This talk starts with a very short sketch, done online. The person who plays Martha will need an apron, a rolling pin and a few pans.
Sketch:
[Members of the cast first introduce themselves.]
Simon-Peter: Hey, Andrew, we’re quite close to Bethany, aren’t we?
Andrew: Yes. Mary and Martha live there, don’t they? Why don’t we drop in on them? What do you think, Jesus?
Jesus: Sure, why not?
Narrator: Half-an-hour later…
[Knock on the door.]
Martha [pretends to open the door]: Jesus! Simon! Andrew! How nice to see you! Come on in!
Andrew: Hi Martha. Hi Mary…
[At this point Mary and Martha simply have to remember as many of the names of the disciples as they can as they enter the house.]
Martha: Hi Andrew, hi Simon, hi James, hi John, hi Philip, hi, um…
Mary: …Bartholomew, hi Matthew, um…
Martha: hi Thomas, hi James, hi Simon, hi Judas and hi Judas. Great to see you! Come on in! Make yourselves comfortable. You must be hungry after a long journey…
Mary (to Jesus): Lord, it’s great that you’re here. There’s a whole load of things I want to ask about!
Jesus: OK, no worries. I’ll do my best!
Mary: D’you mind if I sit here?
[Martha puts on her apron, picks up her rolling pin and disappears. Various banging sounds. Martha reappears.]
Martha: Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!
Last week we started a new series in Luke. In last week’s passage, Jesus and his disciples began a journey to Jerusalem. In today’s passage Jesus and his disciples continue their journey and arrive in a village called Bethany where there’s a family they know: Martha, Mary and their brother, Lazarus.
I think there are two main lessons we can learn from this story. The less important one, in my view, concerns gender. The more important one is about the nature of Christian discipleship. That's the basis for my title for today’s talk: ‘What Mary Got Right.’
I’m going to start with gender and then go on to What Mary Got Right.
In the passage, we read that Martha ‘had a sister called Mary, WHO SAT AT THE LORD’S FEET LISTENING TO WHAT HE SAID.’ In that time and context, the fact that someone sat at a teacher’s feet it strongly suggests that they were the teacher’s disciple. For example, in Acts Paul says ‘I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, EDUCATED AT THE FEET OF GAMALIEL…’ [Acts 22:3]. What Paul means is that he was educated under Gamaliel; he was Gamaliel’s disciple.
So, when Luke tells us that Mary ‘SAT AT THE LORD’S FEET’ he probably has more in mind than where Mary was physically sitting. We may look at this scene and think, this looks A BIT strange, a woman sitting among 13 men. To us the only thing that is uncomfortable is the fact that the woman is outnumbered. We wouldn’t see anything wrong in Mary being one of Jesus’ disciples. But this would have been a big deal in Jesus’ day.
Earn Ellis, in his commentary on Luke wrote:
“The picture is that of a rabbi instructing his pupil. The extraordinary feature is that the pupil is a woman. Judaism did not forbid women to be instructed in the Torah, but it was very unusual for a rabbi to lower himself to this. In the social system of the time women were a rejected group. Luke pays considerable attention to the acceptance which Jesus accords them.”
By accepting Mary into the group of men, Jesus showed that she was absolutely welcome as a disciple. Jesus clearly stepped away from convention.
Mary also stepped away from convention. She might have had a traditional view of what her role should be. She was also rejecting a stereotype, that a woman’s role was to look after the men, not to join them.
Jesus and Mary BOTH rejected gender stereotypes and because they did that, I think they’re great examples for us WHETHER WE ARE MEN OR WOMEN. I’m a man, specifically a married man. I need to watch out for a gender stereotype and not allow my wonderful wife to wait on me. And women need to be careful that they don’t simply retire to the kitchen.
Does this passage tell us anything about the role of women in church leadership?
The matter of women in church leadership has been controversial. It’s also a rather tricky issue for me personally, as I think my own position is probably not quite as intellectually solid as I would like.
By and large, FIEC churches have taken a conservative approach. They consider that the primary leaders and teachers of a church should be suitably qualified men. That doesn’t at all mean they see no role for women: they see men and women as having different but ‘complementary’ roles. The traditional denominations, such as Baptists, have generally taken an egalitarian position.
Before I started at Bristol Baptist College, I was asked if I accepted the Baptist Union’s position in regard to women in leadership. I said that I did, but I gave a slightly longer answer than ‘Yes, I do.’
This passage doesn’t tell us anything about women in leadership but it does give us cause for thought. Jesus accepted Mary as a disciple. He broke convention by doing that – and we know that Jesus was generally not afraid to break convention. But if he wasn’t afraid to go against convention, why didn’t he include women among the 12 apostles? Doesn't it suggest that there was a principle which he was following?
We can’t take a view on this without looking at a range of passages of scripture and it isn’t my intention to do that here. What we can say is this THIS specific passage does seem to strengthen the conservative position. However, Jesus doesn’t tell us in this passage or anywhere else that women should NOT be in positions of leadership.
Let’s move on to What Mary Got Right.
You remember that when Martha complained to Jesus and asked him to tell Mary to help her, Jesus answered: ‘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.’
In what way did Mary make a better choice? People have proposed a variety of ways in which Mary supposedly did better. Let’s have a look at two main views, then I’ll give another one.
