The Story of Martha and Mary

Martha means ‘lady of the house’.
Mary means ‘wise woman’ or ‘lady’; it is a Greek form of the Hebrew Miriam or Mariam.
Lazarus means ‘God has given help’.

What the story is about:
Martha and Mary of Bethany were two young women who knew Jesus well. They were close friends with him, and shared several important episodes in his life. Their stories were told not only for this reason, but because the early Christians were arguing about what a woman could and could not do. The stories about Martha and Mary staked a claim for women: that they could act as ministers within their communities.

The story of Martha and Mary of Bethany contains three different episodes:
1 Martha and Mary are visited by Jesus (Luke 10:38-42)
Martha and Mary offered hospitality to their friend Jesus, a respected but somewhat controversial Jewish rabbi. Mary sat and listened to him as he talked, but Martha objected to the fact that she was left with all the work. Jesus told Martha not to worry about small things, but to concentrate on what was important.
2 Martha and Mary ask for Jesus’ help (John 11:1-44)
Their brother Lazarus was dangerously ill, and in desperation Martha and Mary sent for Jesus. He delayed coming, and in the meantime Lazarus died. When Jesus arrived, both Martha and Mary were angry and reproached him for not coming sooner. But Martha also made an extraordinary statement of her faith in Jesus. He went to the tomb, prayed, and called to Lazarus. Lazarus came out, alive, from the tomb.
3 Mary of Bethany anoint Jesus (John 12:1-8)
Martha, Mary and Lazarus gave a dinner for Jesus. During the dinner, Mary anointed Jesus with expensive perfume. Judas objected to her extravagance, but Jesus defended her action.

JESUS VISITS MARTHA AND MARY
(Luke 10:38-42)
Martha and Mary are introduced as two sisters who offered hospitality to Jesus and the people traveling with him. They had a brother, Lazarus, who appeared in a story in John’s gospel. The three young people were friends of Jesus. They behaved with him in a natural way, speaking openly about what they thought. Jesus, who was quite capable of overwhelming people with his presence, was informal and easy in their company.

This was important for a man like Jesus. People who are held in high esteem, as Jesus was, are often isolated, even though they are at the center of the crowd. Leonardo da Vinci captures this isolation in his painting of The Last Supper: Jesus is sitting in the middle of a table with his friends all around him, but he seems alone, as those dearest to him lean away from him, separating themselves from him as they will do later, when he is arrested and faces death.

We know little about the background of Martha, Mary and Lazarus. They may have been orphans who had the management of their own lives, since there is no mention of their parents. Moreover the eldest of the three, Martha, appeared to be in control of the household.

They seemed to be affluent. They had a house large enough to accommodate many people, as their hospitality to Jesus and his group of friends shows. They appeared to have no occupation. Mary could afford to buy a very expensive perfume called nard. In a modern context, they were on a social level where the young sisters would have had a nose job before the age of twenty.

None of the three appeared to have a spouse. This was unusual in Jewish society, where people were usually married before the age of 20. This may mean that they were quite young, perhaps still in their teens, or that they were on the edge of society, and not acceptable in some way. In any case, they seem to have been young, comparatively well-off, independent, and intelligent.

The first story about them occurs in Luke’s gospel. It happened in a town near Jericho, which is between Galilee, where Jesus came from, and Jerusalem, where he died. Jesus visited their house. Martha prepared food for the guests; Mary sat and listened to Jesus.

‘Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and asked “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her “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”.’
(Read Luke 10:38-42)

The two women had complementary personalities. Martha was a doer, a capable young woman who organized and ran a fairly large household. Mary was a thinker, interested in ideas.
Martha objected to the fact that she had to work while Mary sat and listened. Jesus said that Mary had made the better choice.

MARTHA AND MARY ASK FOR JESUS’ HELP

(John 11:1-44)
A second story about Martha and Mary occurs in John’s gospel. It happened in the town of Bethany, a small town near Jerusalem but separated from it by the Kidron Valley. It was about three kilometers east of the city, a comfortable walk for people at that time.

Lazarus was very ill, so Martha and Mary sent a message to Jesus, asking him to come. Jesus received the message, but put off coming for two days. In the meantime, Lazarus died of his illness.
As was the custom, a continual stream of friends and relatives came to comfort Martha and Mary, and to mourn for Lazarus. After a funeral, the family of the dead person stayed at home for seven days, sitting barefoot on the floor or on a low bench. They did not wash themselves or their clothes, or do any work. They did not cook, but were given food by relatives. (See 'Major Events' for further information on death and burial in ancient Jewish culture.)

When Jesus eventually arrived, Lazarus had already been buried in the tomb for four days. The length of time, four days, is important. It means that the custom of inspecting the body three days after burial, to make sure that the person was dead, had already been carried out.
So Lazarus was not merely unconscious, as modern skeptics suggest. This point is driven home by Martha in verse 39, when she described the stench of the rotting body.

As Jesus approached, Martha went out to meet him on the road. She reproached him for being so long in coming.

‘When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him”. Jesus said to her “Your brother will rise again”. Martha said to him “I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day”. Jesus said to her “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him “Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world”.’
(Read John 11:20-27)

Distraught ,Martha berated Jesus for being absent when he was needed. She did not mince her words. Modern interpretations of the New Testament assume that women at that time were down-trodden and docile, but I’ve known quite a few Jewish women, and ‘docile’ is not a word I’d use to describe any of them.

