“Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41).
We might explore this enlightening anecdote for lessons we can apply to ourselves. First comes family values from a model family, albeit one without children or parents. Three siblings who live together are bonded in a love relationship that has no sexual expression. Here we find a monastic community in the midst of society.
Where is Lazarus, the friend of Jesus? Notice that he never speaks. His sisters are our spiritual teachers. We learn from Martha how approachable is the Lord Jesus. She does not know her place even in such a patriarchal society, because Jesus is her friend as well, and friends never put their friends down. Martha does not ask her brother Lazarus, head of the household, to reprimand Mary. She asks Jesus. This guest is the actual host and master of their home.
Christ puts the problem in perspective, and indeed a problem exists. Company has arrived, yet the meal is nowhere near ready to be served. It is a dilemma. Still, as Jesus told the man who wanted to follow Him if only He could wait until the father’s funeral would be over, He was only passing through. His time on earth was limited. He had no spare time for conventional affairs.
Two tiers of concern vie for attention within us. On the lower level are the immediate problems that fill our lives, such as the weather, our health, the state of politics, and social interests that fill our daily lives to an obsession. An upper room exists in our souls, but too often it remains empty. We treat it like an attic that we rarely visit. In it is the mirror that reveals to us who we truly are when we divest ourselves of mundane concerns.
Mary was beginning to comprehend the difference. Somehow she realized that contemplation was not only for men. She too had a soul that needed tending. Even then, in the patriarchal Middle East two millennia past, Christ had spoken to her inner being. He taught her that she was much more than merely a functionary. As He did with the woman at Jacob’s well, so here He found a way to Mary’s soul. She was beginning to explore the depths of her true inner self. The guests are hungry, Martha insists. Let them wait, says Mary. She was nourishing herself on spiritual food, devouring each syllable from the Lord’s blessed lips. He was speaking to her heart, and she opened up her soul to Him. He filled it with the divine revelation of the Kingdom of His Father, where the saints and angels dwelled. She would be living there among them long after her time in this temporal stage of life was no more.
Like many of us, she would forget all about that when a crisis broke into her life. She was the only person in the gospels who had made Jesus weep. It happened later, when her beloved Lazarus had died. The sisters had appealed to the Master to come and heal him while he lay ill, before he passed away. When He finally did arrive, it was too late. Or so they thought. Like her sister Martha, she was unable to comprehend the vast dimensions of His authority. She repeated word for word the admonition of her big sister: “If only You had been here!” The world’s logic overwhelmed her, and she lost spiritual perspective.
The memory of that incident would remain with her long after the Master Himself would be taken up into heaven. She would remember the time He brought her beloved brother back into this life. After the horror of Jesus’ agonizing crucifixion and the glorious resurrection, He left His disciples with the words: “Lo, I am with you always.” How could she ever forget the day when He visited their home? How would it be possible not to cherish the insights He had been trying to ingrain in her soul? He told her how it would be possible to be with her beyond the limits of time and space, and even beyond death.