SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY (Proper 11C)
18 July 2010

Mary and Martha: their story is so well-known that it is scarcely worth preaching on. Martha busy in the kitchen and getting increasingly irritated with her sister sitting at Jesus' feet and not so much as lifting a finger to help. And yet when she complains, Martha is the one who is rebuked: 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.

Interestingly enough, one of the commentaries I consulted suggested that there is need of only one thing could mean Martha was simply cooking too much, and that Jesus and his disciples needed only one dish not a whole banquet … though I'm not sure Luke would have bothered to record this story if that was all it was about! There must be more here than that.

Of course, where Luke places this story is part of what is significant about it: immediately after the Parable of the Good Samaritan we heard last week. So whatever Mary's “better part” is, it certainly isn't simply cutting oneself off from the world and it's needs and leaving someone else to worry about it. Go and do likewise, said Jesus to the lawyer at the end of last week's Gospel; and those words should still be ringing in our ears. Care of our neighbour is not an optional extra.

Nor is Martha's busyness in the kitchen. I doubt Jesus was saying, “why don't you come and sit here and listen too” … not if he expected to eat, anyway. And this is where it gets interesting, because John also records Jesus being invited to eat at Mary and Martha's, with Martha serving. But in his version Mary is not only sitting at Jesus' feet, but anointing them with perfume and wiping them with her hair. And the complaint comes not from Martha but from Judas about what a waste her actions are. But Jesus' reply in John's account is a similar endorsement of Mary's piety: Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.

Now it is not absolutely clear whether these are two separate meals, or two slightly different versions of the same story; nor is it clear how John's version relates to Luke's account of “the woman who was a sinner” who anointed Jesus' feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee, which we heard a few weeks ago. The Gospel writers were writing some thirty or so years after the end of Jesus' earthly ministry, and had a variety of sources at their disposal including their own recollections and those of others. That some details should get displaced or conflated is only natural and does not undermine the veracity of the Gospels as a whole.

Where Luke and John clearly agree, however, is in the substance of what Jesus says in reply to both complaints, from Mary and from Judas. Activism is important. Care for those in need, whether through illness or poverty, is important – Jesus does not say to Judas, Ignore the poor, any more than he tells Mary to quit the kitchen and join her sister. But there is a place for simple stillness in the Lord's presence, for extravagantly pouring out our love and devotion to Jesus which should not be despised – and indeed is the foundation of all else.

But there is another question: Is this Mary also Mary Magdalene? Tradition says yes; modern scholarship tends to say no, she was someone else. But just for a moment, let's assume Mary the sister of Lazarus is Mary Magdalene. Because there is another scene featuring a stooped Mary weeping at Jesus' feet, and that is in the Garden of the Resurrection. Noli me tangere … Do not cling to me says Jesus, before charging her to tell the disciples the Good News of the resurrection. Weeping and waiting is once again the prerequisite to action.

Today's Epistle is a great hymn of praise to Christ, the image of the unseen God and the first-born of all creation, through whom all things came into being, and by whom we are reconciled to God. In fact it may well literally be a hymn from the earliest days of the Church; and it ends with the resounding words, God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Before we can do anything for Christ we have to know Christ with us, among us and in us, seeing in him the Father to whom we have been reconciled. And that comes only from following the example of Mary, sitting at Jesus' feet in worship, private prayer, and study of the Gospels where we see Christ most clearly among us. Then, with Paul, we will be established in the faith, and able to proclaim Christ in word and deed.

Let me end with a brief reflection on our Collect … which is where I thought I was going to begin; because what interests me the priority implied by the order of the petitions. What we prayed for was first, that we might honour God; that was followed by a request that we might increase in true religion, i.e., right doctrine and belief; then that we might be nourished with goodness; and finally that we might be kept in all of these three.

I find this helpful. Too often our human temptation is to reverse the order: we expect people to be good first, right believing second, and love of God, for most of us, comes a distant third as a sort of optional extra for the truly holy. What our Collect implies is that that's the wrong way round.

Which is not to suggest that we should not pray to be better people: kinder, gentler, more loving to our neighbour. The imperative of the Gospel demands it. But it is to say that love of God’s name has priority, and that the first thing we should pray for is that we might truly love God, and honour his name (as we do each time we pray the Lord's Prayer), and the rest will follow from that. And that, it seems to me, is very close to what Jesus is trying to say to Martha: 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.