+ ‘Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her’
In our very short gospel reading Jesus and his disciples are on their way to Jerusalem and he drops in on a couple of women for a meal. Martha is a Jewish name that means ‘the Lady’, and she was the Lady of the house who welcomed Jesus into her home. Unusually, it was a household of women and she had a younger sister called Mary. In John’s gospel they live at Bethany and have a brother called Lazarus but he is absent here, although he was present in our first hymn. Perhaps Luke wanted to emphasis that it was a household of women. The story is simple, beautiful and famous. Martha fusses around getting stuff ready for the guest while Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to him. Martha moans about her lazy sister and Jesus answers: ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’ What does this mean?
Does this mean that Jesus loves the people who come here for the quiet contemplative Eucharist at 9am on a Sunday while he’s not that keen on those who are going to make the coffee after this service? No, but the most popular interpretation in Christian tradition is a more sophisticated version of this. Martha stands for the active Christian life, doing good things; Mary is the icon of the contemplative life, sitting quietly at the feet of the Lord, enjoying his presence. On Friday night we had a celebration of the contemplative life at the ancient Carmelite church in South Queensferry. Even today Carmelite nuns are ‘Marys’, they leave the world to live in convents to give themselves to a life of contemplation. This retains its popularity and there is a Carmel at Dysart in Fife with 24 nuns. I visited there the other week and got a shock when I went to look out of the window in the chapel – there were all 24 nuns lined up praying silently and looking directly at me.
But, I have lived the contemplative monastic life and it is very busy, this is even true for Carmelite nuns. Monks and nuns, and all Christians, live both the active and the contemplative life – we pray and we do good works. We are all called to contemplation as well as work. This interpretation where Martha and Mary are two types of life is therefore limited.
The Protestant Reformers said that the life of a wife is better than the life of a nun, but they still confined women to the home looking after the men and children. The Reformed ideal of a woman was the Pastor’s wife, as in the old rhyme: ‘Martha and Mary in one life, make up the perfect rector’s wife’.
But if we look again at the story, there is much more in it. It comes after the Good Samaritan and Jesus’ command to love God and our neighbour. Jesus breaks social prejudices by commending the hated Samaritan and he also breaks them as a rabbi here by being received by woman. We might also say that our story is about hospitality, how to treat the neighbour who drops in. It’s like Abraham and Sarah in the first reading welcoming the three men. Martha’s attention was on things; Mary’s was on the guest. You can love someone by practical acts of kindness, but if these don’t go with personal attention they’re worthless. As with the good Samaritan, Jesus is saying ‘be attentive to the other’ – this is the better part.
But there’s even more than that. Mary sits at Jesus’ feet. We think, ‘how sweet’, just like a little child. But think of St Paul who said he was ‘brought up at the feet of rabbi Gamaliel’. Many scholars point out that sitting at the feet of a rabbi and receiving teaching was reserved for disciples, for people who hoped themselves to be rabbis, teachers. And this was certainly forbidden to women. Rabbi Eliazer, in the same century, said, ‘it is better to burn the Bible than to teach it to women’. So we can say that Martha was doing what contemporary Jewish women should do, housework; but Mary was doing something scandalous – and it was of this that Jesus said ‘Mary has chosen the better part’. As with the Good Samaritan, he was breaking down artificial barriers in his society. And it is sad to say that in this case the church put them up again and, until recently, connived with a culture that confined women in the home.
So, the story of Martha and Mary tells us that we should each live a life of work and prayer. In the life of a busy priest it is often prayer that gets squeezed out in the round of meetings, people’s needs and administration. We need to put contemplation, even just a walk under the trees, first. We also need to get beyond convention and value each person whoever they are. This means being hospitable, like Martha and Mary, like Abraham and Sarah. Strangely enough, in both of those cases they welcomed God to their house. Contemplation and hospitality both really welcome God into our lives. Let us, like Mary, choose the better part and may it not be taken from us.
