Jesus' take on Mary and Martha: What gives? I feel like I'm a Mary but God's given me a Martha role.

Question:

How do I reconcile Jesus take on Mary and Martha when I feel like I'm a Mary but God's given me (sometimes I feel like I've been trapped in) the job description of Martha?

Response:

“Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.  And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word.  But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.”

And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things.  But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”

It’s important to understand what Jesus meant when He addressed Martha.  We may take this passage to mean that the mundane work of serving is less than the “spiritual” work of listening to Jesus.  I can imagine that busy mothers roll their eyes at this passage – “well, if I just sat and read my Bible all day, this house would fall apart.”  Or perhaps, “I would like to study the word and worship and have deep spiritual conversations but someone has to do the laundry.”  We may be left with a resentful thought toward Jesus for His naivete about what it takes to run a household or toward our role as mother and homemaker for taking us from what we’d rather be doing.

But take heart!  Jesus meant no such things by this encounter.  Mary did not spend all her time listening to Jesus – her job description would have been to cook and clean and care for the home and those in it just like any other woman in those days.  We must not take the incident of Jesus’ visit to their home as what was normal.  It was a one-time situation that Jesus used to illustrate an important principle.

We each have spheres in which we find ourselves, having certain tasks and responsibilities and we are called to fulfil them “as to the Lord.”  We were created to work as per God’s mandate to mankind in Genesis: “fill the earth and subdue it” and though many tasks are tedious and thankless they nevertheless have the dignity of playing a role in fulfilling our mandate from God and we bring Him pleasure when we do them.

Jesus was on earth for a short time and fulfilled His ministry in a time even shorter which required certain responsibilities to be temporarily altered.  For example, Jesus was questioned by the disciples of John the Baptist who wondered why they fasted while Jesus’ disciples did not.  Jesus responded that His disciples’ behaviour was appropriate because He, the bridegroom, was only with them for a short time and so it was right for them to rejoice while He was still there.  The time was coming when He would be taken away – that was the time for mourning and fasting, not before.

Likewise, with Mary and Martha.  Both fulfilled their household duties in Jesus’ absence.  But when He came, for short while to teach, Mary correctly understood the tremendous opportunity that had presented itself and acted accordingly by suspending her work in order to listen.  Doing otherwise would have been akin to saying “Thank-you Mr. Mandela, for your kind invitation to dinner but you see, Saturday is laundry night and therefore I must decline.”

Martha failed to recognize the opportunity of learning directly from Jesus, instead being “worried and troubled about many things” to the point of wishing Mary to lose out on her limited time opportunity as well, for which Jesus gently rebuked her.  I daresay that if Martha had also stopped serving in order to listen and the disciples complained to Jesus about it, he would have said that same thing to them.  He was not bothered by Martha's serving per se, just with her inappropriate devotion to it.

I believe this passage is about priorities.  Fulfilling the responsibilities of our sphere is right and good and a part of our mandate from God.  But if a limited time opportunity of great importance presents itself shall we become “distracted with much serving”?  Will the house fall down if dinner is late?