The New Testament's Book of Luke offers up a story that has long given me pause and seems particularly ripe for the season that is upon us. It is a tale of what happens when two sisters invite Jesus home for dinner.
Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her."
Luke 10:38-42
Who am I, and who might you be in this stillframe of family/guest dynamics? I identify most readily with Martha and more cautiously, with Mary. I even find myself empathizing with Jesus in the role of mediator and counselor. Let me suggest my own linkages with these characters and then back up to consider the potentially universal appeal of each.
Martha.....Martha is out there in the kitchen, peeling her onions, slaving over a hot stove, simmering every bit as much as the food she is preparing. I have had Martha moments that are splendid and Martha moments that I would rather forget.
Over the years, I have cultivated a Christmas tradition of increasingly large gatherings of family and friends for dinner and tree decorating. It usually takes place a week or so before Christmas itself. My first such festivity was in 1966 in a small apartment at the corner of 105th and 2nd Avenue, which I shared with another woman from seminary. I was on an intern year, working at a community center in the neighborhood. Joy and I invited a manageable 15 to 20 friends over for dinner. We prepared the main course and asked our friends to bring a dish of their choosing. We purchased construction paper, glitter, pipe cleaners, etc. from the local Woolworth's, set them out on a table alongside scissors and glue, and invited our guests to craft decorations for our tree--a grand four-footer purchased from the grocer across the street.
Our preparation and enjoyment were in balance. We prepared...but not too much, certainly not so much that we didn't have as good a time as our guests did. It was a warm and wonderful success....and one of my best Martha moments. I spent my share of time in the kitchen, but had no reason or inclination to complain about a prototypical Mary not carrying her weight.
Fast forward to a few years ago. I'm working full-time, with a husband and three daughters in various stages of high school and college. I'm involved in my church and other community activities. But the Christmas tree party had become part of my annual portfolio. The ante is upped to 60 guests, including children. The invitations go out--personally designed with aesthetics befitting another well-known Martha. I bake cookies at midnight---when else? I pour through my open stacks of Gourmet, Food and Wine, Cooking Light. I map out my schedule of to do's, a classic flowchart. My family respectfully clears my path. Mom is on cruise control. Of course all this is on top of Christmas shopping, adorning the house in holiday regalia, and playing guest at a few other gatherings, where I don't quite know what to do with myself because I don't have to do anything.
Finally, the day of the party arrives. Evening comes. I give myself 20 minutes to shower and change. Guests bring appetizers, but that's it....Ms. Claus has to do the whole dinner herself. It can't be boorishly simple, and my work ethic and checkbook balance are in mutual complicity to preclude any extra help. So....back and forth I bustle from kitchen to dining room to living room, making sure everyone is duly satisfied, gratified, and engaged. I faintly catch the sound of caroling in the other room. Then....it's ll:30, 12:00. People start to leave. It's over. I've barely sat down. What happened? This.....is not one of my finer Martha moments.
Enter Mary. This Thanksgiving I was a Mary. Of course it wasn't my house, but I was still a bona fide Mary. My family and I enjoyed two Thanksgivings--one here in the city on Thursday at the Tribeca loft of my brother-in-law, the other on Friday in Pennsylvania at the home of my brother and sister-in-law. So I made a few pies and some pumpkin flan, I was, for the most part, a guest. It took some restraint on my part, but I enjoyed it immensely. I relaxed. I basked in the luxury of complete sentences in extended conversation. I did help in the kitchen occasionally--unlike that scoundrel Mary--but I had a splendid time. Simple being defined my holiday every bit as much as focused doing. I was a gracious Mary.
Now...I remember many holidays, many mealtimes, in fact, when, as a child, I strategically avoided the kitchen. Knowing full well that my mother and sometimes my father...were out there doing all the work of preparation, presentation, and cleanup, I carefully timed my appearances. I always made it to the table when dinner was ready, joined the conversation, cleaned my plate, thanked my mother--she was the primary chef in our home--for a wonderful dinner, and cleared out. She was, I knew, sufficiently task oriented to clean up those dishes herself. If I just happened to saunter out about 30 minutes after dinner with a look that said, "Are you ready for some help, Mom?" that kitchen would be clean. My mother's revenge, of course, was in my growing up to be just as task oriented as she ever was. Ah.....the seeds of Martha in the young Mary.
Jesus is yet another story. In the renditions of this parable that I learned as a child, Jesus always commanded unqualified benefit of the doubt. When Martha came to him whining and complaining about her sister, Jesus dutifully reminded Martha that Mary, who after all had been sitting at his feet, bent on every word, had the better portion. The better portion of what I was never quite sure. But Jesus had to be right.
There have been so many times in my family when one of our darlings has come to me with a complaint about the negligent, thoughtless behavior of her sister and I jumped right in. Mother Butinsky is all too willing to do what clinical psychology refers to as triangulating. When, upon those rare occasions, I have had the presence of mind to suggest that child A address her concerns directly to child B, I stepped out of the middle, leaving child A as responsible for her frustrations as child B was for her alleged thoughtlessness. I chose empowerment over interference. As for one child sitting at my feet listening to my words of wisdom, it never happened.
In this brief New Testament vignette, all three characters hold the potential for rising or falling to their current functions and their essential selves. Martha, Mary, and Jesus each plays a role that carries the potential for affirmation of self and others and for the undermining of self and others, for behavior that is expansive and behavior that is constrictive.
This tale brims with choices that are interpersonal and intrapersonal. Its texture of possibility is equally rich for what it doesn't tell us. We know nothing of Martha and Mary's prior patterns of relating. We don't know if there were guests in addition to Jesus. We don't know if Mary had indeed been working her fingers to the bone and had only sat down in the moments prior to the scene visible to us. While Martha and Jesus are given dialogue, Mary remains silent. How does Jesus know that Martha is "anxious and troubled about many things?" What things? She just walked into the room. And what about Mary choosing the "good portion" of which Jesus speaks....the "good portion, which shall not be taken away from her?" We are void of context.
This story is fully susceptible to our projections. And therein lies its richness of possibility. Such is the power of parable.
In the integrity of its simplicity, this tale from the Gospel of Luke is ripe for what strikes us so close to home around the holidays. Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa....all carry choices for activity that resonates with joy and enjoyment and activity that is rife with frenzy and frustration, for modes of relating that are thoughtful and direct and modes of relating laced with resentment and passivity, for running interference and for trusting empowerment. The holidays that are upon us and the choices that are ours invite us all--male, female, adult, child--to be our best possible Martha, our best possible Mary,....our best possible Jesus. Perhaps the good portion of which Jesus spoke, is that portion of possibility which permitted Mary, during this fleeting moment of our encounter, to be in harmony with her best possible self. It's that simple.
With Thanksgiving leftovers barely cool and the next round of holidays warming our calendars, we hold within us our own portion of possibility. We can accept who we are, appreciate whom we are with, relish our precious time together, and rise to the occasion of our best possible selves.
God bless us every one. Amen. Copyright All Souls 1997