Preacher: Lisa Ramish

Scripture: Genesis 18:1-10a; Luke 10:38-42

Thank you so much for having me as your guest today. I am so grateful to be with you. Let us start with a prayer.

Our Creator, Please bless my words and let them be a blessing to those listening. Guide our voices, thoughts and actions to reflect your truth. Amen.

Our passage from Luke today can make some people bristle – especially people who are overwhelmed with work, especially women who are overwhelmed with unpaid, unequal, unacknowledged work in the household. This can be a really tough thing to admit, and it can be a really tough thing to hear. I know there were times when I was terrified that all that I would learn by talking about womanhood in the Bible is that Jesus perpetuated the patriarchy. There were times when I worried that this God, who I love, who made me, wants to overthrow empire and end economic inequality and offer radical welcome to the ostracized but he doesn’t want to challenge traditional gender roles.

But I know, with God, it is always better to face my fears. He will see me through. And it is exactly because of my fears that I feel it is absolutely necessary that every time we have even the smallest inkling that gender is at play in the Bible, we grapple with it. There are too many really loud voices equating Christianity with traditional womanhood, for people who might have a different perspective to avoid it. Perhaps we can offer healing if we are willing to acknowledge where things feel uncomfortable.

I’d like to talk about the two most common interpretations of this passage and explore why they make some people bristle. And then I’d like us to imagine a third interpretation together and really focus on what Jesus does. Let’s turn to our story. 

To be sure, there is plenty to cringe at without worrying about gender. Jesus and his disciples arrive at Martha’s house. We don’t get the sense that Martha got a lot of warning here. Her sister, Mary, decides to sit down to listen to Jesus. It honestly seems like the right thing to do – especially 2000 years later when we know that Jesus is only going to be on earth for 36 years. Good blanket policy: Any time Jesus is talking, stop and listen. But Martha is running around taking care of things. Which we can also understand. I have three kids. If Jesus shows up at my door, the first thing I am going to do is check that there is not a pair of dirty underwear on the bathroom floor. I’m doing that before I even open the door. After he sits down, there will be some point where I’ll have to ask him to lift up his elbows so I can wipe crumbs off the table.

Should I be worrying about those things when God is in my house? Probably not. Will I worry about them? Probably yes. The point is that all of us have been in the situation that Martha has been in where some immediate tasks demand our attention. And on our bad days, when they are too overwhelming, we have a tendency to start pointing our fingers at other people. Which is what Martha does. And it is not a flattering portrayal. She complains to Jesus about her sister in front of everyone saying, “Don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” And Jesus responds with some boundaries. We will talk more about his response in a minute but for now let’s just say that he is not going to tell Mary to do anything.

One common way to interpret this passage is to contrast Martha’s action with Mary’s reflection. We don’t absolutely have to think about what Martha was doing as housework per se. Churches began in houses. So we could think about this passage as speaking to how we give our time to the church. In fact, the word that is used for Martha’s work is often translated as “serving” but it is the Greek word “diakonia” which gives us our word deacon. So Martha is really “deaconing” – ministering. We could think about this passage as being about the need for balance between Martha’s active, outwardly visible life in the church and Mary’s still, internal reflective life in the church. I think this is an important perspective that we can learn from. Some of us are more action-oriented, some of us are more contemplative. And all of us could probably do with a better balance. This is where we get the phrase, “Are you a Mary or a Martha?”

But one thing we have to grapple with is that Martha is resentful of her sister. It is not simply that Martha is busy “deaconing” and Mary is busy learning. That could have been the story and Jesus could have noticed the two women and said, “Hey Martha, there is a time for what you are doing but now is the time for what Mary is doing. Come on over and sit down.” But in this story Martha is bitter – so bitter that she asks Jesus if he cares. So there is something about this dynamic that is causing friction. It doesn’t seem like it is about one type of work and then another different type of work being equally valued. It is more like it is about feeling pinned into one kind of work versus feeling free to set down that work for something else.

This brings us to a second common interpretation which is that Martha’s work is highly important and highly valued. But there is a time when she should leave it for something even more important, listening to Jesus. This makes sense because the whole chapter of Luke 10 is actually about care work and hospitality. In the beginning of the chapter, Jesus sends out 72 people to spread his word, and he tells them not to bring anything but to rely on the people they encounter. When they return, they report that they were welcomed and cared for. The hospitality in homes is what allowed them to do their ministry, and Jesus is thrilled. The next part of Luke 10 is the story of the good Samaritan in which a man cares for a stranger and brings him to hospice. And just in case we missed it, the people who put together the lectionary paired this reading with the reading we heard from Genesis, where Jesus and two angels visit Abraham. And after Sarah provides incredible hospitality, she is rewarded with the baby she’s always wanted. So by the time we get to Martha’s story, there isn’t really a question about whether her hospitality/her care work is vitally important to Jesus. The stakes of Martha’s work feel incredibly high.

