A very familiar Gospel passage to many church-going folk is the visit of Jesus to the home of Mary and Martha.  It’s a passage I know that many women’s groups have used on retreats since its about two women.  Many who read this passage think that women more than men simply find it an expression of their gender to play hostess and make the house hospitable and have everything just so—which may be true, but I don’t think that’s really what is being illustrated in this passage—I think it has a great deal more to do with social expectations and roles and the expectation that Jesus will support the system. 

But he doesn’t, does he?  Which for most of us that isn’t really a surprise—we’re used to Jesus putting a question mark on what so many of us take for granted and assume. 

Have you ever noticed that in the Gospels there’s an alternating pattern of Jesus talking to people outside his immediate circle and then Jesus talking to those inside? This encounter with Mary and Martha takes place at the end of Luke ten, which is full of well-known passages—in reverse from our lesson we see the Good Samaritan, which was being told to the lawyer who asked about the most important laws.  The lawyer suddenly appears, it seems, at the end of Jesus saying a prayer, giving thanks for what God has revealed, not to the wise, learned, well-connected, movers and shakers of society who would be the ones everyone would expect to have some direct line to God, but to the common folk, those who made it day by day, facing the challenges, working hard and just getting by—not the ones we would think would likely have some holy, heavenly insight. 

And his prayer is in response to the 70 he sent out to the towns in order to bring peace and the message of God’s love, when they returned they brought news of the powerful and overwhelming response they received.  While they’re out, or as part of preparing them to go out, Jesus gives a speech about how the cities that were doing pretty well on the societal scale of morality were the ones that would be judged more harshly than the cities that had a reputation for corruption and deceit, because the communities that seem healthier are the ones that will ignore the message of the Gospel, whereas the communities on the other end of the scale are likely to wake up and repent—which is the message of Jonah who goes to Nineveh preaching God’s judgment and the people repent.

So that’s what precedes the Mary Martha story in Luke. 

Then finally we come to Jesus’ moments with Mary and Martha.  Mary turns her full attention to Jesus, who is the source of her identity.  Martha is distracted by an outsider definition of who she is—her identity is primarily one determined by the society, rather than her Lord. 

And from Jesus’ comments to Martha, it is clear that we have a choice in the matter—we can chose to be defined by society, by our family, by our acquaintances, by our work, by our worries, by our personality profile, by our income, by the neighborhood in which we live, by the car we drive, by our desires and impulses OR we can choose to be defined by the one who has created us.  We have this choice.

Like Mary, Jesus encourages us to soak up our sacred identity and be purged of the ways we are defined by the world and others. 

Martha tries to "fix" Mary, to get her doing what she's supposed to be doing.  She's meddling because she has accepted that she is defined by what society says she is, that she's identified by what she does.  

Anybody experienced that before—have others try to fix you, others who seem to think they have the answers to your life when their life is far from perfect?  What about you, do you try to fix others, get them to fit in as you think they should? Try to get others defined by something other than God?  Get them to measure up?

The salvation we are offered is a freedom from depleting and demanding definitions, liberty from the lies we believe to be true about who we are, or who we’re supposed to be, emancipation from the things that drain us and the gift of what sustains us and makes us thrive.

And the remarkable thing is that when we are no longer a sinkhole of heartache and hurt, when we no longer are defined by the shadows of fear and desperation, then others cannot help but be drawn to the light that shines through us—and we cannot help but see the systems that continue to claim lives and seek to make a difference. 

But it begins right where Mary is—listening and knowing our identity in and through Christ.