6th Sunday after Pentecost

Grace be to you and peace from God our father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I always feel sorry for Martha. She is trying so hard to make things nice for her guests and be the good host her culture expects her to be, yet when she asks her sister to help, Jesus seems to be yelling at her.

This always bothers me. Jesus, after all, is benefitting from Martha’s work. She is making his dinner.

My father is a pastor. He loved having people come to the parsonage. Often, after worship, he would bring a group of folk home to discuss the sermon. He would hold meetings at the parsonage. My mom would prepare tea and coffee and goodies. She would rush around to make sure the guests were well taken care off. More than once did I hear my father commenting on her being so frantic and how she just couldn’t sit still and how she was such a Martha.

Yet he totally relied on my mom’s work. He expected the house to be tidy and clean, the coffee and tea to magically appear, the hospitality to be wonderful. My mom worked hard at this. Whenever I heard his remarks about her being such a Martha, I would get angry. Still do. Obviously.

There are many amazing, hardworking women in the church who hate this text. They are in the kitchen making sure we all can eat great meals. They are cooking and baking for hours so we can have coffee hour and Mother-Daughter dinner and congregational meals. Then this text rolls around and they feel like Jesus is yelling at them.

One commentator warns: “If we censure Martha too harshly, she may abandon serving altogether, and if we commend Mary too profusely, she may sit there forever.” And then, I wonder, where would the church be?

So, today, I am rising to the defense of Martha.

When we had this gospel before us the last time, I spoke about the fact that what Martha is doing is not wrong, but that the timing is wrong. Jesus had just announced that he would die soon. This might be his last visit with Mary and Martha. On this particular visit, sitting with him might have been more important than serving dinner. While hospitality is a highly regarded tradition in the Middle East, on this particular day it would have been better for Martha to just be with Jesus, talk to him, listen to him, enjoy his presence, and give him comfort for the tough journey ahead of him.

This year, I did some research into the way Luke describes Martha’s worry and distraction. What are the words he uses? Once I understood what Martha was experiencing, I realized that Jesus is not yelling at her, but caring for her and trying to help her.

Luke writes that Martha was “distracted”. The original Greek word here is much stronger. It has the same root as our word “spasm” and “spastic”. Martha was going into spasm with all the work she had to do. This puts the emphasis not on Martha’s busyness or her work, but on how it affected her personally; on how it discombobulated her.

In our translations, Martha asks Jesus to make Mary help her. The verb Luke uses describes someone in a struggle needing support. She experiences herself in a struggle, and she feels alone and abandoned in this struggle that threatens to overwhelm her. Martha wants her sister to join her in her struggle to meet the many needs facing them.

Then we come to Jesus’ answer to Martha.

You are worried, he says. Jesus uses this word a lot, and it is never worry about small stuff. The next time he uses it is in chapter 12, where Jesus talks about the worry of his disciples when they get arrested by authorities who have power to bind, imprison, and execute them. This is serious worry, more like anxiety.

And Jesus says that Martha is distracted. In the original Greek, this is a different word than the “distracted” a couple verses ago. This word is also used to describe wailing, an uproar, or the reaction of people when someone had fallen out of an upper story window.

Taking all this together, we get the impression that Martha is inches away from a panic attack. She has just about reached her breaking point.

And no wonder. Jesus came for dinner. In those days without telephone or the internet, she couldn’t have known he was coming. Thus, she had no time to prepare ahead of time.

Plus, Jesus didn’t come alone. “They” went on their way, the gospel says. Who is “they”? Is it the 12 disciples plus Jesus? Is it the 12 disciples plus Jesus plus the women who supported them? Or is it the 70 disciples who just 21 verses prior had returned from their mission journey?

Can you imagine having 70 guests without warning? And that in a time and place without freezers and without the possibility to call out for pizza or Chinese food.

Now we begin to understand why Martha is so panicked.

And there is one more interesting thing to add. When I prepared a Bible study on this text a couple of years ago, I read something I find remarkable. I promise it is the last Greek word study for today.

Martha is distracted by her many tasks, we read. The Greek word translated as “task” is “diakonia”, where we get the word ‘deacon’ from. It is used a lot in the New Testament, for both men and women. And here is the interesting thing: When it is used for women, it is always translated as task or service. When it is used for men, half the time it is translated as ministry. Interesting, right?

So maybe this isn’t about cooking at all. Maybe Martha is busy with ministry. There is some evidence pointing to the fact that Martha and Mary hosted a house church in their home.

It has been the preconceived notion of centuries of patriarchal societies that reads about a woman having company and having a lot to do, and assumes this is about cooking. However, in Jesus’ presence, women were full-fledged disciples. Mary is sitting at his feet to learn, just like the Apostle Paul sat at the feet of his rabbi-teacher Gamaliel. Mary Magdalene is called to be an apostle. Women did the same kind of ministry men did.

So let’s imagine Martha not in the kitchen, but running herself ragged doing ministry.

Immediately before this story about Martha and Mary, we read the parable of the Good Samaritan. What is Jesus’ punchline in that parable? Go and do likewise. Do ministry. Help the needy. Heal the wounded. Take care of your neighbor. Maybe that’s exactly what Martha is doing. Why is Jesus trying to slow her down?

Because Martha is doing it so much, she has reached her breaking point. She is doing it so much, she is in danger of forgetting why she is doing it. She is doing it so much, she ignores her need to spend time in the presence of the Lord to be nurtured, recharged, strengthened, and guided.

In her over-stressed anxiety, she lashes out at Jesus: “Don’t you care about me?” She wants to deny her sister her chosen way of being a disciple, sitting at her master’s feet and listening. She is frazzled and angry and no longer a gracious host and minister.

This is why Jesus tells Martha to slow down. Right now, Martha needs only one thing: to sit down and rest and be restored. To listen to the gospel and be reminded why she is such a hard-working minister. To be filled with the love of God, so she in turn can do her ministry out of love, not out of duty.

For some of us, sitting still when there is stuff that needs to get done, is really hard. It is for me.

It is a lovely summer afternoon and I decide to take a break and take a book and sit outside in the garden to read. Within minutes I see the weeds that need to be pulled and the flowers that need to be deadheaded. In less than half an hour, I am up and working, because these tasks need to be done.

My husband is more like Mary. He can sit there for hours and ignore what is going on around him. Sometimes that makes me mad. Like Martha, I am thinking: “Doesn’t he see what needs to be done?” More often, I am jealous. I wish I could be as disciplined about resting as I am about working.

A few years ago, I was granted a sabbatical time of two months. It was a wonderful time of study and rest. At the end of that time, my husband remarked that I seemed to be a happier person or nicer person or something like that. Sounds like I had become too much like Martha, overworked and prone to yelling at other people. Not a joyful disciple.

Ministry can be stressful. Life in the church can be hectic and busy. You and I both know that. I just had a week like that. Last Saturday, I was asked to help open the German festival in Baltimore. We had Vacation Bible School and several pastoral care situations that needed tending and a wedding yesterday and before that a meeting of the synod council I am newly elected to.

Whenever these kinds of weeks roll around, I try to be good about taking time out: time to pray, time for daily devotions, time at the feet of Jesus, time to recharge and be refilled, time to do what gives me joy, time for healing. I do it because Jesus calls us to do it, so that we can be healthy, balanced, joy-filled messengers of God’s kingdom.

Let us all pray to find the balance between doing and resting, between working and listening, between serving and being quiet with Jesus. With that balance, we will be sustained and fulfilled in serving God and loving our neighbor. Amen.