I want to pause here to point out that this is the classic caretaker trope. The caretaker, usually a woman or someone who identifies as a woman but not always, puts all of themself into their work, often to the point of self-sacrifice. Think Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web. Sometimes the caretaker gives so much that they drive away the ones they love – like Nemo’s dad in Finding Nemo. Sometimes the caretaker gives so much that they become bitter. Think Marilla from Anne of Green Gables or the stepmom in Hansel and Gretl or every mom in every 90s sitcom. At its absolute grossest, the caretaker trope is the Mammy stereotype of Aunt Jemima. This caretaker trope is the perfect trap: luring us in and then keeping us stuck. The lure is in our purported high value of the work. Of course, it is usually unpaid but that just makes it even more admirable. The work gives our lives meaning, and care work is the most noble work. The message is “Work like Martha.” But then there’s a trap: Don’t get overwhelmed; don’t let it make you bitter; make sure your work looks effortless. “Be able to stop like Mary.” It’s not really “Are you a Martha or a Mary?” It’s really: “You have to be both.” This disproportionately affects women because they do a disproportionate amount of the care work even today. But it also embodies the message of capitalism for men and women: Work work work; your productivity is your worth. You can sleep when you’re dead.

This is what makes Jesus’s response to Martha seem kind of unfair: “Hey, your work is super important and no one is helping you and you’re feeling overwhelmed but also you should be able to set it down.” It feels like Jesus wants Mary to gamble knowing the stakes are high, and he is putting all that risk onto her as if bucking tradition is just the matter of a simple choice. Maybe Martha wants to be a disciple and leave her home and follow Jesus around Galilee. Maybe Martha wants to set down her work and she could set it down faster if someone would help her for two seconds! I hope that even if you don’t personally get resentful over housework every now and then, you can see why it’s chafes that Jesus would say, “Mary made the better choice.” It smacks of privilege – the privilege that is getting a very loud microphone these days in other places where the stakes are high, “If they hate it here so much, why don’t they move? If they want healthcare so badly, why don’t they get a job? If Martha doesn’t want to do all the work, why doesn’t she stop?” It’s not fair to demand people take responsibility when the system is rigged. Is this really how Jesus treated Martha?

I’d like to take a pause and ask you to create a picture of Jesus and his disciples in your mind’s eye. It doesn’t have to be this passage. Just notice what comes to mind for you. Where is Jesus? Where are his disciples? What are they wearing? What expressions do they have? Are you picturing DaVinci’s Last Supper or the sermon on the mount? I have a friend who did a painting of Jesus and the disciples on a boat in a storm, and that is what immediately comes to mind for me. Now one more question, is everyone in your mind’s picture a man? Did you picture male disciples? Did you maybe start to picture male disciples and then correct it because you knew where I was headed? This isn’t a gotcha. I picture male disciples and I know the setup. But here’s a question: If you imagine that Jesus also had female disciples would that change how we hear Jesus talking to Martha?

We are immersed in pictures of all male leadership both from Jesus’s time and in our own time. It is so comprehensive that even though Jesus challenged every other power dynamic, it is not the default to assume he challenged gender. We can understand why. The only books of the Bible that we have were written by men. The most famous artists who depicted scenes from the Bible were men. It has only been in the last 60 years or so that theologians have even looked for a different kind of gender dynamic in the Bible. But radical views about gender still managed to make their way in – even the existence of women disciples. Some of it is more familiar to us – we know that there were women at Jesus’s crucifixion and burial but it is easy to miss the part where Mathew and Mark say those women had been with Jesus since he traveled from Galilee. What do we call people who traveled with Jesus? Disciples. In Luke 8:1, it says “Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him,  and also some women.” There is more evidence I won’t get into here. But this is why biblical scholar, Jane Dewar Schaberg, wrote, “Where women are not mentioned explicitly, they should nevertheless be imagined as present.”

