Hospitality is a great gift – and here we have another great Biblical model – Martha.  Jesus and disciples are on the long road to Jerusalem, and all that awaits Jesus and those who will follow him there.  Stopping along the way, hungry, dusty footed, weary, hoping for hospitality, and there is Martha – waiting to welcome Jesus, and likely all those traveling with him, into her home.  The door to her home is opened wide, there is a feast suddenly to rustle up. “Come on in, Jesus, Take a load off. Sit a spell.”

And I am so sure what should come next  – surely Jesus will affirm this important ministry.  Here’s the good Samaritan embodied:  Martha welcoming him and his disciples, offering hospitality.  Here’s the example of the kind of hospitality that was lacking at the Pharisees table, the warm welcome Jesus was hoping to find.  Jesus will surely say, “Thank you Martha.  Well done, Martha. Hey, y’all, you should be more like Martha!  This world would be a better place with more Marthas!”

But, what’s this -- Do you hear Jesus response?  Sounds more like:  “Martha, take a seat!”  The kind of command Mom and Dad give when there is some serious disappointment to share over your conduct. Or the vice-principal.  Or the boss.  “Take a seat.  We need to talk.  We’ve got some serious business to discuss.  Take a seat Martha – you are too distracted and anxious, too much on your mind.  I’m not going to get you help, Martha, I’m going to give you a good stern talking to in response to your concerns.”

Jesus, what kind of response is this?

Where would the family be without Martha and her kind?  “Sorry kids, that you are hungry, I’ve got to let go of these worries and distractions about whether there is fresh milk for you and get some “me” time.”

Where would the church be without Martha and her kind?  “Sorry nominating committee, I’ve got my own finances to worry about with day care or college tuition or retirement looming.  I’m not interested in adding to those the distractions of who’s pledging and who isn’t by serving on the financial stewardship committee.” “Sorry, Jessie Chew, I need some time to watch the memorial garden grow, I can’t be worried and distracted with weeding it!”  “Building and grounds?  No thanks, I think I need to get more grounded first before you hand me anxiety over leaking roofs and faulty furnaces!”

Where would the world be without Martha and her kind?

Who is this Jesus – one minute holding up the imperative of hospitality, and the next seeming to fling Martha’s hospitality right back in her face?  Isn’t he a little inconsistent, confusing, maybe even condemning our best efforts and refusing our gifts?  And not only that, isn’t he, just a little bit, sanctioning laziness, defending the undeserving?  Hey, Jesus, what about good hard-working American protestants?!  We’ve seen what happens when folks just sit around enjoying national health care while waiting for their unemployment checks (at least in those countries who have taken the time to approve extensions of unemployment checks in the worst recession in years) – that’s the Greek economy and we don’t want it.  Isn’t this just the prodigal son all over again?  The party is for the one who spends it all, wastes it all, lazes the day away!  Yes, the prodigal son– only this time for the sake of equal time for the females, with sisters.   One working hard, and one just sitting there, and which one are you defending, Jesus?

Jesus is defending Mary.  The other sister in the picture.  Mary can be a little easy to miss, to overlook.  She seems so quiet and passive, out of the action, sitting there at the feet of Jesus.  But if we see her that way, I think we miss seeing her clear.  Mary, too, has Taken a Seat – but she has really taken it.  Her sitting there at the feet of Jesus like any other disciple may seem quiet and passive – but it is audacious and insistent and radical for a woman of her time and place.  Her sitting there is not quiet and passive: it shouts, it is bold, it is transgressive even. She has taken her seat – aggressively, assertively, and claiming that seat rocks the boat, rocks the world.  She takes a seat like Rosa Parks at the front of the bus.  She takes a seat like those African American students who sat down at ‘whites only’ lunch counters insisting on being served.  She takes a seat like students in wheelchairs at the bottom of the flight of stairs that lead into school, insisting that they be given desks and ways to reach them.  She takes a seat like older adult job seekers sitting in interviews insisting they still have wisdom and skills to offer the workplace.  Mary takes a seat.

And here comes Martha, with perhaps not just a domestic dispute, a sibling squabble, but the weight of tradition and authority and social custom behind her.  Is she asking Jesus not so much to get her some help in the kitchen, but to reassert authority, reestablish order, enforce norms of proper behavior?  “Jesus, help me constrain and restrain Mary and send her back where she belongs.”

But Jesus won’t stand with Martha.  He is much more at home sitting with Mary.  This Jesus didn’t come into their home and their lives to bless their usual roles, but to mess with them!  This Jesus didn’t come to affirm our social norms, but to upend them.  This Jesus doesn’t arrive to meet our expectations, but to reshape them in his image.  “Mary has chosen the better part and it won’t be taken away from her.”

Is this better part Mary has chosen the ministry of claiming  a seat at the table when it is unjustly withheld, and making space at the table for those who have been excluded, to learn to engage and embrace the hospitality of welcoming others to the table.  Thanks to recent action by our General Assembly, we’ll have a chance again in our Presbyteries to respond to another invitation regarding our ordination standards for elders, deacons and MWS – replacing language which serves to exclude our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters who are in loving committed relationships with a proposed change which would focus on the individual calling, gifts, preparation, and suitability of persons for the office to which they are nominated, in joyful submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life.  Does Mary show us how to welcome all to take a seat at the table?

Or perhaps the better part Mary has chosen is the hospitality she offers to Jesus.  Doesn’t she, too, extend welcome?  Martha welcomed Jesus into her home. Mary, with her rapt attention and choice to be truly present to Jesus, Mary welcomed him into her life, her mind, her heart.

So perhaps this is not a text which questions the importance of hospitality, but one which invites us to ponder what true hospitality is?  It is not really the chocolate on the pillow Emily leaves me, but the laughter and tears we share late into the night which keep me from that pillow.  It is not the clean sheets, but the hug in the kitchen that says we are as welcome as family.  It is not only the newly stitched up pair of pants and warm winter jacket for a homeless man at Broad Street Ministries, but the dignity with which the one who will wear it is treated while he is being served, the gracious invitation to sit and share a story while the sewing is going on.

Or might it be that the better part Mary has chosen is to recognize that she is not the host here, but the guest.  She knows that she has received an invitation from the Great Host to take a load off and sit a spell, and she has accepted with gratitude and delight. 

Martha asks Jesus to reaffirm social order, to enter her world, to support her as the host.  Jesus turns the table around on Martha, and on us – he is no longer the guest, but the host.  “Come on in, Martha.  Take a load off. Sit a spell.”  He extends this invitation to all of us Marthas and Marys, prodigals and hard-workers, sisters and brothers.  “Take a load off.  Sit a spell.  Hear the stories.  Know my heart and learn my ways.  Let me tell you who you are by telling you whose you are.  Come and be a human being, and wait to let your human doing flow out of the time we spend together.  Then your service can be rooted in joy and clarity, and not in worry and distraction.”

We don’t have Martha’s answer, but we do have some clues as to what it must have been.  In John’s gospel, later in the story of Jesus’ relationship with these women, as their brother Lazarus lies dead and stinking in the tomb, when Mary can only weep, it is Martha who affirms long before Peter will proclaim it, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”  These are words it would have been hard to utter under any circumstances, and especially those in which she finds herself.  Unless of course she has spent some time at the feet of Jesus.  Take a seat, sit a spell.