Martha got annoyed and complained to Jesus. My Grandmother and my mother both loved this story, and taught it to me a long time ago - so I know the verses by heart from the old "King James" bible
But Martha was cumbered about with much serving, and came to
him, and said, “Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve
alone? bid her therefore that she help me.” And Jesus answered and said unto
her, “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one
thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken
away from her.”
This story has kept coming back to me this week. Bob and I felt called, over 40 years ago, to serve God together, in the Church. We do not regret that for one instant. Admittedly, just occasionally, I have felt 'cumbered about' - when chairs need to be set out, or stacked up, when it takes all day to prepare craft materials for a 15 minute children's slot, when I am struggling to find a parking space at the Hospital, when the church photocopier jams halfway through a task. But 99.9% of the time I'm OK with my tasks, I love being a Pastor's wife.
During this pandemic, so many of the patterns of "service" we are used to have become impossible. We cannot meet in our church building to worship, we cannot call on members in their homes, and sit,talk, and pray with them, we cannot visit sick friends in the hospital, or see elderly friends in Care Homes, we cannot run children's activities, we cannot sit together in someone's lounge for a Bible study...
What I have realised afresh this week is that the "good part" - the listening to Jesus speaking, worshipping him, just being in his presence - that can never be taken away. Through the wonder of technology, we can still worship 'together', and share communion, we can still find other ways to show love and concern both for our church family and for our community. When this time is all over, I don't think 'church life' is going to be the same as it was before. And if it does result in us letting go of the non-essential 'encumbrances', and cause us to focus more on Jesus, and how he would have us love and serve one another, that is a 'good part' which I want to hang on to.
I hope I can go and see that painting when the gallery re-opens. I'm going to totally disagree with Jesus here and say that Mary could have shared her sister's workload then the two of them would have benefitted from 'the good part'!
ReplyDeleteAn interesting point. I suspect Martha was trying to do too much, and making extra work for herself. But it is good to share the load
DeleteVermeer - what a great artist. That's a marvellous image of the Mary and Martha message.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what will happen, too, after the end of restrictions. In our small Suffolk parish we average about 140 for Sunday Mass for two services. The online streamed service averages about 70 live 'views' although many of the views are likely to represent more than one individual. Some might be from outside of the parish. What will attendance be like when normal services resume? In the light of your last sentence, today's Gospel (John 14:15-21) seems most apt.
Even when "normal service" resumes, it's going to be different. "attendance" at online services is interesting. We too have nonlocals tuning in. Also longterm housebound folk who had not been at church for a long time, even before covid19. So maybe we an continue to provide for them. I'm glad you like the Vermeer. I'm growing increasingly fond of the Flemish/Dutch artists
DeleteIt has been an interesting time as I work in my church office. We average around 200 attendees each week but our YouTube views have been around 400 each week ad our Zoom Bible Study classes have brought in people from all around the world! We have now started a Zoom Coffee hour at our normal 11:30am Sunday morning time so it will be interesting to see how people respond to that.
ReplyDeleteWe know we are still many weeks away from re-opening (in what we expect will be a restricted format) so we are looking at many different options for moving forward. We expect that live streaming may become an ongoing format.
Zoom completely collapsed in the UK this morning - our service was on YouTube, so we were ok then - but our AfterChurch coffee meeting on Zoom was utterly chaotic!
DeleteYour patterns of service may have changed, but your service is still tenfold, Ang. You and Bob have brought us lovely, calming online services and Communion, you have dressed neighbourhood dolls and wombats? and been your ever-serving self. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that x
DeleteI have always felt a little sympathy for Martha. Visitors come (probably unannounced?) to her home and while she is no doubt pleased to see them, being a good hostess, her first thought is to prepare a meal for them. Then, she gets rebuked for it! There she is, working so hard to prepare a meal, by herself, while her sister, who should have been helping her, is simply sitting and listening to the conversation; of course she feels being taken for granted and perhaps a little resentful and sorry for herself. What would have happened if Martha, too, had simply come and sat in the living room and listened? Wouldn't the visitors be expecting some refreshments to be served at the end of their visit? Wouldn't Martha have been seen as having neglected her duties as a hostess if she didn't provide a meal to her guests? No one actually made any attempt to include her, did they? Did anywone say, "Where is Martha? Why doesn't she join us?". Maybe the guests should have said, "Come and join us, Martha, don't worry about preparing a meal, we have brought something with us/we can all prepare it together, afterwards" or made an attempt to include her. That is my take on that story!
ReplyDeleteI think the problem was that women were not supposed to sit and listen to the rabbi, he would be speaking to the men. Mary's behaviour was all wrong. They would have expected her to go off and work in the kitchen. Jesus, on the other hand, is saying "No. Women have just as much right to listen, to learn, and to be part of God's Kingdom. Why should they be relegated to just providing food?" The other men present would not have dreamed of inviting a woman to join the conversation. But Jesus ignores the convention, and treats Mary as an equal. That's my take on it...
ReplyDeleteThat makes a lot of sense! Thank you! :)
DeleteI like your take on this! I always felt a bit sorry for Martha but then it made me think of people who busy themselves too much with things at church and then resent it... I think we all need a lot of Mary in our life as well as some Martha. I like to think that Mary would have helped at another time but this time, she knew WHEN it was important to stop and listen.
ReplyDeletePrecisely. We all need to learn to stop and listen sometimes
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