No one was more surprised than I was a few years ago when I found myself hitting the “record” button on my TV to make sure I didn’t miss an overnight Formula 1 car race. I got sucked into the actual racing after discovering the Netflix reality show Drive to Survive that has been following drivers and team principals through their racing seasons for the last seven season.
Ahead of the start of the new racing season that began today, I consumed the newly released seventh season of the reality show fairly quickly over the weekend and was struck by a unique episode show runners included. While it still featured a race, even more so this episode was dedicated to the off-track friendships of five drivers who had essentially grown up together in life and the sport. In addition to the professional camera work and Netflix producers, the drivers were also given smart phones and asked to film a sort of “behind the scenes” view (on a behind the scenes show) of their relationships with each other. There was footage of these fierce competitors laughing on transglobal flights with one another, supporting each other over shared meals, and commiserating together about punishing race conditions.
The whole episode about the friendship of these competitors highlighted for me the exact opposite trope present in reality TV shows centered on women. In those story lines, it seems the goal is always to try to expose the fractures and hidden competitions among a group of supposed friends. The women who are presented as friends are then exposed and characterized as backstabbing and catty competitors for attention, accolade, or authority in their social circle. Pop culture loves to exploit a real or fabricated feud between women, whether they are reality TV stars, artists, athletes, politicians, or more.
Sometimes it feels like that tendency even stretches to the way we tend to read this story from the Bible. I remember a book popularamong many women’s ministry groups in the early 2000s called, “How to have a Mary Heart in a Martha World.” The book and many treatments of this story build their interpretations on the “better part” language, lifting up Mary and her act of listening at Jesus’ feet at the expense of Martha and her tasks of hospitality. They and their forms of devotion are pitted against each other as if we can only choose one path of discipleship, or one woman with whom we identify. The two women are flattened into two-dimensional stereotypes and all the Marthas in the world are encouraged to turn away from their less faithful “doing” in order to turn toward a more faithful Mary attitude of “listening,” as if these two categories are mutually exclusive, as if this short snapshot of these two women on this one day tells us how they live their entire lives, as if one of them is solely devoted to holy faith and listening while they other is missing the point with all those less holy works, and as if we have no other Scriptural witness to serving that tell us how honorable it is, indeed how it is at the core of what it means to follow Jesus and live as his disciples in the world.
In fact, the word used to describe what Martha is up to, here translated into English as “many tasks,” is the noun version of the very same word used a number of different places in Luke’s gospel in very positive ways. In the story where Jesus has healed Peter’s mother-in-law, she immediately gets up and begins to serve – and that is a good thing. It’s as if she has been healed for a Christ-like purpose, because serving is exactly what Jesus later says is how he lives among his disciples, as one who serves. And again, the women that Luke’s gospel alone points out are accompanying Jesus are described as providing for him, serving him and his mission from their own resources. Luke even lifts up the importance of this sort of work when he tells the story in Acts of the calling of the first deacons, seven men full of the Spirit and wisdom, who will help make sure that all the widows, those of Greek and Jewish descent, will be cared for with compassion and equity.
The service that Martha is engaged in is not, in and of itself, the lesser part, and she is not the lesser sister or the lesser disciple for engaging in it. She does not have any less faith than Mary; she isn’t any less devoted to her relationship with Jesus. She doesn’t ignore who he is or how important it is to be devoted to his words. She has clearly heard his words and has a depth of relationship with him that is able to withstand her direct complaint to him, her intimate way of challenging not only Mary who isn’t helping her, but Jesus who is, in her mind, letting her shirk her duties. Martha speaks to Jesus as one who knows him well. Like other disciples in the gospel of Luke and those who seek out Jesus’ healing and wholeness, those who know him, walk with him, and believe in what he is capable of, she calls him Lord.
Martha knows who Jesus is and what he can do. While we don’t have chapters upon chapters of stories featuring her, based on the setting of this interaction (Jesus is in her own home!), the familiarity with which she interacts with him, and her declaration of faith in calling him Lord, we can surmise she has paid very close attention to Jesus’ presence and Jesus’ words.
