Can Two People Be Right? A Look at Mary and Martha

One of the biggest problem in the religious world today is "black and white" thinking.

We seem to think that things can only be one way or the other.  If someone is right, then anyone who disagrees with him in any way must be wrong.  It seems like that should be true, doesn't it?  Right and wrong should be a zero sum game, shouldn't it?  If what I have is the truth, then it stands to reason that your contradiction of my truth should be falsehood.  Perhaps not only falsehood, but maybe even blatant dishonesty and lies.

And then, of course, I get to jump up and down on your falsehood, condemn you as an apostate false teacher, and gleefully watch as the earth opens up and swallows you immediately down into the pits of Hell.

HA!  SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CLAP YOUR HANDS DURING VBS??!!!

But is it always true that two people, who do two different things, can't be right at the same time?  

Consider this passage of scripture:

"As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, 'Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!'

'Martha, Martha,' the Lord answered, 'you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.'" Luke 10:38-42

Here we have two women.  They are sisters, and they are receiving Jesus into their home.  One is slaving away in the kitchen, trying to keep the kishke and schnitzel from burning, and flitting around the house trying to clean up.  Nobody wants the house to be a mess when the Messiah comes by, right?  Both Mary and Martha are excited that he's coming, and they both anticipate having a good time and enjoying his company and learning from him.

But then that blasted Mary goes completely ADHD and totally up and takes off, leaving all the work to her already-burdened sister Martha.  No doubt, Martha had already made an intricate plan in her mind and was counting on Mary to pull her part of the load.  But no!  Mary had completely flaked off in the middle of all their work because Jesus had already shown up.  So there Martha was:  so many things to do, and now she had no help.  It was going to be a total raving disaster of Biblical proportions, just a complete and total mess.  How embarrassing that Martha's home, meal and facilities weren't going to be ready for God's Son!

"Ugh, thanks for nothing, Mary, you didn't even hide the alcohol!"

And then there's Mary.  She's young and excitable.  And hey, it's not every day that the Savior of all mankind stops by, so she's bursting with energy and peeking out the window every couple of seconds to see if Jesus and crew are walking up the driveway.  She does her best to help her sister, who frankly is kind of being a drill sergeant about everything and more than a little of a pain in the neck.  Still, she does everything she can, and she doesn't say much about Martha barking out orders like Gordon Ramsey on meth, but before too long she hears laughter and footsteps outside.  She runs to the window and peeks through the curtains to see Jesus and his disciples walking up.  She promptly drops the broom and runs out the door to greet him.  Once she's welcomed him in, she's forgotten all about polishing the silverware and watching the kreplach boil.  She sits down as close to him as she can, forgetting even her own culture and its taboos, because she is hanging on every word he's saying.

Meanwhile, Martha is about to have a fit because everything isn't done, the Lord's already there, and where in the heck is that no-good layabout Mary anyway??  Things will never get done!  It's over.  The party is ruined!  What will the neighbors say?  What will the disciples think??  What a fine mess!

"Get back in this kitchen right now, or I will knock you into the next dispensation!"

So she storms out and finds Mary sitting on her stupid, lazy butt right in front of Jesus.  Perfect!  And now she's even more of an embarrassment, because women were not to sit in that position in their culture.  Women should not be sitting at the feet of the master.  That is the right of the men.  She can't believe her idiot sister!  Sure, Jesus is being nice enough and not saying anything about it, but UGGGGHHHH, stupid Mary!!

"Jesus, I'm really struggling to get things done in the back," she says.  "Don't you think my sister ought to be back there giving me a hand?  This is women's work, right?"

And then Jesus got up in Martha's face and shouted her down!  "You're wrong!" he said.  "You don't need to do all this fixing up.  You ought to be out here with me learning some stuff!  Mary's a better Christian than you!  Get your priorities in line!  You need to be more spiritual!"

And then Martha slinked away, totally p'wned by the only begotten Son.

"And I cleaned the toilets and made the special Nazareth-style latkes for him!  I work and I slave..."

Except that's not what really happened.

For most of my life, I have read that verse and come away with the lesson that Mary was right and Martha was wrong.  No, not just wrong, but dead wrong.  Martha was a jerk!  She was sinning!  It seems right, doesn't it?  Mary was doing the right thing, and Martha wasn't.  Mary = good, Martha = bad.  Right?

Not really, though.

In fact, Martha was very much right in her desire to be hospitable to Jesus.  There are tons of scriptures in the Bible that command us to be hospitable.  Hebrews 13:2 tells us to show hospitality to strangers.  1 Peter 4:9 says that Christians should show hospitality to each other.  Mark 9 talks about giving a cup of water to the thirsty person.  There are many other places where the Bible talks about hospitality, and Martha showed a great desire to make things comfortable for her special guest and his people.  In fact, we can reasonably assume that she had been busting her butt to get things in order, so much so that she ultimately ended up frazzled and somewhat defeated.

