Episode 20 – Mary & Martha
Welcome to the Proverbs 910 Podcast, No Trash, Just Truth. We are your hosts and co-founders of Proverbs910 Ministries, Rose Spiller & Chris Paxson.
We are in the middle of a series entitled, Women in Scripture. We are delving into some of the well-known, and not so well-known women of the Bible.
Chris, I think it’s important to note that we are not doing this series as some sort of feminist movement to show that women were crucial to the history of the world. God has used both men and women since the creation of the earth to further His plan.
I’m glad you said that. There’s no agenda here. We’re doing Women in Scripture just because that’s what we decided to do right now. We could have just as likely looked at some of the men of the Bible. And the key words you used, Rose, are “God used” and “God’s plan.” The Bible is the story of how God redeemed His people through Jesus Christ. He is the important one. All of the Bible characters, even though they may have heroic attributes, are just the means God used to further His plan. God is the One who is crucial to the history of the world, and any heroic thing anyone in the Bible did, was only because God ordained it.
All of God’s people, whether male or female, are equally loved and equally valued in God’s eyes. So we aren’t in any way trying to emasculate men or empower women in this study. We just thought it would be fun to look at some of the women God has used in Biblical history, and maybe offer some insight into them you hadn’t thought about before.
Up until now, we have looked at some OT women, Esther, Ruth, and Hannah. In this episode, we are going to jump to the NT and look at 2 women, Mary and Martha, who also happen to be sisters.
That’s one aspect you’re a lightweight on, since you’re an only child.
But my mom would say I’m not a brat.
Oh really??? Well, getting back to Mary and Martha, we don’t know a whole lot about these ladies. We know that they have a brother named Lazarus. We can surmise that they don’t appear to be married since they live with their brother, and that they are personal friends of Jesus.
There are only 3 passages in Scripture where they both appear, Luke chapter 10 and John chapters 11 & 12. Yet even with so little press, a lot has been written about these women.
There has been! Why don’t we take a look at each passage separately, put them into historical and textual context, maybe debunk some incorrect interpretations, and see if we can’t figure these women out.
Good idea. Let’s start with Luke, chapter 10. Luke 10:38 – 42 says, “38 Now as they went on their way, Jesus[d] entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, 42 but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
Right before this passage in Luke 10, a lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him he needs to follow the 2 great commandments, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind,” and, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” When the lawyer asks who his neighbor is, Jesus answers by telling him the parable of the Good Samaritan.
If you aren’t familiar with that parable, it is basically about a Jewish man who was beaten and robbed, and how the people who should have shown him compassion and hospitality, a priest and a Levite, chose to ignore him, and a man who was his enemy, a Samaritan, showed true compassion and hospitality by caring for him. Jesus was telling the lawyer, and everyone listening, that real hospitality and compassion involves action – doing something for people, even for your enemies.
So it seems strange that right after this, Jesus would tell Martha that her actions are wrong, and Mary’s inaction is right. Back in Biblical times, hospitality was everything. Under normal circumstances, women and men worked from sunup to sundown. When they had guests staying in their home, no extra amount of time needed to make the guest feel welcomed was too much.
And as we see in the book of Genesis and Judges, hospitality of ones’ guests included guarding their well-being no matter the personal costs. In Genesis, Lot was willing to sacrifice his 2 virgin daughters to be abused and raped in place of 2 men who were staying with him. It was the same in the book of Judges when an Ephraimite man was willing to subject his virgin daughter to an angry mob of men just to keep his guest safe.
So with hospitality being so crucial, and Martha trying to show hospitality by preparing a meal for Jesus and the disciples, why did Jesus rebuke her? The first time I read this passage, my thought was I would much rather be invited to Martha’s house for Thanksgiving. I want to walk in and smell turkey and stuffing cooking, not sit there with an empty belly while my hostess just wants to talk.
I picture Martha as one of those church ladies who is involved in everything. Everyone loves her because she is reliable, and she gets the job done. Need to organize coffee hour for Sunday morning? Call Martha. Need to get cards written to congregants who are sick? Call Martha. Need to visit shut-ins, make meals, crochet mittens, or decorate the sanctuary, call Martha!
There’s nothing wrong with serving. Can you imagine what happen in church if nobody served! The problem with Martha is what she most values. If you have a Martha in your church, or if you are a Martha, you need to ask yourself, when are you being fed the Word of God? When are you being discipled? When are you intimate with God? Are you so busy serving God, that you aren’t spending time with Him? Is spending time with God even a priority for you? 1chronicles 16:11 says, Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!.”
We should mention that if Martha was having any other guests over, what she was doing was completely appropriate. As you said, hospitality was very important in the Jewish culture at this time. Even if Jesus was the guest and He and the disciples were sitting around talking about the weather or sports, her actions would have been appropriate. But Jesus, God, was teaching them – probably giving them the Gospel message! The Word of God in the flesh was sitting in her living room giving a life-giving, life-transforming message, and she was worried about peeling the potatoes.
