Practicing Hospitality with Mary and Martha

I grew up in a family where hospitality was an Olympic sport. Family dinners were nightly and often grew to accommodate chosen family and friends from church, school, and beyond. It was common to come home and find my dad briskly preparing something delicious—maybe spaghetti or something on the grill—and be drafted to help get the house ready for our guests. The dinners themselves were the ultimate payoff—a chance for conversation, laughter, delicious food, and—most importantly—connection with beloved friends around the table. My childhood and youth were shaped by the meals and, more significantly, by the regular act of welcoming diverse groups of people into our home and our family life.  

It’s no wonder, then, that when I hear the story of Jesus’ visit to Martha and Mary in Bethany, I immediately resonate with Martha’s role in the story. It is sometimes common to hear Christians identify with this passage in this way: “Oh, I am such a Martha!” or “I’m trying to be like Mary, sitting at Jesus’ feet.” I wonder, though, if this is a false dichotomy. If we instead look at this story as a parable about the rhythms and shape of faithful hospitality, we begin to see in this story a lesson about welcome, about hospitality both outwardly and within ourselves.

The former is obvious in Martha’s activity in our story. Martha welcomes Jesus (and his entourage!) into her home while managing the logistics of his visit. We are told that Martha is distracted by her many tasks—we imagine a beleaguered housewife here, chained to the stovetop and making passive-aggressive remarks. This is not the whole picture. Theologian and professor Andrew McGowan comments on this passage that we ought to remember that Martha is the householder in this story. As such, Martha is a person with authority, and so her welcome signals generosity and implies wealth. She serves as a paradigm for the kind of radical, self-offering hospitality that Jesus calls us to share. In Martha, we see faithful people practicing warm welcome to both the friend and the stranger, nourishing them physically and offering shelter for their bodies. This is classic hospitality—I am reminded of the dinner parties my family hosted when I was growing up. 

In addition to this familiar form of hospitality, the story of Mary and Martha of Bethany illustrates a second form of welcome. While Martha busily prepared the house for their guests, her sister Mary “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.” Martha was not impressed with her sister’s choice and asked Jesus to compel Mary to help her with domestic preparations. Because of this exchange between Martha and Jesus, we might assume that Mary is diametrically opposed to Martha—while Martha extends hospitality, Mary seems not to participate in the welcome. However, if we look at Mary through the lens of hospitality, we begin to see another posture of welcome, no less valuable than what Martha teaches us. As Mary sits and listens to Jesus, she demonstrates welcoming the Lord into her heart. This is itself a kind of hospitality—a self-opening in order to welcome Christ into one’s very soul. 

Jesus seems to suggest in our passage that one of these forms of hospitality is better than the other; he chides Martha for being distracted, saying that Mary has chosen the better course of action. Rather than hear this as an assertion that Martha’s hustle and bustle is out of line with the life of faith, I wonder if Jesus’ emphasis is instead on the issue of distraction. Martha sees only that she needs to provide for Jesus and this distracts her from listening like Mary—it distracts her from fully welcoming Jesus into her heart. It is this distraction that we want to avoid. When we are distracted, we are not able to practice the kind of radical and holistic hospitality that our passage illustrates. Moreover, we are kept from remembering that Jesus provides the “one thing needed”—indeed, that Jesus is the very thing we need. 

So rather than asking yourself which sister you are—a Martha or a Mary—I wonder if the question is instead, “How am I practicing hospitality today? How am I welcoming Jesus into my life?” Because after all, aren’t we each a little bit of both Martha and Mary? Perhaps that is the ultimate lesson of this parable: to be hospitable both to the world around us and the stranger in it and to be hospitable to our friend Jesus, who draws near to the hearts of us all if only we will receive him. 

[Image Credit: Public domain via the Metropolitan Museum of Art]