We have two interesting Bible stories in today’s
readings, both of them juxtaposed. In the first, Abraham spots three angelic
visitors in the distance and literally begs them to stop by his house, ordering
Sarah, his wife, to make bread, and his servants to kill and cook an animal.
Abraham himself waits on the guests.
“Where is Sarah?” the angels ask Abraham as they eat,
leading me to assume that Abraham is not a traditional silent waiter but has
been talking to his guests.
“In the tent,” Abraham says, confused. Where else
would Sarah be?
“Next year we will stop this way again,” the angels
tell Abraham. “By then, she will have had a son.”
This, of course, is a notoriously tricky issue,
because men have been telling Sarah all
of her life that, eventually, she will conceive. But does Sarah see a baby?
No. Has Sarah seen these angels of the lord? No. At some point in the coming
year, she gives up and tells Abraham just to sleep with her maid already, give
her a son by proxy. What happens is that Ishmael is born, from whose line Islam
descends. Of course, Sarah is a total brat and sends Hagar and Ishmael away
because she has (finally) conceived: Isaac is born, as the angels prophesy,
just after Ishmael is born.
What is fascinating about this story, though, is
that Abraham and Sarah are rewarded for their work and hospitality. Sarah
especially is given a promise from these angels whom she may not have even met.
As a reward for her hard work and service, she will have a son, and then everybody
will stop judging her already.
Taken with today’s Gospel reading—that of Mary and Martha—this story is an interesting choice. It would appear that humanity is rewarded for cooking and serving those
who—to paraphrase Catholic doctrine—“come in the name of the Lord.” Yet Jesus
seems to say the opposite to Mary and Martha.
The story begins with Jesus visiting some of his
best friends, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, who appear quite often in the gospels.
Of course, where Jesus goes, his twelve besties come along, and then that one
girlfriend of Mary’s who has a crush on Andrew, and then maybe Peter’s wife or
mother-in-law show up because dude, Peter, you have responsibilities, why are you following this guy around Galilee?
Then that one guy Jesus healed last summer comes around to remind Jesus how
grateful he is, and suddenly instead of an intimate get together of fourteen
besties, Martha has a rave on her hands.
Now, women rarely get to party. My aunt hosted a
retirement party for her husband yesterday, and she’s having a Baptism party
today for her most recent granddaughter, and let me tell you: It is all work
and no play for my aunt. Yesterday I watched her get out the kid’s toys and put
them in the backyard so the wee ones would stop pestering so-and-so, and then
check on the grill, and then run into the house and make sure the food inside
wasn’t getting cold, and then greet the latest person to arrive, and then
console the oldest grandchild because he had become convinced that a cop who
dropped by had come to take him to jail. Today she called me up and then she apologized for not spending more time
with me, and I was dumbfounded: Who on Earth apologizes for not spending enough
time with the niece who lives ten minutes away because there were thirty other
people (many of whom live several hours away) to entertain and feed? My aunt, apparently.
The same would have been true for Martha and Mary.
They would have had to wash the disciples’ feet, which would have been dusty
and muddy from their travels. John, the youngest apostle, would have complained
of thirst and hunger, and so Martha would have had bread in the oven and some
hamburgers on the grill. And then one of the wee ones that Jesus loved so much
(possibly one of Peter’s neglected daughters) would have had to go to the
bathroom, and she wouldn’t know where it was, so Martha would have had to leave
everything and show her. Then Matthew would have asked something about income,
and Thomas, the most annoying disciple, would have said something to Lazarus
and picked a fight, and Philip, the stupidest, would have knocked over one of
the casks of wine Martha had been saving especially for a prized Jesus visit.
Sometime during all of this, Mary ends up sitting at
the feet of Jesus, listening to him teach.
There is nothing
more on this planet that Martha wants except to sit at the feet of Jesus
and have the noise stop. But all of her life she has been taught to be silent,
to serve, not to complain, not to draw attention to herself. This is a woman of
great faith. When her brother Lazarus dies later in the Gospels, Martha runs
out to meet Jesus on the road when she hears he is coming and she cries to him,
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
At that moment, Martha is acknowledging that Jesus
is God. He can raise people from the dead, or save them from death. This is
faith, and Martha has it in abundance.
But in this
story, she goes to Jesus and says, “Lord, you see what I am dealing with. I
need help. I need Mary’s help.”
But Jesus says, “Martha, wonderful, patient, Martha,
you don’t need Mary’s help. You need mine.”
This is a revolutionary moment. Jesus is telling
Martha to ignore the tumult of her household, to go against her training from
girlhood, her own instincts, and to sit at the feet of Jesus. Jesus is inviting
Martha and Mary to follow him, to learn from him, to become enlightened. Just
because they are women they need not sit with Sarah in a tent far away from the
angelic guests. They have a front-row seat to divinity, and Jesus wants them at
his right hand.
Jesus wanted women in his ministry. He wanted them
to listen to his words. Jesus never saw any woman as secondary, as a
background, as a work animal whose salvation was conditional on her husband’s.
When he died, three woman and John were at the foot of his cross. Jesus knew
all along that Martha would be there at the foot of his cross. And he wanted
her to know that he saw her, saw all that she was doing for him, saw all that
she feared and worried about and wanted—and her place was not in the kitchen
but sitting beside him.
I will end this week’s lay homily with a few lines
from poem I have always loved by Franz Wright, “The Raising of Lazarus:”
here was Martha…
…He knew
she would not stray,
as he knew which would;
he knew that he would always find her
at his right hand,
and beside her
her sister Mary, the one
a whole world of whores
still stood in a vast circle pointing at. Yes,
all were gathered around him. And once again
he began to explain…
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