Martha always gets a bad rap for being a doer. As we said, there is nothing wrong with being a doer and having a servant’s heart. Martha’s problem was that her doing was where she got her worth. That was where she found her value, and that was her top priority. She couldn’t stop and sit at the feet of Jesus and receive what He was offering her. How many of us are so caught up in doing our “good things”, we don’t give God the time of day! Doing for God is not the same as being with God.
You said Martha always gets a bad rap, but she is giving her sister, Mary, a bad rap. She’s making it sound like Mary is lazy. But Martha’s slam on Mary is more of a reflection of herself than of Mary. Martha thinks she needs to do to be of worth, and that’s the lens she is seeing Mary through. There is no indication that Mary doesn’t normally knock herself out for guests. So to answer your question, Rose, Mary would probably serve you as good a Thanksgiving dinner as Martha would. It’s just that Mary realizes God is in her midst and has something to tell her. She understands what Martha doesn’t. She wants to be with God rather than do for God. No offense, but she probably wouldn’t drop everything to sit at your feet and listen to you.
And I’m glad for that, because that would be awkward! Chris, the words used in this passage to describe Martha are very telling. It says she is distracted. Jesus tells her she is anxious and troubled. Here is the root of Martha’s problem. Finding your worth in what you do, is a huge distraction. And as soon as things don’t go as you plan, you get anxious and troubled, and often about superficial things. Distraction is one of the biggest causes of backsliding in discipleship. Or maybe it is what keeps you from ever being discipled to begin with!
Matthew 6:24 says, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” When your doing becomes a distraction that keeps you from growing in the Lord, it becomes your master. Martha’s doing budded into distraction, then bloomed into anxiety and trouble. And because of this, Martha was not just doing something good at the expense of missing out on something better, she was flat out sinning. She was allowing distraction and anxiety to be her master instead of God.
Contrast that to Mary, who as you pointed out Chris, we have no reason to believe she was lazy, or never helped her sister when they had guests. The fact that Martha is complaining she’s not helping at this particular time indicates she probably had helped before.
But unlike Martha, Mary isn’t worried about food for the body. She is looking for food for her soul. And she knows she can only get that food from Jesus. Mary is at attentive at Jesus’ feet while Martha is distracted. Mary is at peace while Martha is anxious.
We said we would debunk some incorrect interpretations of this passage, and I want to do that before we move onto the John passage. There’s a book called Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World. In it, the author says that while women are wired like Martha, there is a Mary deep inside of us. She says, “Deep inside you there is a hunger, a calling to know and love God. To truly know Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Spirit. You’re not after head knowledge – it’s heart -to-heart intimacy you long for.” Chris, would you like to explain what is wrong with this statement?
Well to start, Mary was interested in head knowledge. That is why she was sitting at the feet of Jesus attentively listening to Him! And why did she do that? Because she knew that it is impossible to have heart-to-heart intimacy with someone without head knowledge of that person. Think of a marriage or a close friendship. What makes those relationships intimate? It’s having a deep knowledge of each other. What would our friendship be like if we never took the time and energy to really know each other? If all we knew about each other was that we were married, had kids, and loved Jesus, it wouldn’t be much of a relationship. I mean, people we barely know, know that about us!
And we are back to why we need to read our Bible. I agree with that author that the Holy Spirit does give us a hunger to know and love God. That is exactly why God divinely inspired the Biblical authors to write the Bible. It is God’s autobiography! Romans 10: 17 says, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”
Everything you need to know about God on this side of Heaven is in the Bible. The more you read, the more you get to know God, the more intimate a relationship you have with Him. And when we add in prayer, that is exactly how we achieve an authentic heart-to-heart intimacy with the true God, not some made-up god we have concocted in our heads. That only leads to relying on feelings – how close (or far away) we feel to God at any given moment. But when we know about Him because we read and study our Bibles, even if we feel “dry”, we can rely on what we’ve learned from Scripture. It’s how we trust God more and we grow in our faith more.
Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to His teaching can be a picture of us! When we earnestly read and study our Bible with the goal of understanding Who God is, we are sitting the feet of Jesus. And as Jesus said to Martha about Mary, we will have chosen what is right and it will not be taken from us!
Rose, this passage ends pretty abruptly. We don’t get to see Martha’s or Mary’s reaction to Jesus’ words. But we do get to see these ladies again sometime after this.
We do. They both appear again in John chapter 11. Mary and Martha send Jesus word that their brother, His good friend, Lazarus, is very sick. John 11:5 says, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”
We don’t have time to unpack all of this and what it means, but just to give a quick summary of what is going on, the sisters tell Jesus Lazarus is ill hoping He will come and heal Him. Jesus intentionally stays away waiting until after Lazarus has died so God can be glorified in Jesus bringing Him back to life. And just so no one thinks this in any way is selfish of Jesus, He has to go to Judea to bring Lazarus back to life, and by this time the Pharisees had plotted to kill Him. He knew by going to Lazarus, He was walking into His own death.
