The One Who Went Out to Meet Him

Lazarus had been in the tomb four days. The house in Bethany was full of people who had come to comfort the two sisters, and somebody brought word that Jesus was on the road.

Martha got up and went out to meet him. She didn’t wait for him to reach the house. She didn’t wait for him to reach the village.

John puts the other sister in the same sentence, and leaves her where she was.

Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house.

Anyone who knows these two from the other story will recognize the positions. One moving, one sitting. It’s the same arrangement as the famous afternoon in Martha’s kitchen, and it would be easy to read it the same way.

It isn’t the same, and the difference is the whole chapter.

The other story is in Luke, and it’s short.

Jesus came to their village, and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. Her house. Luke says it that way. She was the householder, the one with the standing to take a traveling teacher in off the road and feed him, and she did. Luke doesn’t say who else came through the door with him, and he doesn’t need to. Anyone who has ever put a meal on for company knows the arithmetic. Somebody has to start the fire, draw the water, set out the bread, keep an eye on the pot and an ear on the room. In that house the somebody was Martha. Her sister Mary sat at his feet and listened. Martha, the text says, was cumbered about much serving.

Then she came in from the kitchen and said, to Jesus, not to Mary: Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.

That isn’t really a request for help. It’s a bill. She’s presenting the account of everything she’s done, to the guest, in front of her sister, and asking him to acknowledge it and collect on it. Dost thou not care. Somewhere in the afternoon the serving had stopped being hospitality and started being evidence, and she wanted the verdict read out loud.

He said her name twice. Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

The usual reading stops there. Martha got corrected, Mary got praised, and people go home feeling either defended or accused, depending on which sister they are.

But look at what he didn’t say. He didn’t tell her to stop serving. He didn’t say the meal didn’t matter or that the kitchen was the wrong room to be in. He said she was anxious and troubled. The trouble wasn’t the work. It was the job the work had been given, which was proving that she counted.

Now back to the road outside Bethany.

Before any of the walking, John says something that’s easy to read past. Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. Martha first. The woman from the kitchen in Luke is the first name in the sentence about who he loved, and in this chapter she hasn’t served anybody anything yet.

On the road she’s still the one who moves. The sisters haven’t changed temperaments. Mary is sitting. Martha got up. But the thing that sent her out the door isn’t the thing that sent her in from the kitchen. There’s no bill this time. There’s a dead brother and a friend who’s late, and she goes straight to him.

They talk there on the road, before any miracle, with the tomb still closed. He tells her, I am the resurrection, and the life. Then he asks her a question. Believest thou this?

And Martha says: Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.

That’s the confession. It’s the same thing Peter said at Caesarea Philippi, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, and Peter’s version is the one that gets preached. Martha said it too, on a road, in grief, before Lazarus came out, before there was anything to see that would make it easy to say.

The woman who was troubled about many things, standing in the road saying the true thing, plainly.

Then she did what she always does. She moved.

She went back to the house and called her sister aside, quietly. The Master is come, and calleth for thee.

In Luke, she went to Jesus to complain about Mary. In John, she went to Mary to bring her to Jesus. Same woman. Same quick feet. She was still the one who got up and went and handled it. The account she’d been keeping had just stopped being the reason.

That’s the distance between the kitchen and the road, and it isn’t the distance between doing and sitting. You don’t stop being the doer. You stop needing it as proof.

Where this meets your week

The kitchen in Luke turns up in plenty of houses that aren’t expecting a guest.

When the caregiving ends. For years the day had a shape. Medications at eight, the appointments, the meals cut small, the nights listening for a sound from the next room. Then the person you cared for, a spouse or a parent, died or moved somewhere others do the caring, and the day has no shape at all. Underneath it is a question you didn’t have time to ask before: who are you if nobody needs you? John lists Martha first among the people Jesus loved, in a chapter where she hasn’t served a single plate. This week, let somebody bring you a meal, and don’t make it even. Eat it, thank them, and leave the account open.

The sibling who sat. A parent’s long decline tends to land on one child, and if it landed on you, you know which sibling it didn’t land on. You did the driving, the paperwork, the hard phone calls, and the account of all of it is still open in your head. In Luke, Martha went to Jesus to complain about her sister. In John, she went to her sister and said, quietly, The Master is come, and calleth for thee. Call the one who sat. Not to settle the account. To bring them into something: a meal, a visit to the grave, a box of photographs that needs sorting. Leave the ledger in the drawer while you do it.

The holiday you always host. Every year the table is yours, and every year, somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, a sentence shows up, maybe only inside your head: nobody else lifts a finger. That’s Luke 10, verse 40, very nearly word for word. It isn’t a character flaw. It’s the audit running. Next time, ask one person for one specific thing early in the day, plainly, before the bill has time to build.

A guest where you used to run things. You go back to the church you left, for a wedding or a funeral. Or back to the company you sold, for somebody’s retirement party. Everything in you wants to fix the sound, straighten the chairs, check the coffee. At the last dinner John records in Bethany, Lazarus sat at the table and did nothing. Sit at the table. Let somebody else serve you, even if they do it badly. You’ll find out whether you can be in a room without earning your place in it.

Her purpose isn’t a new job. It’s the old one, done for a different reason, and it takes three steps.

Sit down once this week while something is still undone. On purpose. The dishes in the sink, the email unanswered, the thing not handled. Sit for twenty minutes with it undone, and notice what comes up. It will probably be the bill. Nobody else is going to do this. Dost thou not care. Let it come up and don’t act on it.

Then say the true thing out loud. Whatever it is you actually believe when the work isn’t there to cover it. Martha’s was I believe that thou art the Christ. Yours might be shorter. It doesn’t need an audience, and it doesn’t need to be tidy. Say it to the one she said it to.

Then go back to the kitchen. Make the meal. Handle the thing. And see whether the work feels different when it isn’t carrying your whole worth on its back.

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came back to Bethany, and they made him a supper there. Lazarus was at the table. Mary brought the ointment.

And John, who could have given Martha a speech, gives her two words.

Martha served.

No complaint on the record. Same work as the afternoon in Luke. A different woman doing it.