42
My mother was quite a theologian. She
listened to the scripture readings and the sermon at Sunday Mass and
usually had a few choice comments afterward. In those days of deep
and widespread Marian devotion, Mary was often the topic of a sermon,
and held up as an ideal to which all women should strive. My mother
would comment that it was probably easy for Mary to be an ideal Mom
because she only had one kid and he was God. I heard that more than
once. But another reading that she would become particularly
incensed about was the one you just heard – where Jesus seems to
put down Martha who has been slaving away in the kitchen while the
menfolk are all in the living room drinking wine and talking theology
– and her little sister Mary is right there with them. My mother
sympathized deeply with Martha, and I think she figured this was one
time when Our Savior was wrong, wrong, wrong.
My mother was probably not alone. I
think we all can hold out a little sympathy for Martha, and we all
can imagine the scene – Martha is rushing about trying to get
supper on the table, and no one is helping. And it extends into the
rest of life as well. I don't know how many times I've been in
charge of something and could not get people to work with me – and
I suspect that is true of most of you as well. They say that in the
average parish, about ten percent of the parishioners actually do
more than come to Mass on Sunday. We all lead very busy lives, and
we all have different ideas of what is important enough to take up
some of our precious time. Our beloved Tony Moran, whose funeral we
just celebrated, was totally committed to the pro-life cause. He
devoted hours every week on behalf of those children who are the
most vulnerable of all. And he was frustrated because he couldn't
even convince enough parishioners to participate in the life chain
every year; all he wanted was a line of people a block long to stand
on Longmeadow Street in front of the Church for an hour, and never
did enough parishioners turn out to meet that goal. I wonder if he
ever cried out, “Lord, tell my brothers and sisters to help me!”
What did Martha need when she cried
out to Jesus? She wanted Jesus to use his authority to make Mary get
out in that kitchen and get to work. Why Mary? Why not John or
James or any other apostles? Well, kitchen work is woman's work,
after all. Martha, being a typical first century Jewish woman, knew
that women saved their souls in childbearing and taking care of the
household, while it was men who were supposed to study the scriptures
and wrestle with theological issues. Not only was Mary not doing the
work she should be doing, but she was sitting with men as they
listened and responded to Jesus' words. “Lord, don't you care that
my sister has left me to do the work by myself?”
If you read the Acts of the Apostles
or pick up the hints in the letters of Paul, you know that the first
generation of Christians had many women who were leaders. We hear
mention of Dorcas, who was a holy woman raised from death by Peter;
we hear about Priscilla and Aquilla, a married couple who were
missionaries, and who instructed Apollos, another missionary. And
there was Lydia, a businesswoman who opened her home to Paul, making
it the locus of one of the first Christian communities in Europe. In
the greetings at the end of the Epistle to the Philippians, Paul
mentions by name his co-workers, many of who are women. When Jesus
told Martha that Mary had chosen the better part, he really started a
revolution, which by fits and starts has proceeded down to today.
Jesus, you see, does not see the kitchen as women's work, or what
passed for scholarship in those days as men's work. This passage is
revolutionary.
And at the same time, to get back to
my mother's objection, Jesus is not demeaning the kitchen work, the
work that seems to fall on women even today, even in our enlightened
country. We need both, we need Martha to bake the Eucharistic bread
and clean the church and wash the altar clothes and we need Mary to
contemplate the words of the Lord and seek that inner transformation
that can only happen when we sit at his feet.
No, Jesus is not demeaning Martha's
work, or elevating Mary's choosing the better part. He says, “You
are worried and upset about many things, but few are needed, and
indeed, only one.” Jesus concern is for Martha's fragmentation,
for her focusing on herself, for her refusing to accept his love, for
her projecting her frustration on her sister. “Lord,” she says,
“do you not care?” Lord, she might as well have said, don't you
love me like you love Mary and those apostles you are sitting with?
“Lord, tell my sister to help me!” she says. She might have
said, “If you care about me please ruin her day.” And that is
what Jesus is concerned about; Martha, in her frustration, in the
context of the pressure she finds herself in, has forgotten the most
important thing right now, the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, the
Savior of the World, the Messiah, is in her house and she is not
paying attention.
And while this little story was
probably the beginning of the feminist movement and the start of the
slow and steady erosion of the patriarchal culture that had existed
for most of the history of the human race, the real point is that we
are all Marthas, who forget that Jesus is not just here on the altar
on Sunday, but he is in his people, he is moving among us, he is
wherever Christians gather together, he is always with us as he
promised to be – and we are out in the kitchen banging pots and
pans and resenting the fact that no one seems to want to come to our
aid. And it is then that we have to realize that only one thing is
important, that we kneel at Jesus' feet and listen to his words and
feel his love. And that was why our brother Tony persisted in his
lonely ministry – because he was always aware of the one thing that
mattered, that he was faithful to his calling.
