"But One Thing is Necessary"
A few thoughts on Martha, Mary, hospitality, and discipleship in preparation for Sunday's Gospel reading.
This coming Sunday’s Gospel reading in the lectionary is Luke 10:38–42, the story of Jesus visiting Martha and Mary. As I study and read this text, I am struck by its placement immediately following the parable of the Good Samaritan.
In the Good Samaritan, Jesus turns the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbour?” around, asking the lawyer which of these three men who encountered the injured man on the road to Jericho proved to be the man’s neighbour and then commanding the lawyer to go and do likewise. This is followed by the story of Jesus entering Martha’s home.
What if this scene further extends Jesus and the lawyer’s conversation about what it looks like to inherit eternal life? The lawyer answers correctly, Jesus says, that the way of eternal life is to love God and neighbour. The parable Jesus then tells the lawyer shows him what it looks like to be a neighbour. But, too often, if we end our reading there, we can end up with a lopsided view, one that carves out the command to love one’s neighbour from the first commandment to love God. We can see this most clearly in how the phrase “Good Samaritan” has come to mean “stranger who does something unexpected for me.” I wonder if the story of Martha and Mary helps balance it, by redirecting us to the necessity of loving God.
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Much of the figural interpretation of this passage has suggested that Martha represents the active life and Mary the contemplative life. But I wonder if the point here is not an either-or, a ‘doing’ vs. ‘being.,’ so much as it is about reorienting the practice and posture of hospitality in light of the proclamation that the kingdom of God has come near (Luke 10:9). Martha, fulfilling all the tasks of hospitality expected of a host, has forgotten that the purpose of hospitality is to attend to the guest. Instead, she has made the act of hospitality all about herself. Mary, though, is completely attending to Jesus who is their guest. And he is no ordinary guest, he is the Guest: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).
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Besides the usual commentaries, I’m also reading Matthew Croasmun and Miroslav Volf’s book, The Hunger for Home: Food and Meals in the Gospel of Luke. I am struck by this framing of the “one thing”:
“Only one thing is necessary. It is true. But this one thing is not God as opposed to the worldly home. The one thing is the word of Jesus through which the world came to be and through which the world comes to be more than mere world. The presence of God in Jesus Christ is therefore precisely the ‘better part,’ but not as victor over the worldly home as if it were God’s competition—rather, as the one with whom we find ourselves truly at home, in whose presence the world truly becomes home by being more than merely the world…
“All created goods are most fully themselves as created goods in relationship to God and to the world whose consummation as the home of God Jesus inaugurates. This is what Mary most gets right. She recognizes in the material realities of meal preparation and hospitality sacraments of the kingdom— but only if they find they are oriented around One who has come proclaiming and demonstrating the kingdom is coming.” (pgs. 100–101).