Measuring Sticks, Mary, and Martha

It begins innocently enough… maybe with hair color or new shoes or whether we prefer vanilla or chocolate ice cream at snack time… then types of pencils and how fancy the erasers are… to what our parents do, then how big our house is, and then what kind of job we have, and then our children and what they do and how many kids they have and what jobs they have… and what began as an innocent game of toddlers comparing their new shoes on the first day of preschool becomes a value game of how much we are worth. There are rules to this game. The most important one is: pretend you’re not playing.

The problem with Mary and Martha isn’t so much that they were playing the game. The problem is that Jesus breaks the rules when he points out that they are playing the game and – what is worse – seems to participate in the game himself. “Martha, Martha,” we hear, and we can pretty much stop listening because we know what comes next. Some of us might squirm in our chairs a little, knowing we didn’t choose the better part, and others of us might feel a small bit of satisfaction that we have done it right which we, of course, will deny because it’s part of the rules of the game.

Sometimes, comparisons are easy to make. My sister Andrea and I are about as different as they come in terms of temperament and demeanor. My dad tells a story of when I was seven and Andrea was five. We were sitting in the church pew – the third row from the front, always the third row from the front – and were about to sing in front of church. My dad looked at me and asked, “Mandy, are you nervous?” My response: “I think I am going to throw up.” He asked Andrea the same question. She looked at him and, swinging her legs under the pew said, “Nope. They clapped last time; they’ll clap again.” No matter how many times it had gone well, I couldn’t convince myself that it would the next time. No matter how hard I worked, I could never work hard enough to convince myself that things would go well.  

Martha wasn’t convinced either. Here Jesus was, in her house, sitting at her table, and she had the opportunity to show him hospitality, to make him feel welcomed, to be helpful. I can imagine Mary, a younger sister, seeing Martha in the doorway with that older sister “Get back here and help me this instant” look and Mary, as only a younger sister can, acting as though she cannot see her. Looking for help, Martha asks Jesus to intercede, and receives what sounds in most translations like a reprimand. So we compare these two sisters, measuring them against each other, trying to determine whether we are a Mary or a Martha and how Marthas can become more like Marys. We divide these two sisters who have so much to teach us. We make them simple and digestible and neat. Of course one is either a Mary or a Martha: how could one be both?

How many of us have ever felt the hot, bitter tears of fear and failure and the anxiety of insecurity rising in our throats and then finally decided it’s time to ask for help? How many of us have ever known we were in over our heads and looked at a loved one and said, “Aren’t you going to help me?”

On the other hand, how many times have we had moments of transcendent beauty where we know, “This is what I was made for,” or moments in which we know we are exactly where we are meant to be?

Mary and Martha have much to teach us, but they teach us far more as mirrors than they do as windows. We can look at Mary and Martha through a window, as though they are ours to judge, or we can see these women as reflections of who we are, of our tendencies to fail to achieve balance.

Our failure to achieve balance is evident – of all places – in our children. We wake them up at 6:30 for the bus, they go to school, an after school program, scarf down some dinner, go to soccer to prepare for the game coming Saturday, and, oh yeah, there’s church and lunch at grandma’s on Sunday and then homework for Monday, not to mention music lessons, swimming lessons, chores, and that pesky thing called homework in the meantime, and then we take them to the doctor because they can’t seem to focus on one thing. How can one thing be necessary, Jesus, when there is this huge list that seems to keep growing? If I stop the anxiety catches up with me and makes it even worse. If I stop, there will only be the echo of the things that I have done and the things I have failed to do.  

I cannot help but wonder if this tells us less about who we are and more about how we live. From an early age, we begin comparing ourselves to others, measuring ourselves up, going up a notch when we do better than another person, and feeling humiliated each time we fail. For all the times we succeed, the shallow wounds of failure never seem to leave us. Somehow, what manages to stick with us most vividly are the times we have felt unlovable or unloved and the times we made the wrong choice or somehow felt like we were doing life wrong. So we try harder. We work harder. Each time I feel like I’m starting to get closer to getting it “right,” something happens and I slide down to the pit of despair. Seriously, Jesus, more work? If you just tell me what the one thing is, I will do it… just tell me what it is!

Somehow, we want Jesus play the game and to treat these women the way we would treat these women. We might want Jesus to ask Mary to help Martha. We might want Jesus to tell Martha to just. Stop. Breathe. Relax. Jesus does not tell Martha to stop doing what she is doing. He also does not tell Mary to get up and help. Jesus, in seeming to point out the comparison game between these sisters, exposes our tendency to divide ourselves from our brothers and sisters with our measuring sticks.

What of the “better part”? Does that not imply a value judgment by Jesus between these two sisters? Perhaps. But perhaps Jesus is taking all of the things that Martha is using to define herself, all the things that give her a sense of value and worth, all the things that she uses to tell herself that she is doing better in the comparison game and is saying, “You don’t need those anymore.” Bear in mind also that Mary has her version of the comparison game too, in which the one who can sit and relax has more value than the one who can’t – for one reason or another – do so. Both have the capability of valuing their work over another, both have the capacity to draw lines in the sand of right and wrong, in and out, loved and forsaken. The problem with the comparison game is its premise is based on the lie that love can be earned. All of the comparisons by which we determine to what extent we are worthy of love and thereby to what extent we are loved fall short because of the immeasurable love we have received. We want love to be earnable, we want it to be understandable, and we want it to work the same way we work. We want God to play our value game and make love and grace just cheap enough that we can earn it but still expensive enough that not just anybody receives it.

Perhaps this is why we find it so hard to convince ourselves that we can stop running. The things we have done and the things we have failed to do and the things that we would use to measure God’s love for us, have so little to do with God’s offensive paradoxical love. It opens its arms wide to sinners, embracing Mary and Martha alike. What is more, it draws the sisters into relationship, naming the value game between them and discarding it, taking away its power of distinction and definition.

The comparison game only ever tells a half-truth. You are not loved to the extent you have earned it to the extent to which you are worthy of it. You are loved… by an unfathomable and scandalous love. The better part comes to the one who works and the one who rests alike, shattering distinctions and divisions and drawing you into one in Christ’s embrace. This, dear friends, is the good thing that will never be taken away.