I really do wish I had the proverbial fiver for every time I’ve preached this passage only to have someone come up afterwards to say that it’s all well and good, but the Church needs Marthas too! The implication is that there another way of being a disciple that is equally valid: that of action, of active serving. Sometimes I’ve even wondered if what I’m being told is that it’s OK not to be like Mary. We are so programmed to think of effectiveness in terms of what is being done, what is being achieved, that we can’t let go of the idea, even when Jesus explicitly rebukes us for it!
Well, yes, but someone still had to prepare the meal! Did they?
We live hurried and harried lives. We see busy-ness as a virtue. It legitimizes our existence. How are you? Busy. I know how busy you are... our schedules are loaded and over-loaded. We often joke in a knowing way about how busy even Church life is. I seem to remember everyone saying after lockdown, that we really shouldn’t get back to being as busy as we were pre-Covid.
And yet here we are. Overstretched to the point of having to shut down outreach because we can’t staff them in the midst of busy lives. At present we can’t even sustain an evening service.
And yet the issue isn’t that there is an irreconcilable divide between contemplative and active Christianity. Still less that one is better than the other. The point is that in a healthy discipleship there is both in their proper place. A key word in the narrative is ‘distracted’. Martha’s mistake is in being distracted. Mary was listening, Martha was distracted. She is worried, and upset. She has allowed a false sense of what must be done to get in the road of the amazing opportunity to sit and hear Jesus in her own home.
There is, as a wise man once said, a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. There is a time to prepare a meal. There is a time to sit and listen to Jesus, and wisdom knows the difference.
When we divide ourselves into Marthas and Marys, and seek to legitimize our version of Christianity over against the other, we are dangerously missing the point. Jesus has no problem with us preparing a meal… unless of course it a time when we should be listening to Him. Then it is a problem.
Questions
What does it mean to ‘open our homes’? Is that something you do?
How often have you been invited to a meal in someone’s home from MIE? How many people from MIE have you had in your home for a meal?
How can we cultivate this kind of hospitality as part of our discipleship? …and how can we stop becoming distracted when we do?
Someone once said: Entertaining is about the host, but hospitality is about the guest. What do you make of that? What difference would it make to your thinking if you could grasp this distinction?
Why is hospitality such a key aspect of Church life? What do we lose when it isn’t a feature of our life together at MIE?
What other passages speak positively about hospitality in the Bible? How do you let those passages shape your vision of what it means to be a Christian?
What do you think Martha expected Jesus to say after v.40?
Do you ever feel exasperated when others don’t seem to pull their weight in Church or home life? What does that say about us?
When do you find ‘busy-ness’ distracting you from the opportunity to hear Jesus? Are you ever too busy, too distracted by the things that worry and upset us’ to hear from Jesus?
How can we hear from Jesus today?
When should we be more Mary-like..? And when more Martha-like?
