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Gospel: Luke 10: 38-42
Jesus entered a village
where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary
who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said,
“Lord, do you not care
that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me.”
The Lord said to her in reply,
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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Imagine the scene in today’s Gospel. Perhaps we’ve experienced something similar before.
I imagine Martha’s hair up in a bun, beads of sweat forming on her forehead, her waist wrapped in an apron, her joints inflamed from standing too long, and flour covering her hands and the floor. Meanwhile, water is boiling – and so is she.
Storming into the living room, Martha accuses Jesus of not caring about her burdens while she blames her sister for being the cause of her anxiety. Have we ever done that, blamed God for our suffering?
Jesus, the divine physician, diagnoses the root cause of Martha’s stress. “You are worried and anxious about many things,” he says. The root of the verb, “worry,” means, “to strangle; to seize by the throat; to tear.”
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At least that day, Martha took her work and seized it by the throat, squeezing all of the grace out of it.
In her kitchen, all she saw a giant mess. Water boiling over; vegetables half cut; flour everywhere; and a whole lot of “stuff” to get done with a lazy, absentee sister.
Instead, she could’ve imagined:
The Lord’s voice humming beneath that boiling water; his empty stomach soon to be filled; his gratitude for a hot meal, a labor of Martha’s love; even Mary’s heart being filled with wisdom as she learned from Jesus.
The entire scene was sacred.
Her work was sacred. Their home was sacred. Most importantly, their guest was sacred. But Martha was too focused on “what” she was doing, as opposed to “why” she was doing it, ruining a beautiful meal in the process.
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How often are we like Martha? We forget to see the deeper dimensions of reality, the God within our homes and our selves, to the point that – in the words of TS Eliot – “We had the experience, but missed the meaning.”
May everything we do today be a labor of love, making our yoke easy and our burdens light.
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Image credits: (1) Eater (2) Christ Inside the House of Martha and Mary, Velazquez (3) A Heart for God, WordPress