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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.
Martha’s hair up in a bun, beads of sweat are forming on her forehead, her waist is wrapped in an apron, her joints are inflamed from standing too long, and flour is covering her hands and the floor.
Meanwhile, water is boiling – and so is she.
Storming into the living room, she accuses Jesus of not caring about her burdens while she blames Mary for being the cause of her anxiety.
But 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 seized her work by the throat and squeezed any 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 love; even Mary’s heart being filled with wisdom as she learned from Jesus.
The entire scene is sacred. Her work is sacred. Her home is sacred. Most importantly, their guest is sacred.
But Martha is too focused on “what” she was doing, as opposed to “why” she was doing it, ruining a beautiful liturgy, as it were, in the process.
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How often are we like Martha? We get so stressed by what we are doing that we forget why we ever started? By the end of the day, we might say, in the words of TS Eliot, “We had the experience, but missed the meaning.”
May we relax our hands and hearts, allowing grace to flow freely throughout our day, and so encounter Christ along the way.
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Image credits: (1) iStock (2) Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Vermeer (3) Etsy