martha

We all know the story told in the Gospel of Luke about Jesus’ visit to the Mary and Martha:

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.

She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.

But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

It’s obvious who’s the role model. Mary is the positive example, Martha is the negative one, and we are to avoid getting caught up in the business of life and missing out on that special communion with the Master. Plain and simple. Even kids know that.

But I’d like to think it’s not that simple. The bare, straight-forward narrative of the story allows us to fill in their inner mental states, and I’d like to think that deep down inside, Martha envied Mary.

Don’t get me wrong. By envy, I don’t mean a jealous bitterness borne of seeing her younger sister getting praised by the Master. I mean an envy without hatred, the kind that arises when one is stuck indoors for whatever reason while one’s friends are playing outdoors.

I’d like to think that even though she effectively said she wanted Mary to be like her, what she really wanted deep down inside was for her to be like Mary.

An excerpt from A.S.J. Tessimond’s The Man in the Bowler Hat expresses this best:

I am the man too busy with a living to live,
Too hurried and worried to see and smell and touch:
The man who is patient too long and obeys too much
And wishes too softly and seldom.

The first two lines describe the Martha we know, as presented in the narrative: a person too hurried and worried to see and smell and touch, or in this case, to sit at the Master’s feet.

But it doesn’t end there (at least, in my version, it won’t), and the last two lines redeem the Marthas of this world, because it shows she hasn’t lost her longing for something beyond her duties.

It shows that despite her “obey[ing] too much” the expectations of society and of what being a grown-up entails, despite her patient, silent, dutiful, self-enforced suffering and serving, deep down inside, although “too softly and seldom”, she still wishes.

She remembers the days when she, too, like her younger sister now, could sit at the feet of other storytellers, listening wistfully, drinking from wells of wonder, wit and wisdom.

But she also remembers the day when she had to leave it all behind, to throw away these childish things and move on with growing up, like Susan Pevensie saying goodbye to Narnia, and never being able to enter therein again for a long, long time.

And she has probably gotten over the initial sadness of the transition, if there was any. She has embraced the grown-up things, what her elders speak of as “real life”, and in doing so, has almost forgotten her younger, eager (and dare I say truer?) self. She has, like Susan, given up the “silly” games of childhood for pots and pans (or, in Susan’s case, for “nylons and lipsticks and invitations”).

But her younger self still exists within her, rapidly getting smaller and smaller. And once in a while, though rarer of late, this younger self speaks in a yet softer and softer voice, reminding her of the world she once lived in, the “centre where [children] dance, where [children] play, where life is still asleep…” (R.S. Thomas, Children’s Song)

And when the Master came over to tell his wonderful stories, I’d like to believe that this still small voice inside Martha spoke. I’d like to believe that her younger self, her inner Mary, stirred within her, even if but for a moment. Because if that were the case, there is hope for Martha, and there is hope for us.