Luke’s story about Mary and Martha has left scholars debating for centuries, leading to character analysis paralysis. Let’s get past the heroine/villain question to figure out Luke's bigger point.

Team Mary or Team Martha?

You’ve already got an opinion about this story, don’t you?  You may be thinking, “Ah, sweet, devoted Mary who sits listening at Jesus’ feet.  Jesus says she made the better choice, so leave her alone, Martha!  Why don’t you calm down?”  Or, maybe you’re thinking, “Martha, I see you.  I know what it’s like to be working your tail off while everyone else is sitting around playing Mario Kart.  Both Mary and Jesus should get up and help you out, and then you can all sit down together and learn deep things.” You, my friend, are part of a long tradition of side-choosing Bible readers. 

Fourth and fifth century side-choosers like John Chrysostom and Augustine saw this story as a debate between the virtues of a contemplative life of prayer represented by Mary and the active life of service represented by Martha (Rakoczy, 61-62, 67-69).  That discussion continues today, along with new ways of interpreting the story.  Some scholars see it as Luke’s condemnation of Martha as a female church leader while others focus on Jesus’ countercultural support of Mary sitting at his feet to learn (Schussler-Fiorenza, 31). Assorted visual artists have also chimed in over the centuries depicting this scene with varying degrees of sympathy for Martha.  Sometimes Jesus looks at her gently, and sometimes he completely ignores her.

Along with what we may have heard in sermons or Sunday School, these biblical interpretations have influenced how we see the story.   Mary and Martha, more than many people in the Bible, live in what Dorothy Lee calls a “World of Reception,” a world where we who have “inherited and passed on Gospel traditions have often changed them to fit the shape and contours of our own context” (Lee 214).   That’s part of why this story fascinates me.  It’s five verses long, but the amount of debate it has stirred up, including within my own heart, suggests an impact more significant than its length. The jury is still very much out on Martha and Mary.

Literary device of the day: character

Everyone has been trying to do with Mary and Martha exactly what English Majors do with them: character analysis!  We’ve all been trying to answer the question, who’s the good guy?  It’s the most fundamental question when it comes to understanding a character.  Is this the heroine, the one we’re supposed to be cheering for?  Or is this the villain, the one we hope gets it in the end?  Even past interpreters debating the merits of contemplative and active lives are trying to answer that question.  Is it better to pray or to serve?  Often it’s pretty easy to pick out the bad guy.  Names like Cruella de Vil and Maleficent tip us off.  But it’s more difficult here.  Let’s try to figure out why.  

First, let’s look at a popular interpretation.  Jesus is hanging out at Martha’s house, and her sister Mary is listening to his teaching.  Martha is “distracted by her many tasks”  or “much serving,” which obviously means cooking and serving food (vs. 40).  Martha’s in a huff about doing all the work herself and goes to Jesus to get him to motivate Mary to help.  His response is, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her” (vs. 41-42).  Some commentators explain his response by claiming that Jesus thinks Martha is going overboard with the cooking (Craddock, 152). The “only one thing” that’s needed is her famous bean dip.  She doesn’t need to do the mac and cheese and tatertot hotdish, too.  The conclusion is that Martha is being fussy, bossy, and annoying, a stereotypical older sister.  She should just stop and sit like her wise, devoted sister, ready to learn from Jesus.  In this interpretation, Martha is the villain.  We can easily cheer for Mary and are grateful that Jesus sticks up for her.

Wait a minute.

But if we think about it, this doesn’t sit well for long. It’s easy to say, “Don’t worry about food” when bellies are full, but what happens when people start to get hangry?  We’re probably not just talking about feeding the three named characters here, either.  Jesus is traveling with a group of 70 disciples at the beginning of the chapter (vs. 10:1).  They may be at Martha’s too, as well as any villagers who want to learn from Jesus.  If Martha is feeding all these people on her own, it’s no wonder she’d like a little help from her sister.  We can see ourselves behaving the same way Martha does in this situation.  Can she really be the villain?  This is starting to feel like childhood holidays when, after cooking for days, the women are cleaning up after the meal while the men are napping.  A Jesus who supports that kind of Christmas doesn’t seem like the same one who sees the woman at the well or calls the hemorrhaging woman “daughter.”   What’s an English major to do?

What we always do.  Reread it and ask questions.  First, if Martha’s cooking, why doesn’t it say she’s cooking?  What is this “many tasks” and “much serving” language?  The Greek word here is the verb form of “diakonia,” which J.N. Collins claims denotes an “activity of a go-between kind.” (qtd in Carter, 269). It’s where the words deacon and deaconess come from, and in 75% of Luke’s usages of the word, it means not serving tables but “herald” or “messenger” (R.J. Karris, qtd in Thurston p. 106).  In addition, Bonnie Thurston explains, “Six of its eight uses in Acts (also written by Luke) point to leadership in the church and proclamation of the gospel” (109). Where is Martha going between?  The kitchen and the table or God and the people?  It’s hard to know for sure, and that’s why the translation is ambiguous. 

Another important question to ask is, “What’s going on around this story?”  A couple of words connect it to the rest of the chapter.  In 10:1, Jesus deploys seventy followers to places he himself intends to visit.  He gives them instructions regarding “entering” towns and finding hosts to ”welcome” them. In verse 38, Jesus “enters” the village where the women live and he’s “welcomed” by Martha. Warren Carter tells us that Martha’s “welcoming” of Jesus means much more than whipping out the good china for his sake.  Primarily it “denotes the embracing of the disciples’ mission” (Carter, 267).   In addition, the verb used for Martha’s action in approaching Jesus denotes an encounter with the divine throughout Luke and Acts. Holly Hearon says, “The use of this verb, coupled with the title “Lord,” suggests that Martha, like Mary, is being described in words intended to signal discipleship.  This is important if we are to avoid inappropriate contrasts between Martha and Mary.  Martha, who initially welcomed Jesus, continues to be described as a faithful follower of Jesus” (p. 394). 

