Hot and Bothered

Luke’s story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42) is a little bit of a mine field, especially for nay male trying to preach on it. Maybe I should stick to the prophet Amos who has some straightforward things to say about the priorities of the wealthy and powerful and the not good consequences of those priorities.

Too often this story of Mary and Martha is used to again devalue the hidden work of women around the world keeping families, households, and communities going by providing food and hospitality and doing most of the cleaning, resulting in women remaining invisible and their contribution unacknowledged. Yet none of that fits with how Jesus treats women just about anywhere else in Luke’s gospel. So how might we read this.

Luke is writing for small house churches struggling to life the way of Jesus. In this part of the Gospel, we are travelling with Jesus to Jerusalem, and a constant question is what pulls us away from this journey. And maybe one of things is being so preoccupied with getting it right we forget the point.

Offering hospitality was and is at the core of life in Jesus’s time and in the Middle East today.  Martha is preoccupied by making sure everything is done well. She is worried and distracted by many things, and so has no time to offer all that hospitality might entail. She misses Jesus’ invitation to accept his hospitality and to sit and listen. Jesus does not devalue Martha’s offering of hospitality. But he does hold up her preoccupations that get in the way of her both fully offering and receiving hospitality. He invites her to be less distracted and to see the world a little differently.

I wonder what this might have offered those first house churches, listening to the stories of Jesus and offering and receiving hospitality? I wonder where our preoccupations distract us from the real purpose of what we are about leaving us bothered like Martha.