“HEAR the word of the Lord!” When the prophets utter that command, they aren’t speaking as themselves, but because the Lord. They aren’t passing on their judgements about God. They are, in that context, God himself passing judgment.
Here, Luke tells how Mary “sat on the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying”. When her sister, Martha, grumbles about that fact, Jesus teaches Martha that listening to the Lord’s word is an important thing anyone can do. It is more necessary than guest-friendship, that system of obligation and expectation which drove Martha into busy-ness. It was so powerful that it once led Lot to barter his own daughters to guard his guests (Genesis 19.8).
In English, we will distinguish between “listening” and “hearing”. We may experience audition (the receiving of auditory signals); we can even shift from receiving a signal to acting on it. In this manner, each “hear” and “listen” can shade into “heeding”, even “obeying”.
When we “hear” the word of the Lord, it should all the time be on this broader sense of “hearing-and-heeding”. The prophetic call “Hear the word of the Lord” commands our attention and fixes it on the message being imparted. All this work is finished, in Greek, by one verb: akouo can seek advice from hearing, listening, and heeding. Hearing the Lord’s word properly should result in obeying the Lord’s word.
What was Jesus saying, to which Mary paid such heed, and which Martha was missing out on? Luke doesn’t tell us. The last recorded teaching before this encounter was the parable of the Good Samaritan. After it, Jesus “entered a village” where Martha welcomed him into her home. Perhaps he spoke in additional detail, there within the sisters’ house, about being neighbour. Or he could have been preparing the bottom for teaching how one can pray, which Luke describes immediately after this passage.
Once we see this Gospel in context, set between the Good Samaritan and the Lord’s Prayer, a possibility comes as much as see it as an exegesis of the preceding parable: about behaving as neighbour, being practical, kind, and considerate. Martha’s invitation to the Lord to enter her home — and the difficulty that she goes to when busying herself on her guest’s behalf — could possibly be a real-life example of the sensible kindness offered by the Samaritan.
But the Samaritan was commended for being neighbour. What is there in Martha’s actions which results in criticism of her practical kindness? She has been neighbour to Jesus (and doubtless a few of his followers) by welcoming him. Presumably she did so due to teachings that she had heard and heeded earlier. Now, though, she has stopped hearing and heeding the word of the Lord.
Her hospitality is commendable. But it shouldn’t be the best type of “heeding” the Lord. I feel sad on Martha’s behalf, because she makes me consider the countless armies of faithful women (historically, it has mostly been women) who set the scene for the Lord’s word to be heard by others, while missing out on hearing it themselves: those nippers-out and switchers-on of urns for post-service hot drinks, and other behind-the-scenes helpers. The hearing of some, in church, tends to rely upon the sacrificial missing-out of others — normally with the identical ungrateful result.
Wait a minute. Did I just call Jesus ungrateful? I feel I did. Time to reformulate —fast. There is a positive message to be present in the episode. But we’d like to expand the scene imaginatively, if we’re to discern it. That will get us further than reading it as some abstract antagonism between motion and contemplation.
Imagining what people need after which providing it’s thing. A warm welcome, plentiful foods and drinks, and a cushty bed are blessings indeed. But hospitality can develop into oppressive. Too much fuss is a burdensome type of solicitude, really in regards to the self: “Look at me and my wonderful attentiveness!” Like restaurant staff trained to hover, asking, at ten-minute intervals, “How is all the pieces?
Martha invited Jesus because she desired to hear him. Perhaps her desire to display her attentiveness became an end in itself. She tried to point out her love by doing things for Jesus. All he really wanted was for her to value herself, by hearing the word of the Lord.
