Mary, Martha, and the “Kitchen Queens”
Sermon by Jamie Howison on Colossians 1:15-20 and Luke 10:38-42
So it is the famous story of Mary and Martha that is on the plate for this week; a story with which I have a bit of history.
In my former parish we had a little group of women affectionately known as “the kitchen queens.” They were absolute masters at organizing events and hospitality for the parish. For funerals they would turn out trays of elegant little finger sandwiches, and for parish dinners they would produce gorgeous meals. Once a year they organized this grand event in which they’d turn out hundreds of meat pies, that were then sold (and always sold out!) to raise money which was then dedicated to ministries and programs outside of the church walls. That kitchen ran like a sewing machine when the kitchen queens were at work, and they took enormous pride and joy in all that they did.
The two head “queens” also came every Wednesday morning to our mid-week eucharist, which we followed by a bible study and then lunch out as a group. We grew that mid-week group to about fifteen people over the years I was there, as it was really good connecting point for those folks. Now on one of those Wednesday mornings we had before us this gospel story of Mary and Martha, which rather raised the ire of one of the queens.
“I’ve never liked this story,” she burst out. “If everyone was a Mary, how would funeral receptions and dinners ever happen? We’re not ‘worried and distracted by many things’”, she continued. “We’re taking care of people!” And then she commented on the piece that most bothered her, namely that Jesus said that “Mary has chosen the better part.” She was fine—well, mostly fine—that any given parish could have both Marys and Marthas, and that both had their place. But her Martha-related way of being a part of community—organizing these events, working hard to make beautiful food, taking practical care of people in their grief—was something she just couldn’t see as being somehow a distraction and lesser than those who would just want to sit at the feet of Jesus and not worry about food and hospitality. On this, she was fierce!
I can’t remember what I said in that study, but I suspect it was something about how the two sisters represented different spiritual orientations, with Martha reflecting the active mode and Mary the more contemplative. That’s a venerable tradition in reading this story… and almost always landing with Jesus saying that Mary’s contemplative choice was “the better part.” What I do remember is that whatever answer I offered, it wasn’t worth much to that kitchen queen!
Seeing the story as a reflection on action and contemplation is one way of thinking about this text, but ultimately it isn’t all that satisfactory. What is far more compelling comes courtesy of N.T. Wright, in his Luke for Everyone commentary. In his comments he really drills down on some issues that we, as modern readers, don’t tend to see. “The real problem,” he writes,
The real problem was that Mary was behaving as if she were a man. In that culture, as in many parts of the world to this day, houses were divided into male ‘space’ and female ‘space,’ and male and female roles were strictly demarcated as well. Mary had crossed an invisible but very important boundary within the house, and another equally important boundary within the social world.
Think about that for a minute. As Luke casts this story, it takes place as Jesus and his disciples are journeying from place to place, with him teaching and healing as they go. They’ve now stopped at the home of Mary and Martha, which we know from other passages in the gospels has become a familiar place of respite for Jesus. The male disciples are all gathered around listening as Jesus teaches, but instead of staying off in the “female space,” Mary has crossed a boundary and situated herself very clearly in the “male space.” Martha is flustered by this, and not simply because she’s left on her own in the kitchen, but also because Mary had transgressed a well-establish boundary in their social world. And so Bishop Wright continues,
To sit at the feet of a rabbi was what you did if you wanted to be a rabbi yourself. There is no thought here of learning for learning’s sake. Mary has quietly taken her place as a would-be teacher and preacher for the kingdom of God.
This, I think, is the most brilliantly scandalous thing about what Mary is doing here, namely to respond to what Bishop Wright calls “the boundary-breaking call of Jesus.” And I think that this is made clear by looking at the original Greek that is translated as “the better part” in our version, but is actually more accurately translated as “that good part.” Interestingly, that is how the King James Version deals with the Greek words tEn agathEn merida, or “that good part.” “But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” She is, in short, beginning to recognize Jesus’ invitation to transgress boundaries and to be prepared to tell and retell his story to whoever might receive it: male or female, slave or free, Jew or Gentile.
And interestingly, there is another set of boundary-breaking transgressions at work in today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Colossians.
Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers
The opening portion of this section of Colossians consists of six verses that form a kind of poem or song that actually stands on its own. Some scholars have even speculated that it is a poem that was circulating in that region, and that Paul was citing to them as he built his case for the glory of Christ. Whether or not that’s the case is not all that consequential, but what is clear is that it does stand on its own as a bold proclamation that says it is not Caesar who is in charge, but rather it is God, in and through Christ.
In the words of Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat,
In a world populated by images of Caesar—who is taken to be the son of god—a world in which the emperor’s pre-eminence over all things is bolstered by political structures and institutions, an empire that views Rome as the head of the body politic in which an imperial peace is imposed—sometimes through the capital punishment of crucifixion—this poem is nothing less than treasonous. In the space of a short well-crafted, three-stanza poem, Paul subverts every major claim of the empire, turning them on their heads, and proclaims Christ to be the Creator, Redeemer and Lord of all creation, including the empire. (Colossians Remixed, InterVarsity Press, 2004)
“Paul subverts every major claim of the empire,” which is another way of saying “Jesus is Lord; Caesar is not.” And Jesus is Lord not because he has conquered Caesar with the power of the sword in a revolutionary uprising, but rather “by making peace through the blood of his cross.” Caesar still sits on the throne of the empire, and that throne will be host to many an emperor over the next several hundred years, and yet Paul would way that such is not true Lordship. We’ve had countless kings and queens and presidents and prime ministers and chairmen and dictators over the centuries, but to each of them Paul would say simply “Jesus is Lord; you are not and cannot be.” You cannot be, because “He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
When Mary came out of the kitchen and sat with the disciples at the feet of Jesus, those men surely exchanged incredulous glances, while Martha’s jaw dropped in astonishment and worry. When the new Christians in Colossae sat to hear Paul’s words from his letter read aloud and heard those words, “in him all things hold together,” there would have been gasps all around… but what about Caesar?
We often forget the audacity of these claims, leaving our hearing of scripture to Sundays rather than enacting them—living into their claims—each and every day of the week, the month, the years. We are yet called to transgress boundaries, and dare to live out the deeper story. May we all find that courage.