While I love scripture that supports women in ministry, for our purposes maybe it’s not so important to decide exactly what Martha is doing.  It’s more essential to understand that Martha is just as much a disciple of Jesus as her sister and the 12 men who traditionally bear the label.  This story is not about “good” Mary sitting and listening and “bad” Martha being too distracted by her quiche to love Jesus.  It’s far more interesting than that.

Main character energy

So if neither woman is a villain, how do we analyze them?  Better terms for these two are main character vs. secondary character and complex character vs. simple character.  Martha is the main character, or if you want to be fancy, the protagonist.  She owns the house, she’s named as the one who welcomes Jesus into her home, and all the action centers around her.  We know her feelings, we hear her speak, and Jesus speaks to her.  Mary is both a simple and secondary character.  She’s simple because we can trust her at face value.  Mary is the sister who sits and listens to Jesus.  She doesn’t say a word when Martha confronts Jesus, nor does she jump up to help.  Mary seems to have one focus, with no internal conflicts. She may be an exemplary character, but she’s still secondary because we just don’t get to know much about her.   Being secondary does not deny Jesus’ affirmation of her.  It simply means she’s not where Luke wants our attention.  Luke wants us to focus on and relate to what’s happening with a more complex Martha.

A great character analysis question is “What is this character’s motivation?”  Martha has multiple motivations.  She has welcomed Jesus and perhaps his entire entourage into her home.  She’s invested in his message and feels a personal burden to make the day go well.  At first, the narrator tells us she’s “distracted” (vs. 40). She has lots to do.  Later, Jesus points out that she’s also “worried” (vs. 41).  That word connotes more than busyness.  She is becoming concerned that things aren’t going to turn out as she hopes.  And if things don’t turn out as she hopes, perhaps Martha wonders what that might say about her, and how this Jesus she serves will feel about her. Her motivation to prove herself adequate joins her initial motivation to support Jesus’ ministry.  Now, both her tasks and her feelings distract her. They build until she acts.  She does what many of us do when feeling discomfort: she skips right over examining her pain and jumps to the first solution that comes to mind. She needs to double her efforts!  Good thing she has a sister.  “Lord,” she says, “do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?  Tell her then to help me” (vs. 40).

Is it judgment or empathy?

But Jesus doesn’t buy it.  He empathetically points out the feelings Martha doesn’t want to see. “Martha, Martha,” he says tenderly, “You are worried and distracted by many things” (vs. 41). He’s not concerned with her service. He’s concerned with the state of her heart.  Getting Mary to help her will do nothing to assuage her fear that her efforts are not enough, that she’s not enough.  The only thing that will do that is sitting in the truth of God’s love for her.  That’s what Mary has chosen, which is the better part that won’t be taken from her.   Jesus is reminding Martha that as his disciple, she already has the one needed thing, and it’s not bean dip.  The unwavering love of God is already hers, and neither a fallen souffle’ nor a flopped ministry event can change that.  

When we get past the heroine/villain question, we discover a story about a complicated character learning to follow Jesus.  If that’s so, we should compare Martha to the other disciples-in-training in the chapter, even if they’re men.  Scholars have not frequently made this comparison but I’m not sure they’ve avoided it intentionally.   Lee sums the problem here up nicely.  This “reinforces the view that female characters cannot play a universal role in the biblical narrative,” and that limits our understanding of them (208).  But what if Luke didn’t share that view? Michael Coogan et al. claim that Luke’s style variations and broader inclusion of marginal members of society than the other gospels indicate that he’s writing to a universal audience.  Readers from “different religious, ethnic, and social backgrounds… could relate and thereby find a point of identity and entry into the story of Jesus Christ” (93).  Perhaps Luke understood in a way we’re still trying to figure out that representation matters.  Martha is a disciple, and we can all learn from her story, especially as we allow her to walk alongside any other disciple Luke presents us.  Let’s do that next time.

Works Cited

Carter, Warren. “Getting Martha our of the Kitchen: Luke 10:38-42.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 58 no 2 Apr 1996, p 264-280.

Collins, J.N. Diakonia: Reinterpreting the Ancient Sources, Oxford University Press, 1990. 

Coogan, Michael D., et al., assoc. editors. The New Oxford Annotated Bible Third Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Craddock, Fred B. Luke Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. John Knox Press, 1990.

Hearon, Holly. “Luke 10:38-42.” Interpretation, 58 no 4 Oct 2004, p 393-395.

Karris, R.J. “Women and Discipleship in Luke.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 56, 1994, 1-20.

Lee, Dorothy. “Mary and Martha: Levels of Characterization in Luke and John.” Characters and Characterization in the Gospel of John, edited by Christopher W. Skinner, Bloomsbury, 2013, p. 197-217.

Rakoczy, Susan. “Martha and Mary: Sorting out the Dilemma.”  Studies in Spirituality, 8 1998, p. 58-80.

Schussler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. “A Feminist Critical Interpretation for Liberation; Martha and Mary; Lk 10:38-42.”Religion and Intellectual Life, 3 no 2 Winter 1986, p 21-36.

Thurston, Bonnie.  Women in the New Testament, Questions and Commentary. The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998.