Evangelion: Mary and Martha

Sadao Watanabe: "Mary Washing Jesus' Feet" (1968)

 Mary and Martha, two sisters from Bethany, were not among the women who followed Jesus. We first read of them in connection with a visit Jesus makes to Martha’s home after his departure from Galilee:

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 few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Lk 10:38–42)

As at the well in Samaria, Jesus here contrasts the relative importance of physical nourishment and spiritual nourishment. One might reasonably ask, however, why Martha’s service is less highly esteemed than Mary’s attentiveness. The answer lies not in an appreciation of the acts themselves but in what Jesus considers his food:

Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” “My food, “said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” (Jn 4:31–34)

Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (Jn 6:28–29)

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” (Jn. 14.5–7)

Jesus is not “the way and the truth and the life” in the sense that he exemplifies Life. He is “the way and the truth and the life” because Life is the result of coming to him. Martha does indeed come to him, and John records her astonishing conviction, following the death of her brother Lazarus, that Jesus can “even now” raise her brother from the dead:

On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.” (Jn 11:17–27)

After Lazarus is raised, Martha prepares a second dinner to honor Jesus. This time her service is recorded to her honor, though overshadowed by an gesture by Mary that represented the equivalent of one year’s labor:

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. (Jn 12:1–3)

A passing notice earlier in John’s account gives us to understand that this is not the first time Mary had performed such a gesture:

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” (Jn. 11:1–3)

John evidently refers to an incident, recorded by Luke, that took place at the house of a Pharisee named Simon the Leper. That Luke does not give the woman’s name is entirely understandable:

When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. (Lk 7:36–38)

The extravagant gesture here comes in response to an even more remarkable circumstance, namely the raising of Lazarus from the dead, but what could have occasioned the similar gesture at the house of Simon the Leper? One guess is that Mary was the woman brought before Jesus to be stoned:

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (Jn 8: 3–11) [1]

This brings us back to Martha, whose relative wealth and social standing are indicated by the fact that she owned a house large enough to accommodate the many Jews who came from Jerusalem to console the sisters following the illness and death of their brother Lazarus. The fact that she took in her previously wayward sister and cared for her ailing brother is testimony of her daily unassuming generosity.

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[1] This disputed passage appears to be original but is missing from the earliest manuscripts, which may indicate that it was removed very early on and reinserted at a later date.