It's very important to notice that Jesus did not scold her for what she was trying to do.  She was absolutely right to be hospitable.  Her only fault was that she got too caught up in preparing for the moment that she had not left herself enough time to enjoy that moment.  

Aren't we guilty of that all too often?  I know I am.  I remember preparing a Chinese food dinner for visiting family, and I was so set on doing it right and making it authentic.  But then the tomatoes and eggs--a cornerstone dish of this meal--absolutely did not work out right.  They were awful.  And I got so angry and irritated that I just couldn't enjoy the meal.  I literally did not want to eat.  I'd have rather thrown it all in the trash and gone out to McDonald's.  I was like Martha in this situation.  I let the stress of providing hospitality actually turn me into someone who was inhospitable.

"All eggs and all tomatoes CAN BURN IN HELL!!!"

So Martha was probably right to be working hard, and let's face it, she was probably justified in being put out that she suddenly found herself without a partner, someone who had no doubt promised to pitch in and help with everything.  Let's be honest:  shouldn't Mary have done just a little bit more?  Wasn't it really kind of rude for her to run out when she'd promised her sister to do her part?  Martha's heart was 100% in the right place.  She knew the Lord was coming, and she wanted to make things nice for him.  What could be wrong with that?  And she was trying really hard, too!  And if I think about it, Jesus' words sound less like the condemnation that I imagined they were for so long, and more like "Hey, Martha, it's cool.  Your house looks great, the food is delicious, and I'm having a really great time.  You don't have to work so hard.  Come on in here and sit next to Mary and let's visit!"

There are some things that Jesus did not do.  He did not get up in her face and chew Martha out.  He did not say that her preparations were worthless.  He did not get up and storm out of her house.  He did not "disfellowship" her for following a different path than Mary.  He did not disown her.  He did not condemn.

Let's think about Mary for a second.  The passage in Luke indicates that Mary was sitting at his feet, and while that may sound like absolutely nothing now, back in those days that was a big no-no for a woman.  She was sitting where the men should be seated, and if anything, the women should be sitting at the back.  One might accuse Mary of forgetting herself, at best, if not completely thumbing her nose at tradition and culture.  She was being at least somewhat presumptuous, if not outright defiant.  

And again, it is extremely important to note that Jesus did not correct her for this.  This is yet another of several passages that show us that the roles of women were changing, and that Jesus was breaking with the patriarchal system and moving toward egalitarian treatment of both genders.  But still, given the culture of the time, Mary might have been faulted for such a thing.  Certainly she did forget her commitments to her sister. She was just so gung-ho to hear Jesus talk that she threw caution and decorum to the wind.

So who was right?  The hospitable one who got a little overworked and stressed out?  Or the over-eager, naive one who abandoned her responsibilities and usurped the position of the men in order to be near to Jesus?

Perhaps they were both right.

I know, right?

Mary was right to listen to Jesus.  And Martha was right to be hospitable to Jesus.  Both were doing the things that they thought would serve him best.  Jesus did not condemn Martha.  He just told her to chill out for a moment.  When she came out there to chew Mary out in front of Jesus, because she didn't react to Jesus in the same way, he said "hey, it's cool!  Don't worry yourselves!"  

Wouldn't that be amazing if it could be applied across the board in our world today?  If we could disagree without one of us having to be wrong?  If we could just stop and think "hey, maybe that other person has a perspective that I haven't thought about just yet?"

Imagine whole churches that said "hey, you like to pass the Lord's Supper with only one cup, but I prefer to do it with multiple small ones.  No big deal!  You do it how you feel you ought to, and I'll do it my way!"  What if congregations said "well, we see that this group across town uses instruments in their singing.  We prefer not to, because we see it a different way, but we're not going to condemn them to Hell for using a piano in their service.  Maybe we just haven't looked at scripture the same way.  No point in being a jerk about it, right?"

NO, WE CANNOT AGREE TO DISAGREE ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT TO USE THE KING JAMES VERSION!  IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR JESUS, AND IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME!!

Think about it, believers.  How many times has it happened that you have read a certain passage of scripture over and over for years, believing one way about it, and then suddenly you hear it again, as if for the first time, and you have realized that it meant the complete opposite of what you thought it meant before?  How many times have you had epiphanies about things that have caused you to change your whole mindset?

Imagine for a moment that we're all seeking to do what's right, but there are just some things that some of us just haven't understood yet?  And what of those all around us who may be in different stages of understanding?  And why assume that any of us will completely understand everything perfectly?

Wouldn't Jesus' prayer for unity be answered if we could get over this black and white thinking and understand that, like Mary and Martha, sometimes two people can be right, but in different ways?  

Am I right??

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NOTE:  These thoughts were inspired (and in some cases directly lifted) from Rev. Andrew Taylor Peck's sermon at Lindenwood Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) this morning.  He gave me so much to think about, and I thank him for challenging me.