Martha is annoyed. There is plenty of work to do to welcome Jesus into her home – Jesus and his entourage, presumably. The food to feed them isn’t going to cook itself, after all. She’s working hard, but from the hearth where she is building a fire, or from the bucket where she is preparing water for washing hands and feet, or from the garden where she is gathering fresh vegetables, she can see her sister doing something else – specifically NOT helping. She’s worried and distracted, Jesus says, not by the service she is providing, but in the way she is approaching it.
Instead of engaging in the work she is doing in such a way that she is solely focused on the one she is serving, she has let her attention wander. Rather than centering her service on Jesus, she is centering her own experience – “my sister has left ME to the all the work by MYself. Tell her to help ME.” Martha’s choice to provide hospitality to Jesus doesn’t seem to be the problem; her decision to turn away from focusing on Jesus’ needs and instead focus on who is or isn’t helping, her decision to judge her sister’s form of devotion against her own, that seems to be the problem.
We live in a competitive world. I can admit I’m easily drawn into it. I use the language of winning and losing a lot, probably more than I should. Looking around the room at the various leftovers friends have brought to a lunch meeting, I’ll say light-heartedly, “You win lunch!” To the person with the delicious looking reheated pasta, for example. Of course, that relatively harmless example points to a deeper habit that I imagine I’m not alone in being tempted to repeat. It’s that tendency to look beyond what we have, what we’re doing, and look to see if someone else has something better, or is doing something different, something more desirable. It’s that tendency to let discontent sneak in and take over, rather than being grateful for what we have or finding joy in the way we commune with God. It’s that impulse to see how each of us stacks up against the rest of the field to make sure we’re getting everything we deserve or putting forth the same amount of effort as everyone else – getting or giving our fair share. Similar to the lawyer in last week’s story that led to Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, it’s that drive to make sure we’re justified, we’re doing just enough, but not too much – whether it’s serving enough or listening enough, praying enough or giving enough.
“Martha, Martha,” Jesus says with compassion. Church, church. Beloved, beloved. “You are worried and distracted by many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part.” But, Mary hasn’t chosen the better part because listening is better than serving. Mary has chosen the better part by turning her attention fully and completely on Jesus. She is listening with her whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. She is singularly focused on the one who has called her and has all she has and all she is in this particular moment is fixed on Jesus in this way. Martha has let her focus drift away from serving Jesus whole-heartedly with her tasks, and this is what Jesus tries to correct.
Choosing the better part is not about establishing a pecking order of the most holy things we can do to follow Jesus. We live in a competitive world, but we don’t need to pit listening to Jesus and serving his purposes against each other. Choosing the better part is about choosing how we will approach the ways of following Jesus that are right for the gifts we bring to the task, right for the world, right for the time, right for his purposes. Choosing the better part is about focusing on Jesus as we do whatever we are called to do, whether that is packing lunches or knitting hats, visiting the sick or tending to those without homes, leading in worship or earnestly praying for the world God loves, paying attention to our studies or caring for those in our workplace, reading Scripture or journaling about our faith journey. Choosing the better part is about centering the person and call, the mission and teachings of Jesus as we move through the world as his disciples.
It’s certainly also about inviting others to join us, but it’s also about not getting distracted from the crucial work of building the kindom of God on earth by worrying about whether or not they will join us, or whether or not their right thing to do right now is the exact same as ours. Instead, when we are working, work for the sake of Jesus. When we are worshiping, worship with full attention. When we are reading Scripture, turn off the TV in the background, resist the urge to click through to a more dazzling app with all the colors and sounds that light the entertainment sections of our brain. When we are praying and our mind starts to wander to the grocery list or the five incomplete tasks on our to-do list, recenter with a word or phrase, a breath prayer that brings us back to communion with the one who gives us breath.
Everything we do as disciples of Jesus should be done with Jesus – his will, his wisdom, his purpose, his presence – at the center. When this is how we are following him – when we’re serving, when we’re studying, when we’re praying, when we’re meeting as church committees, when we’re at work, when we’re in the community, when we’re deciding how to spend our money, when we’re deciding where to place our vote, when we’re helping a stranger, when we’re parenting our children, when we’re caring for a neighbor – when Jesus is at the center, then we have chosen the better part.
