“Tell her then to help me.” How often have I said that? OK, maybe I’ve had the self-control not to say it out loud. After all, that would be what’s called triangulation. The example of which—in this case—being Martha asking Jesus to carry the uncomfortable message, rather than asking her sister for help directly. Indirect or triangular communication can really cause harm in a community, so I try not to do it. If I need your help, I hope that I’ll ask you directly, rather than bringing a third party in to amplify my discontent. Indeed, if I haven’t asked you for help, I’m probably not doing my job, since Christian leadership always means inviting others into ministry. When I was responsible for young adult ministries in the Diocese of California, my interns made me a coffee mug that said “Julia loves you, and has a wonderful plan for your life.” For those who may know the “Four Spiritual Laws” that have long been the backbone of evangelical campus ministries, that’s a play on law number one. “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Myself, I have a wonderful plan to invite you into our church’s ministries. Stay tuned!
But the fact that I make it a point to ask for help directly—that is, I don’t triangulate—doesn’t mean that I don’t feel the frustration when people don’t do what I want them too. We all know what it’s like to be disappointed by the people we love and trust. Why didn’t she acknowledge my gift? Why didn’t he call me when my mother died? Why actually didn’t Mary help her sister Martha with that most basic and expected of hospitality practices: readying a meal for a special guest? We human beings disappoint each other, frequently. Whether we know it or not. I’m sure that I have and will yet disappoint you, as your pastor. And I may not even know why or how. Jesus, could you just clean up our communication messes so that we can all get along?
But of course that’s not what Jesus did in the Gospel we just heard. He didn’t scold Mary on Martha’s behalf, nor did he tell Martha to speak directly to her sister. Instead, he gently but firmly redirected the worried and distracted Martha. Notice that he never suggested that Martha’s appropriate housework and hospitality was the wrong thing to do. But Jesus did affirm her sister’s very countercultural choice to sit at his feet and listen, even while Martha was laboring away in the kitchen.
Martha, Martha… I feel your pain. You didn’t create your worry: you lived in a community—indeed a whole social and religious system—that expected you to do the job of housekeeping and hospitality. As women are still expected to do in most of the world. And it’s not as if men are off the hook for role and gender-based responsibility. My husband and I just went on a camping trip in our new-to-us campervan—it’s in our parking lot right now—and I was only too happy to let him figure out all of the electrical and plumbing systems. While I cooked; how traditional is that? Most of us play roles within family and workplaces that make it hard for us to switch things up and make new choices. Choices like listening to and learning from Jesus, which tends to disrupt all sorts of cultural expectations.
This Gospel has often been preached as a binary set of choices: be busy or be contemplative. With Jesus evidently expressing a preference for contemplation, which certainly can be a liberating message for those whose roles or race or gender encourage serving. But the world—and Jesus Christ—needs people who serve. Actually, we need both ways of being. Busyness and stillness. Word and deed. Mysticism and activism. Here at Trinity/Guadalupe we need people who will pray and people who will play music and people who will produce bulletins. Thanks, Bonnie! Martha and Mary’s household needed both kinds of people if the rabbi was to be fed after teaching his attentive disciples.
So maybe this is a story about balancing action and contemplation, or about knowing the right thing to do at the right time. In fact, it would be perfectly reasonable to understand Jesus affirming Mary’s choice of knowing her own mind, and doing what seemed best for her in that moment. Maybe the very next day Mary was happily cooking, and Martha was taking a well-deserved retreat, and everyone was happy again. Maybe Martha’s problem that evening was not doing the wrong thing, but doing it at the wrong time or for the wrong reason. To everything there is a season, right?
My friend Debie Thomas sees it differently, though. “This story is not about balance,” she says. This story is about choosing the one thing, the best thing — and forsaking everything else for its sake. The story is about single-mindedness. About a passionate and undistracted pursuit of a single treasure.”
“Think of Jesus’s most evocative parables,” says Debie. “They all point in this same direction. The pearl of great price. The buried treasure in the field. The lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son. Christianity, it seems, is not about balance; it’s about extravagance. It’s not about being reasonable; it’s about being wildly, madly, and deeply in love with Jesus. As soon as Jesus entered Martha’s house, he turned the place upside down. He messed with Martha’s expectations, routines, and habits. He insisted on costly change. Perhaps Martha’s mistake was that she assumed she could invite Jesus into her life – and still carry on with that life as usual, maintaining control, privileging her own priorities, and clinging to her much-beloved agendas and schedules.”
“In contrast, Mary recognized that Jesus’s presence in her house required a radical, countercultural shift. Which is to say, a wholehearted surrender. Every action, every decision, every priority, and every life choice, would have to be filtered through this new love, this new devotion, this new passion. Why? Because Jesus was no ordinary guest. He was the Guest who would be Host. The Host who would provide the bread of life, the living water, and the wine that was his own blood, to anyone who would sit at his feet and receive his hospitality.”
What’s your wholehearted choice for Jesus? Can you risk switching up the roles to do something unexpected for the love of God? And—since we’re in church— I offer an equally important question. What support would you need from your community in order to do your ministry wholeheartedly? Can you ask for the help you need in order to live the life of faith you are called to? Myself, I love it when people come to me and let me know they need more prayer, more community, more understanding, more grace. When it’s the deepest desire of your heart, I assure you: it’s God’s deepest desire for you as well.
Admittedly, it always feels a little risky to ask for help. Will someone think less of me because I asked? Wouldn’t it be safer if I silently prayed to God “tell her to help me.” But what if she doesn’t? What if I don’t get what I want? The truth is, we don’t always get what we want. I know this for sure because I was a child of hippies, and I grew up listening to the Rolling Stones as my childhood soundtrack. Most of the lyrics—like “I saw her today at the reception. In her glass was a bleeding man”—were beyond my elementary school understanding. Ah, but that top 40 refrain! “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need”.
What we want might actually be the wrong thing for us, but we won’t know unless we ask. Such is God’s compassion towards us, that Jesus actually encourages us to do the wrong thing when the time for it is right. Because almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, knows our necessities before we ask, and also our ignorance in asking. We may not get what we want, but we can always pause our busy lives and listen to Jesus. Who has compassion on our weakness, and mercifully gives us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask. For he is worthy, and he is worth listening to.
