Sermon for Sunday, April 3rd 2022 – Fifth Sunday in Lent – Martha served

Fifth Sunday in Lent, rcl yr c, 2022
Philippians 3:4b-14; Psalm 126; John 12:1-8

Martha served

This story we hear in John’s Gospel is, in many ways, almost breathtaking. We know from the previous chapter in John that the plot to kill Jesus is well underway. It’s only a matter of time, now, until Jesus will be taken away to be executed. The Temple authorities fear a Roman crackdown on account of the numbers of people now following Jesus after the resurrection of Lazarus. And the Roman authorities themselves will be ever-so-willing to go along with a plan to kill him.

But in the midst of this, in the high anxiety and anticipation that something truly momentous was about to happen in the death of Jesus, we have a small dinner party. Lazarus is there, waiting to eat. Mary is there, doing a most extravagant thing: Mary is at the feet of Jesus, pouring out a very costly perfume over Jesus’s feet, wiping his feet with her hair. And “[t]he house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” And Martha? She’s there too, but in the background. “Martha served.”

There’s another story of Martha and Mary in a different part of the New Testament, in Luke. In this other story, Jesus visits Martha and Mary. Mary “sits at the Lord’s feet and listen[s] to what he was saying,” but Martha “was distracted by her many tasks.” And when a frustrated Martha comes to Jesus to say “do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” Jesus answers, saying, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things;  there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part.”

Much is made of the difference between Mary and Martha in some parts of churchland. Maybe you’ve heard someone saying “I’m more of a Mary,” or “I’m more of a Martha.” And much is made about Mary’s “better part,” her contemplative attention to her Lord, and the difference between that and Martha’s busy work and her complaining.

I will admit to some self-interest in seeing Mary’s contemplative attention to Jesus as the “better part,” and in distinction to Martha’s distracted attention to the task at hand. Introverts come out well. As do people who don’t want to do their chores. “Make dinner? Do the dishes? But I’m READING.”

But there’s some real wisdom in the way that John tells the story of Mary and Martha. Even though, now, Mary isn’t just sitting at Jesus’s feet, but in John’s habit of making every telling of every story so very over-the-top, Mary’s gesture of devotion is the costly and dramatic pouring out of perfume and then wiping his feet with her hair. Despite the high drama of such an extravagant gesture of devotion, there isn’t even a whisper that Mary’s act is the “better part” over and above the fact that “Martha served.”

There is, certainly, a sort of simplicity in both the act and how it’s described—John’s gospel simply saying, “Martha served.” But in this, in Martha’s simple service, we have some deep resonance with what else John’s Gospel says about life with Jesus. Jesus says, after all, in John, that “[w]hoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.” And so even the simplicity of Martha’s service is deeply entwined with following Jesus, with unity with Jesus, and with being honoured by the Father.

Martha shows this exemplary faith and service, along with Mary in a different way, and are both, along with Lazarus, “model friends of Jesus” (as David Ford puts it in his commentary on John). The essentials in John’s Gospel are, according to Ford, “being loved by Jesus, loving and trusting Jesus, recognizing who Jesus is [having] a heart open to the suffering of others, prayer, service, life-giving signs, extravagant attention and generosity, and playing different parts in the drama of friendship with Jesus.”

And we see these essentials in the whole of the community that gathers around Jesus in the moments before his death, in the simplicity of Martha’s service, in the extravagance of Mary’s pouring of the perfume, and even in the patient Lazarus waiting for his dinner.

Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro explores similar themes in his most recent novel Klara and the Sun. (I have to give credit to Christine Purdon, of this parish, for much of this.) Klara and the Sun centres around the relationship between Josie, a rather sick and unwell young woman, and Klara, a sophisticated robot “Artificial Friend.” Klara draws her energy from the Sun, and means that she is also contemplatively drawn to the Sun in prayer and petition.

But her devotion to the Sun isn’t something that lies apart from the way Klara serves Josie. Instead, Klara’s devotion to the Sun and her service to Josie are deeply entwined. Klara even pours out some fluid from her own neck in her hopes of the Sun healing Josie, with Klara later praying to the Sun: “I don’t mind that I lost precious fluid. I’d willingly have given more, if it meant your providing help to Josie.” And later Klara will do a simple act of service, a simple act of housekeeping: Klara will pull back blinds and reveal the Sun to Josie, an act that gives Josie healing and wellness.

Klara’s devotion to the Sun and her help to Josie have such purity that they transcend any distinction between service and prayer. Much like in John’s Gospel, there’s no clear distinction between prayer and service, or between extravagant devotion and usefulness; neither is the “better part.” In fact, prayer and service can be found together, as we do in Klara, who is both Mary and Martha doing both service and deep devotion, and without seeing one as greater than the other, but rather seeing both tightly woven together.

All of this—Martha’s quiet service, Mary’s extraordinary act of devotion, and even poor Lazarus waiting at the table for dinner—all come into heightened significance, taking place as they do in the moments before Jesus’s death, in the shadow of the cross. And it’s this proximity to death and the cross that brings Jesus’s closest friends together in a spirit of service, devotion, and patient waiting, in a community working together for his sake, in a spirit of kindness and openness to the gifts of others.

We should see and find ourselves in Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, as the community that lives in the shadow of the cross. Though even more than Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, we know of the benefits of that cross: that on the cross all our sin and guilt is carried in Jesus, the innocent victim; and that as Jesus carries our sin and guilt, giving it over to death, he gives us his innocence, and fills us with his goodness and life. This is the happy exchange between Jesus and his community of friends.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it: What happens to him, happens to us, for he has accepted us. That is, as Jesus has taken us on and borne us, we die with him; but so too, if we die with him, we live with him.

Yes, Martha serves him, and Mary offers her extravagant devotion to him, and Lazarus waits upon him. And we find ourselves, too, in this service, devotion, and waiting. But all this is possible for us, the friends of the crucified one, because of what Jesus offers us, more fully, and more completely. He is the ultimate servant in our need, he is the one who will pour out even his own blood in his devotion to us, and he is the one who waits patiently upon us: he is the crucified one. And in his act of service, devotion, and patience, we find something accomplished for our sake, and for our benefit: we discover that we have been befriended by the crucified one.

The Revd Preston DS Parsons