Pentecost IX: Two Lessons

Jesus loved those  people in the strange household in Bethany.  They were sisters Mary and Martha, who lived with their brother Lazarus.  Today's pericope (Lk 10: 28-32) follows Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan.  Jesus shifts now from emphasis on "works" (building the Kingdom of God on earth) to emphasis on "faith" (radical trust in God.)   Mary is listening to Jesus. Martha is following all the protocols for hospitality, a central core value in that society, and wants Jesus to force Mary back into the kitchen.  Jesus refuses. Mary, he says, has chosen the better part.

Like Martha, how often we become worried and distracted by all that we have to do, caught up in worldly cares and responsibilities, forgetting to nourish our spiritual side.  We are nourished through our relationship with the Divine, and "conversation" is necessary to maintain relationship.  That will take different forms for different people: some are into serious meditation, listening for God's word; others like the Rosary so as to pray to God with Mary as prayer partner, still others engage writings, sacred and otherwise, to spark insights. There are numerous examples of clergy and religious who become burnt out, because they lose grounding by neglecting matters of faith in favour of pure service.  That can happen to anyone.  First lesson:  nourish your Spirit, balance faith and works.

Martha appears in two more vignettes in Scripture: one where she believes Jesus can raise her brother and he does, the other where John adapts the woman-anointing-Jesus'-feet story to identify that character with Martha.  Clearly the message is:  She "got it," and so must we as disciples.

But what about the rest of the story?  In the so-called Golden Legend, our trio are converted from Judaism (remember Jesus was a Jew) to Christianity by Saint Maximian.  As newly-minted Catholic Christians, the three go to France.  There Mary becomes contemplative, Lazarus becomes the Bishop of Marseilles, and Martha becomes ascetic while continuing to model spiritually-centred servant leadership.  The kingpin story speaks of a dragon terrorizing the wood between Avignon and Arles.  Martha comes with a crucifix and holy water.  With the water she puts out the dragon's flames, and the cross takes all of the spirit out of the malevolent creature, so he is weak and easily slain. This story prompts our second lesson:    Ask yourself what you are doing to slay the dragons of ignorance and fear, the dragons of poverty and inequality, the dragons of injustice and oppression.