This kind of imagination isn’t fantasy. It’s the kind of imagination that pushes back against false oppressive constructs. It’s the kind of imagination that reaches toward God’s promise. And it isn’t a 21st century invention. Even in the 2nd century, two different gnostic texts refer to 12 male disciples and 7 female disciples. We don’t need to take those texts as gospel to understand that people from 2000 years ago believed there were men and women with Jesus. And yet (I’ll speak for myself) it still feels radical to say it now and my imagination doesn’t take me there unless I’m intentional about it.

Perhaps you already knew there was evidence of female disciples. Did you know it in your head? Or did you know it in your heart? Did you know it so deeply that it shapes your imagination? Or do you forget sometimes because the patriarchal constructs of gender are so comprehensive and constant and loud? Do you know it enough to change how you see God? Do you know it enough to reframe every passage in the Bible? Or do you still hold yourself back?

Presumably Martha knew it. But could she imagine how that would change her life? I know my imagination totally changes how I hear this passage. When I am no longer afraid to imagine 19 disciples then when Jesus arrives, he is not simply taking advantage of Martha’s hospitality, he is bringing in gender equality. He walks in with a new paradigm that welcomed children, touched lepers, and radically changed what women do and where women get to sit. The kingdom of God is at hand! I imagine it’s like the Wizard of Oz. The screen goes from black and white to technicolor. 

When I am no longer afraid to imagine 19 disciples then Jesus is not asking Martha to do something that challenged the ancient norms all by herself. He is saying, “I have already challenged these norms and now I want you to join me.” In other words, Jesus is not asking Martha to set down her work but to set down her attitudes about work from the old way. This has a really different feel to me. This sees Martha and exactly how stuck she is and says there is a different way but you are going to have to choose. 

And there are so many things to learn from how Jesus speaks to her. First, he addresses her by her name. He says, “Martha Martha.” It is so full of love and tenderness. Martha is one of Jesus’s close friends. He knows her. In John 11 when Jesus comes back to Bethany, her name will be listed ahead of her brother’s when John writes “Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus.” So when Jesus speaks to Martha, he cares about her deeply. He arrives with this different gender paradigm where men and women are both disciples. Mary recognizes that there is a place for her and she sits down at Jesus’s feet the way that male students did with their rabbis. But Martha is still caught up in the habits that served the old paradigm, she still holds the very values that oppressed her and made her resentful. She lashes out. Jesus says “Martha, Martha…  you are worried and upset about many things,” He points to her feelings as a signpost for her. Not to be dismissed but to be addressed. He says, “few things are needed-or indeed only one.” He points her to think about what she needs. Not what she should do but what she needs which is more important than her work, however high she believes the stakes to be. He says, “Mary has CHOSEN what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” Even when there is another way, we have to make that choice. And then no matter what happens, our choice, our internal clarity about what is right and what we are worth without work, our imagination of a new life cannot be taken away from us.

It is not an easy thing to do. There is a woman named Tricia Hersey who found an organization called The Nap Ministry. She is an artist, activist and author of the book, Rest is Resistance. Her thesis is that capitalism, which she calls grind culture, would have us work so hard that we disconnect from our bodies and lose ourselves to work. When Tricia talks about using rest to disrupt grind culture, she says it helps to bring a sort of trickster energy, a playful subversiveness to move in the right direction in small experimental ways. She looks to her enslaved ancestors who did not have a way out but made one. They refused to be ground down by work. And it is out of that refusal that they fought against oppression. Surely there were times when these freedommakers could not imagine a way to put down their work. But that is exactly the point: the greatest oppression is when we cannot imagine a way.

To do that we have to give ourselves the love Jesus had for Martha. We have to accept that we might be resentful, bitter and angry – or so depleted that we don’t even feel anymore. And then we have to give ourselves what we need. This is not only because we want to survive but it allows us to be a partner to someone we love, parent our children, take care of our own parents, dream of a different world and go out and fight for it.

At the beginning of this sermon, I talked about the fear I can bring to this passage. When I am in that place of fear, hearing what Jesus says to Martha makes me bitter. But imagination is the antidote there. When I imagine Jesus with the women who have been erased then I hear Jesus differently. This is what happens to Martha too. Jesus brings 19 disciples to Martha’s door. Mary sits down at Jesus’s feet, and Martha is still too scared to set down her work. She is too overwhelmed. She cannot imagine a different choice. What about you? What do you allow yourself to imagine? Do you give yourself time to imagine? Or are you stuck in the habits of an old paradigm? What will you set down to step into the life God wants for you? Jesus is speaking to you, “Beloved, beloved… you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one.”