This Sunday’s Gospel has always challenged me. As a child of the 50s raised by parents who lived through the Great Depression and World War II, I’ve always felt the need to be productive, to get things done, to not waste time. That seems to be a ubiquitous predisposition in my age group that you too may perhaps share. Even in our daily conversations, we often query people we’ve just met with a “what do you do?” as if their occupation defines them.
So, when Martha gets short shrift from a close family friend Jesus, I bristle. “If someone doesn’t prepare the meal,” I complain, “there will be some hungry people. He ought to praise her diligent attentiveness!” But no, the Lord gently and with love but definitely rebukes her and discounts her efforts. What’s up with that??
Understanding may come more easily for you, but I spent years trying to justify Martha … justify myself perhaps. I never took the vacations I was entitled to when I worked in the hospitals out of a misplaced sense that I was needed and no one else could fill my place but also maybe because I needed to feel indispensable. Where does that come from?
There’s a maxim in mental health care provision that our personalities are pretty much carved in stone and immutable by the time we are four or five years old. We’ve formed our opinion of the world around us and we’ve begun to know what behaviors are expected and approved of and which evoke only disapproval and disappointment. Teenage years aside when hormones rage and we’re trying to metamorphosize into adults, if we were hardworking five-year-olds we will carry that same pattern through the rest of our days and that is further strengthened in our culture where productivity and personal sacrifice are rewarded. Yes, for many reasons, I was a Martha for much of my life. How about you?
But what about Mary? Throughout the gospels, Jesus teaches we should set priorities with God at the pinnacle of the pyramid. All else falls below him. If we do that, everything below will be firmed, formed, fed, and enriched through the love and power we obtain in that single priority. “Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?”, our passage tells us but, “… Mary … sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.” Mary understood the priority.
What’s the take home message for us? The Church has traditionally taught the actions and attitudes of both Martha and Mary play critical roles in our lives. We can surely see that – if we were to spend my entire days reading Scripture and praying, how are we dying to ourselves to meet the needs of others or any other essential aspect of an authentic faith lived in our lives? The question is priority. The Lord did prepare a meal for his disciples at a post resurrection appearance, but he spent his earthly life teaching, healing, and inaugurating his kingdom. So, we will continue to have (and perhaps feel comfortable in) our Martha moments but will strive to be more like Mary. That’s worth some thought.
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