(1) MARY LISTENED RATHER THAN WORKED.
One theory of WHAT MARY GOT RIGHT is that she listened whereas Martha got on with the work. Some people conclude from this that listening is better than doing, that the contemplative life is better than the active life, that being a celibate monk or a nun is better than being a working mum.
We can quickly reject this. The story of Martha and Mary follows immediately after the story of the Good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite who passed by on the other side had probably spent a large part of their lives studying the Torah, the Old Testament. They had listened to God’s word to the nth degree. But they didn’t do anything. The Samaritan may have never read the Torah and he didn’t get down on his knees to pray when he saw the injured man. But he did what God wanted. So, this story immediately rules out any thought that listening is better than doing.
(2) MARTHA TRIED TO DO TOO MUCH.
A second theory of WHAT MARY GOT RIGHT is that Martha went overboard and Mary didn’t. According to this theory, Martha wasn’t wrong to be preparing a meal, but she was going to more trouble than necessary. This is a possible understanding. In v.42 you’ll find there's a footnote which shows an alternative reading. In the main reading Jesus says, ‘there is need of only one thing’. In the alternative Jesus says, ‘few things are necessary, or only one’. If we think that ‘few things are necessary, or only one’ is the correct reading, then we can imagine that Jesus is telling Martha to keep it simple; he doesn’t need a banquet. Just a few things are necessary.
A commentator called John Dummelow wrote, 'There is no need of an elaborate meal. A few dishes or even one would suffice.’
That could be the correct way of looking at things. Some years ago, Priscilla [my wife] bought me a book titled, ‘An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess’ by an American lady called Jen Hatmaker. Hatmaker wrote, ‘Food is the centrifugal force that draws together my people. According to me, a party need no other activity than eating. I shoo the kids out of my space around 5 p.m. every day, put on some music and enter cooking heaven. I love to chop. I love to sauté…’ and so on. But Hatmaker decided that life was full of complications and decided to radically simplify it. She decided that for one month she would only eat seven varieties of food. Perhaps that was what Martha’s problem was: she was making things too complicated, doing more than was needed. But I’m not very happy about this. The issue wasn’t really about doing a lot or a little. Mary wasn’t doing a LITTLE; she wasn’t doing ANYTHING AT ALL! So, I feel that the explanation that Martha should have done LESS doesn’t really work.
(3) MY EXPLANATION: WHAT MARY DEMONSTRATED WAS REAL DISCIPLESHIP
We have already commented that Mary acted like a disciple in coming to Jesus and placing herself at Jesus’ feet. But there’s more to it.
God’s plan for marriage is stated in Genesis: “Therefore a man shall LEAVE his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” [Genesis 2:24]. The King James version expresses it like this: “Therefore shall a man LEAVE his father and his mother, and shall CLEAVE unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.” For marriage to work there must be leaving as well as cleaving. The same thing is true of Christian discipleship: there is no cleaving without leaving.
We can see Martha’s difficulty. Jesus says to her, very gently, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things’.
On the one hand Martha would have liked to listen to Jesus. But on the other hand, she’s sure that it’s necessary to make a meal. That is what society expects, what convention demands of her. She’s conflicted. And because she’s being torn between two things, she isn’t happy. She isn’t happy with Mary and she doesn’t seem to be happy with Jesus!
Mary on the other hand has taken a radical and counter-cultural step by sitting at Jesus’ feet. She has left the domain of the woman and entered the domain of men. She abandoned both her place and conventional wisdom.
But this is what Luke presents us with over and over again. In Luke’s gospel people are called on to abandon both their place and conventional wisdom. Luke just keeps on pressing it home. Let me give a few examples:
In Luke 2, we find Jesus, aged 12, in the temple. He hadn’t exactly left his parents but what he did wasn’t a lot different. I feel sure Jesus was well aware that his parents were leaving Jerusalem. They left him, but in a sense, he'd left them.
In Luke 5, Jesus called some of his first disciples. He spoke to Simon after he’d been fishing with James and John. He told him, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” Then we read, ‘When they had brought their boats to shore, THEY LEFT EVERYTHING and followed him.’ Simon then left his job and his family. He had nothing but he was with someone who had everything.
In Luke 9, a man wanted to bury his father before following Jesus. Maybe his father was already dead; maybe he wanted to wait until his father died and then follow Jesus. But Jesus told him to come now; to LEAVE his father behind.
Later in Luke 9 we read, ‘Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”’ That’s radical letting go.
In Luke 14 we read, Jesus said, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes, even their own life – such a person cannot be my disciple.’ That’s also radical letting go.
In Luke 15, in the story of the prodigal son, the son had to LEAVE his proud independence behind.
In Luke 18, Jesus called the rich young man to LEAVE all his wealth behind.
Are you getting the picture? When Jesus called people to discipleship, he didn’t just call them to come; he called them to LEAVE. Nothing has changed. He calls US in the same way. He wants followers who are disentangled. It’s very radical; it isn’t at all half-hearted.
In this story Mary has left. She’s deserted her post. She’s done what’s wrong, what a woman should not do. It’s not sensible at all. But she’s single-minded.
The question for us is: where are we? Like Martha, entangled? Or like Mary, following with abandonment? That isn’t easy. But it’s what God calls us to.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 10th January 2021
