Martha's better part

Today is not our first visit this month to Bethany - a place where Jesus loved to be - or to a tomb. Last week we celebrated Mary Magdalene, first witness to the Risen Jesus, and two Sundays ago we heard the Gospel account of Martha and Mary's contrasting styles of hospitality. We all know how Mary, utterly engrossed in Jesus, has chosen the better part, while Martha worries and frets and is distracted with all the serving. Thanks to familiarity, and a thousand reflections and homilies, Martha and Mary have entered our lexicon as shorthand for busyness and prayerful stillness. Martha is gently chided by Jesus, and subsequently frowned upon by two millennia of preachers and pray-ers, setting Mary the focused, Jesus-centred contemplative versus Martha, distracted woman of action. 

And yet... and yet... Despite her fretting and distractions, Martha clearly knew Jesus as well as any of his close disciples. She certainly knew him well enough to speak to him robustly and with familiarity. She must have spent time with him, listening, observing, pondering... growing in intimacy, in friendship and in love...  She too, in her own way, must have fused attentiveness with service; must have found and chosen her own better part. How else to explain the remarkable depth of her exchange with Jesus after Lazarus' death, and her acceptance of, and declaration of her faith in him as the Resurrection and the Life? She doesn't quibble, or ask questions about Jesus' identity or purpose; she knows - just knows, and she proclaims this, with clarity and certainty. 

I chose today's Gospel (John 11: 19-27) for my mother's funeral. Partly this was because I knew my grieving father found meaning in I am the Resurrection and the Life, and maybe hearing these words would bring him some comfort. But mostly, I chose this Gospel because Jesus reveals himself, not to the learned or those the world judges as important, but to a housewife: a woman who, like my mother, fussed and fretted and lavished delicious, homemade food on her guests - having previously declared she wasn't going to go to any trouble at all! And a woman who knew how to trust, and to believe, with a strong and pragmatic faith.

As we celebrate Martha and her siblings, what can she in particular teach us about faith and friendship, and the intimacy and demands of discipleship?