That’s an excellent point, Chris, and as you said, we don’t have time to unpack all of that, so let’s get back to the sisters. By the time Jesus gets to Judea, Lazarus has been dead in the tomb for 4 days. Mary and Martha are surrounded by people who came to mourn with them. When they heard Jesus had arrived, John 11:20 – 21 says, “So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”
Martha has grown spiritually, sort of. Matthew Henry says this about this scene, “Here are sad instances of unbelief. Her faith was true, but weak as a bruised reed, for she limits the power of Christ, in saying, If thou hadst been here; whereas she ought to have known that Christ could cure at a distance, and that his gracious operations were not limited to his bodily presence.”
But she does have the humility and understanding to follow up her accusation that if Jesus had only been there . . . with But I know whatever you ask of God, God will give you. Like you said, Chris, this shows some spiritual growth in that she has some understanding of who Jesus is.
Yeah, she shows some growth, but when Jesus tells her Lazarus will rise again, she thinks He is talking about the resurrection on the last day when everyone who has died will be raised.
I don’t think we should be too hard on her. How could she ever imagine that Jesus had in mind to raise Lazarus from the dead right then and there
That’s true. And to her credit, when Jesus challenges her belief of Him, she answers, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who is coming into the world.”
Martha calls for Mary, who up until this point had been sitting at home. Was she being passive aggressive against Jesus? No, she wasn’t. Because as soon as Martha sends word that Jesus is asking for her, she jumps up and runs out to meet Him.
And when she gets to Him, she says to Him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Seems like she’s being harsh, but the text says, she falls at His feet and is weeping when she says this. This isn’t Mary being snarky with Jesus, this is Mary showing raw grief. And Jesus totally gets it and is moved by her grief.
They lead Jesus to the tomb where Lazarus had been laid. Again, there is so much to unpack with this – why Jesus wept at the tomb, how Lazarus’ raising from the dead is a picture of us being dead in our sin and raised to life in Christ, and so much more. Perhaps this is a good topic for a future episode, but in this episode, we are just focusing on Mary and Martha.
Right. Jesus tells the sisters to take the stone away from the tomb. Martha, ever practical, tells Him after 4 days, Lazarus is going to stink! He gently reminds her in John 11:40, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” They remove the stone, Jesus prays to the Father out loud for the benefit of the watching audience, tells Lazarus to come out, and he does!
And just as Jesus knew would happen, many of the people watching went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. They are desperate to get rid of Him and start to strategize how to arrest and kill Him.
And that brings us to John chapter 12 and 6 days before the Passover, or 11 days before His crucifixion, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus give a dinner for Jesus. It’s a familiar scene. Martha is serving, but she’s not complaining about it, and Mary is at the feet of Jesus.
This time, though, Mary dumps a pound of very expensive nard, or perfume, on Jesus’ feet and wipes them with her hair. Judas Iscariot, who not only goes on to betray Jesus, but was helping himself to some of the money the disciples had, complains that the perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor.
Jesus knows all of this, but ignores Judas’ hypocrisy and instead, focuses on what Mary has just done. He says in John 12:7, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”
We don’t know what Jesus had been teaching to everyone sitting around prior to Mary dumping perfume on His feet; but from Jesus’ statement, we can confer He must have been telling them what was going to happen to Him.
Again, Mary shows us that Jesus is her top priority. That perfume was probably an investment for her. Kind of like her 401K. She probably had it stored away to sell someday when she was older and needed money. I don’t know if she understood how prophetic what she was doing was, but it was a gesture that cost her a lot.
It was prophetic. As we read in the Easter Sunday accounts of the Gospels, the women were going to anoint Jesus’ body with spices and perfumes they had prepared. Even prior to this, John tells us that Nicodemus used 75 lbs. of myhrr and aloe on Jesus’ body. Because the Jewish people didn’t practice embalming, the spices and perfumes were used to control the smell of decomposition. The ointments the women brought to Jesus’ tomb were intended to eliminate the odor and honor the body of Christ.
And that is exactly what Mary was doing for Jesus. We don’t know how much Mary understood about what Jesus was going to have to endure to save her, and she most likely didn’t grasp that He would be resurrected, since she was symbolically preparing Him for burial, but she obviously understood enough to want to sacrifice her most precious possession to honor Him.
And how do you think she understood that, Chris?
She understood it because she listened to the Words Jesus had spoken to her.
And I pray we, too are listening to the Words Jesus has spoken to us through Scripture. I pray that we all are able to be people of action, doing and serving in our church and those around us, but we are also able to come to the feet of Jesus to be with Him, to learn from Him, and to worship Him.
Rose, let’s end this episode with a Spurgeon gem on that very thing. He said, “It is not an easy thing to maintain the balance of our spiritual life. No one can be spiritually healthy who does not meditate and commune, no man, on the other hand, is as he should be unless he is active and diligent in holy service. David sweetly sang, “He makes me to lie down in green pastures,” there was the contemplative, “He leads me beside the still waters,” there was the active and progressive, the difficulty is to maintain the two, and to keep each in its relative proportion to the other. We must not be so active as to neglect communion, nor so contemplative as to become unpractical.
I will give that a hearty Amen! Thanks for tuning in. As always, we invite your comments, questions, and feedback.
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