In Luke 10:38-42 , there's a famous story that takes place when Jesus is visiting in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, in the village of Bethany. It's an interesting vignette; it raises good questions for us to think about.
Before I explore them with you, here's a relevant doctrinal excerpt from Arcana Caelestia 5949:
"A person should be very concerned about his body that it is fed and clothed and used well; and yet his concern for all these things should not be for his body’s sake but for his soul, that his soul can act in a healthy body so that the body is in obedience to it. So, the soul must be the end in view. And yet the soul must not be the final end in view, because a person should be concerned about his soul not for its own sake but for the service it must perform in both worlds (earth and heaven). When a person has this service as his end in view he has the Lord as his end, because the Lord fits him for these uses and oversees them."
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Sermon: "Martha and Mary"
I have never given a sermon about Martha and Mary before because I have heard or read about six sermons over the years on this passage and always felt rather uncomfortable. I think it is all too easy to be too superficial over what we think is going on here. Let me take you through the basic idea for a moment. Inside the house there are these two women, Martha and Mary, who one day have the Lord as their guest. Martha spends time – as one just must – getting things ready for the Lord. Mary on the other hand doesn’t seem to do anything except sit down at the Lord’s feet and listen to Him. So Martha complains and Jesus rebukes her and says that what Mary is doing is very important and she must be left alone to do it.
Now what we usually get from this incident is that it isn’t an ‘either – or’ but a ‘both – and’. In other words, the Lord doesn’t tell Martha that she is wrong or that what she is doing is all misplaced. Not at all. He certainly doesn’t ever once tell her to stop working! But He highlights the importance of what Mary is doing, sitting there listening to Him. So, we get the fairly obvious idea that both service and quietness are important, that they are what we are meant to foster in our own life. Both Martha and Mary have their place in us, and real spiritual life is a kind of synthesis – or balance if you like – of getting on with things and also reflecting on the deeper side of life too.
Now there’s nothing wrong with that idea of course, and one of the great things about it is that it takes this story and turns it into a personal parable so effectively. Everyone can see that Martha and Mary are parts of our make-up and that the house they live in is our mind or our awareness about life. And we can all certainly see that the Lord comes into our house – or our mind – as a kind of guest, or perhaps we should say a ‘presence’ … as we become aware of the place and importance of the Lord there with us. And we can take all this one stage further still, and integrate both Mary and Martha into how we live and do things. Put them both together at the same time. So, for example, when you are washing up (that’s a Martha) you can reflect on getting things clean and putting them away and see that we should not only do this with dirty dishes but with attitudes and intentions and keep our minds clean and tidy too (that’s a Mary). And you can do that with any physical activity and see a kind of lesson in it for you. The outer and the inner begin to come together rather meaningfully. One of our writers, Wilson Van Dusen, wrote a short booklet called Uses in which he advocates this kind of practical reflection. And the great thing about it is that it helps us see that being a spiritual person is not something airy-fairy or remote – or abstract – but is there in some real use in life. And that being useful is not only the outlet for our spirituality but it also develops it, increases it and gives it reality. I find that quite fascinating actually. Here we are, human beings, living our lives here, but we’ve really been created to become spiritual beings and not simply be like work machines on a treadmill keeping the whole thing running. We’re not to think of ourselves as ants! And yet, if you take two people – one who gets stuck into some useful activity or who goes and helps someone and another who sits quietly dreaming and contemplating the meaning of life; which of the two is going to understand life as a whole and come to know what it is all about? The person who is doing something practical and useful is open to getting some powerful realizations about life that the passive dreamer may sort of see but never get them properly because they’re only being thought about, not acted on. And yet – and yet – sheer busyness can take you right away from being contented and fulfilled and turn you into a compulsive do-er who never has any time to sit and listen to the Lord.
So when I read the story of Martha and Mary I can see the need for the balance and for both of them to be there together in our life. After all, it says that they are sisters! But let’s take it on a bit further still. I sat and read through the story a number of times and made a note of what I was seeing in it. I’ll share these with you. I noticed that it was actually Martha who first welcomed him into her house. Martha, not Mary. You might think it would have been the other way round. But Martha opens the door to the Lord. And yet she is soon going to be the one with all the anxiety and over-distraction and complaints. But she wants the Lord there in her house. And the thought that I got from this is that the part of us which wants the Lord to be with us is often that part which is in a state of unrest, or in a feeling of agitation, even alertness. We have so many questions and issues and imponderables about life. Why is it like it is, Lord? Why do bad things happen to the nicest people, Lord? Why don’t we know everything for certain, Lord? And what do You actually do about it all, Lord? Come in, because I really do want to know. This opening is rather wonderful, isn’t it? It’s healthy and positive to be on your toes like this and to expect something to happen when you invite the Lord into your own house, into your own mind. I remember the comment from James Redfield who wrote the Celestine Prophecy and kicked off with the idea of coincidences that we notice happening. He said that in order to notice the connections and threads of what’s going on in life you have to be in a bit of an agitated disturbed state, a bit unsettled. And you think you are going a bit crazy or peculiar but actually you are having a breakthrough and you are waking up. I like that idea. The one thing the Lord can’t come into is our apathy and disinterest. Martha, you see, is very expectant. Come in, oh do come in!
The next thing I noticed in this story is that Mary never really takes any part in it. She is only ever “referred to”. Everything that happens or is said only goes on between Martha and Jesus. Mary simply “is there”. The only thing we’re told about her is that she sits at Jesus’ feet and hears His word. And the way it’s put seems to suggest that she was always doing that anyway and always will, regardless of anything. Jesus is already there in the house so far as Mary is concerned! Always has been. She never invited him in because she didn’t need to. And Martha had a sister called Mary who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word. It doesn’t say ‘when Jesus came in, Mary said, Hello, can I sit down and listen to you?’
And having bustled the Lord into her house, Martha, notice, disappears out of sight. She goes away from the Lord to get things ready. But in going away from the Lord she loses sight of the Lord. Her many questions which let her welcome the Lord into her house to begin with now become the very barriers between her and the Lord. It says she was distracted with much serving. Distraction is literally to be drawn away from your original focus of attention, from where you began. We think of distraction as being fussy or getting all worked up. No, it is to be drawn away. It is to lose your first plot.
And when she approaches the Lord the second time, she is a very different Martha. She is getting everything wrong now. ‘Lord do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?’ She’s wrong because the Lord always cares but she can’t see that. She’s wrong because her sister never ever left her. And she’s wrong because, if only she could see it, she’s not alone at all. There are three of them in the house, but her attitude is excluding the other two. She can only think ‘I am alone’. Alone actually means ‘all one’.
And then we move away from Martha to the Lord and His wonderful answer. Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. You aren’t alone at all. You are turbulent. You aren’t ‘all one’ by any means. You are all over the place with your distractions. You are led away from your oneness into the worst kind of aloneness. He could have added too, Reflect on the difference between loneliness and solitude. The one is tragic and feels like hell; the other is profound and feels like heaven. You, Martha, are lonely, but Mary is in the real solitude. Know the difference. But one thing is needed and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her. She is with Me and I am with her in your house, and she shall not be distracted from her place. Amen.
