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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I’m glad Martha loses her cool, because her frustration teaches us a lesson in discipleship which we can apply to our daily lives.
Imagine the scene: Martha is moving around the kitchen for an hour or two, banging pots and pans, cutting vegetables while mumbling beneath her breath. Finally, she storms into the dining room confronting her sister, Mary, who’s listening attentively to Jesus.
Interrupting their conversation, Martha snarls, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?”
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Martha just made several mistakes. First, she accuses Jesus of not caring about her burdens. “Lord, do you not care?”
How often is that also us, accusing God of being aloof from our burdens?
Then Martha blames someone else for her own anxiety. “My sister has left me to do all the serving.” Somehow, it’s Mary’s fault that Martha is so anxious.
Finally, Martha polishes off her cocktail of complaints by telling the Lord how to solve her problem. “Tell her to help me!” Can’t we do the same, telling God how to help us?
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Jesus rebukes Martha gently, knowing that she is not anxious about making a perfect sauce or maintaining a clean kitchen.
Deep down, Martha is anxious because she lost her focus; that day, she’s motivated more by duty than by love, effectively choking the meaning out of her work.
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Think about the ordinary tasks we do throughout the day – going to work, toting the kids across town, doing household chores. Do these activities bring us more anxiety than peace?
The answer really depends upon what our motivation is: either duty or love. If it’s the latter, then we should be at peace.
As Saint Paul says, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
It brings joy to any situation, even hosting a meal.
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Image credits: (1) Neuroscience News (2) Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Jan Bruegel the Younger and Peter Paul Rubens (3) self.com
There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” He replied to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”
But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn, and cared for him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, ‘Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.’ Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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Mother Teresa was once walking along the streets of Calcutta, when suddenly she passed by a homeless man dying on the street.
He smelled sour. Maggots were nibbling at his flesh.
Naturally, she was repulsed by the sight and smell, so she moved to the other side of the street in order to avoid him and to continue going about her day.
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Within a matter of seconds, she regretted her instincts as she remembered Christ’s words, “Whatever you do unto the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me.”
This man was Jesus in a sour, disfigured disguise.
So, she turned around and knelt next to him. He was so starved that Mother Teresa – a woman barely five feet tall – was able to pick him up and carry him to her home for the dying.
Upon arriving, that man looked up into her eyes and breathed his last.
Although he was previously unwanted and left abandoned, this man died in the arms of love.
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Mother Teresa used this story to remind her sisters – and each of us today – that, at times, Jesus comes to us in “distressing disguise,” much like the man robbed, beaten, and left for dead in today’s Gospel.
Perhaps we won’t encounter the Lord in such a radical way today – or ever.
But we will encounter him in a distressed colleague; an elderly neighbor; a person who randomly comes to mind as we go about our day.
Find a way to pick them up, to love and serve them in some way. This is much of our faith in its simplicity: Whatever we do to them, mysteriously, we do to Christ.
The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” They were testing him. He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?” They replied, “Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.” But Jesus told them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” In the house the disciples again questioned Jesus about this. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.
The Gospel of the Lord.
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When I first read this Gospel passage, my mind drifted to an old Rodney Dangerfield comedy skit, when he turned to the audience and said:
“My wife tells me she’s leaving me.”
To which I asked her, “What, is there somebody else?”
She said, “There’s gotta be!”
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When confronted with hard teachings from Jesus, it’s always helpful to start with a little humor.
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The Pharisees had a real knack for asking Jesus difficult questions, which were always lodged in the controversial topics of their day.
For example, “If a woman marries seven different brothers, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?”
“Is it lawful to pay our taxes to Caesar?”
“Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
Or today, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
This is a loaded question, not only because it deals with marriage and divorce, but also because it does notaddress women’s rights; the Pharisees did not regard men and women as equals.
Ultimately, the Pharisees are pitting Jesus against two different sides: God’s perfect dream for humanity versus the reality we all live in: a fallen, post-Garden of Eden world. Aside from the Virgin Mary, born without sin, no one is perfect.
Some may fall short on the ideal of marriage, while others may lie, steal, cheat, judge, harbor anger, jealousy, lust, or fail to put God first in their lives.
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I remember being ten years old, sitting on my living room couch after school, trying to process the surprising, heartbreaking reality that my own parents were getting divorced.
Suddenly, everything was split: homes, weekends, even sides to a story.
Although there were reasons I did not yet understand, I learned two hard lessons: there’s always more to a story than what meets the eye, and nobody’s perfect. Not even the people I once idealized most – my parents.
As Saint Paul says, “All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.”
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So, instead of allowing himself to slip deeper into the rabbit hole dug by the Pharisees, Jesus shuts the conversation down by pointing out the Pharisees’ hardness of heart, reminding them of the beauty that once was before the fall of Adam and Eve.
In the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, God creates the sun, the moon, the stars, and every creature of the land, sea, and sky. He looks upon his creation and sees that it is “good.”
However, after God gives all of it to Adam, God seems to change his mind, seeing that it is, “not good.” Something is missing.
“It is not good for man to be alone,” God says in our first reading. Although Adam enjoyed friendship with God and was given dominion over all of creation, Adam lacked an equal. So, God put him to sleep, and from Adam’s rib, created Eve.
The Hebrew verb used to describe Eve’s creation is banah, which literally means to, “build.” The same verb is later used to describe the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem, which becomes God’s dwelling place in the Old Testament.
But God’s first dwelling place here on earth – his first temples – were the hearts of Adam and Eve.
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We know Adam’s joy over Eve’s creation is short lived. After they both disobey God’s commandment by eating from the tree of knowledge, they are cast out of Eden, which not only separated them from each other, but also from God.
I’d imagine as they were making their exit, both of them were wondering, “Sheesh, is there somebody else? … There’s gotta be!”
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This is why sin is so serious; by its very nature, it seeks to separate – man from woman, brother from brother, nation from nation, humanity from our Creator.
Thus, today’s Gospel passage is about much more than marriage; it’s about our universal divorce from our Creator – and our need to mend that rupture.
Where is there sin – separation – in my own life? What prevents me from enjoying a deeper relationship with my neighbor and, ultimately, with God?
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“From the beginning,” Jesus says, “it was not so.”
Our first parents once lived in harmony.
May we strive for that peace and purity, allowing our hearts – and indeed our world – to become what it was intended to be – a welcome dwelling place for God.
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Image credits: (1) Centhq.com (2) Creation of Adam, Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo (3) A Table Prepared