But then as Martha continued talking, she named Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God. This is the central moment of the story. Martha said the same words that Peter said in Mark 8:29. On the strength of these words, Peter went on to become the first leader of the Christian community. The writer of John’s gospel suggests that Martha had an equal right to authority, because she had an equal understanding of who Jesus was.

John inserted the story into his gospel to stifle the argument that was raging in the Christian community. Since the day of Pentecost, when the Christian church began, women had been acting as deacons, preaching about Jesus and presiding over eucharistic meals. But opposition had arisen because this did not mirror the position that women held in society at the time. By telling the stories about Martha and Mary, John showed that Jesus treated women as the equal of men, and implied that Christian practice should do the same.

After speaking with Jesus, Martha called Mary. Mary ran to Jesus, weeping with terrible grief, and Jesus was deeply upset by the sight of her pain.
Jesus went to the tomb, had the stone taken away from its entrance, prayed, and then called loudly to Lazarus. Lazarus appeared, alive, still wrapped in the linen strips of cloth used to cover his corpse. Many Jews believed in Jesus after witnessing this event.

The term ‘the Jews’ is used in several ways in the gospels. In the story you have just read, John meant ‘the Jewish friends and relatives of the family’. Remember that Jesus and the people he knew were Jewish. At other times, when John spoke of ‘the Jews’, he meant any people with closed minds. People like this can be found in any nationality.
John was writing for a community of Jews who had moved away from traditional Judaism, so his portrayal of Jews often reflected the dislike this community felt for traditional Jews.

MARY OF BETHANY ANOINTS JESUS

(John 12:1-8)
In the last year of his ministry, Jesus again visited his friends at Bethany, just prior to going into Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover.

This was the week before his death. All his friends knew that Jesus was in grave danger. They did not want him to go anywhere near Jerusalem (see John 11:8 and 11:16). The house at Bethany was a safe place, a refuge.
Martha, Mary and Lazarus gave a dinner for Jesus and the people who were with him.

In was the custom when guests arrived for dinner to give them a refreshing foot bath. Then they either sat at a table, or lay propped up on couches surrounding a central food table. People always ate from a communal center platter, which contained the main dish. There might be small side dishes. It was essential to wash themselves before eating, because they ate with their fingers from the one plate - knives and forks were not used, and food was scooped up with a piece of bread (see John 13:26). Depending on the circumstances, women and men might share a meal, sitting together. Because they prepared the food, women also brought the food to the table, as Martha did in this story. Martha served at the meal.

‘Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.’
(Read John 11:1-4)

The story of the dinner, as told by John, is set on a Sunday evening, when members of the early Christian communities met to share a eucharistic celebration. This was no accident. John, writing circa 100CE, used several levels of meaning in the story. At the first level, Martha ‘served’ at the meal.
But on a second level of meaning Martha was acting as a deacon at a eucharistic celebration. The word ‘served’ in Greek was diakonein; it was the term used for deacons in the early Christian church. This word was used in both stories about Martha and Mary, in Luke’s and John’s gospels.

During the meal, Mary took a container of oil of nard (oil extracted from a balsam tree), broke it, and anointed Jesus’ feet with the expensive perfume. Then she wiped his feet with her hair.

Anointing with oil has always had deep religious significance. It is performed at the coronation of a monarch. In the Jewish world, it was a symbolic action which announced that the person anointed was especially favored by God. In the Old Testament, prophets anointed future kings, for example, Samuel anointed the future King David.
When Mary anointed Jesus, she may have been anointing him as a king, the Messiah - Mark’s gospel hinted at this when it said that what she had done would always be remembered (Mark 14:3-0).

Judas, a close friend of Jesus, objected to the waste of money. He reasoned that the money should be given to people in need - and of course he had a point. Judas was particularly aware of the value of money because he was the organizer of the group who traveled with Jesus, in charge of the money that they carried with them. He paid for food and lodging from the contributions that wealthy supporters gave Jesus.
In a bitter aside written long after Jesus' death, the writer of John’s gospel suggests that Judas was not honest in this task.

But Jesus defended Mary’s apparent extravagance. He knew he was in great danger, and that the path he meant to take might end in a terrible death. Being fully human he could not see into the future, but he knew the probable consequences of the actions he planned. He had many enemies who would bring him down if they could.
Mary also knew the danger that Jesus was in, and that he faced an ominous future. She offered her gift as a comfort and a reassurance to him, and perhaps as something more. She believed he was the Messiah, and the nard was her anointing oil.

Summary
Jesus said and did many things during the course of his life. Only a fraction of these are recorded in the gospels. So when we read the stories, we ask

Why was this particular event seen as important? Why was it, and not some other incident, recorded?

These questions are especially important in the stories about Martha and Mary, which held significant messages for the early Christian communities about problems that were surfacing at the time.
Some of these problems were about the role of women. Should women be ministers? Or should the traditional Jewish custom be followed, with ministry held by men only? Other ancient religions had priests and priestesses. Which pattern should the Christian communities adopt?

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO THE STORY

Though he lived centuries before Christ, Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) influenced the Jewish world in which Martha and Mary lived. Alexander was not merely a military conqueror, but a visionary with an ambition to spread Greek culture throughout the world.
There was much that was refined and intelligent in Hellenistic (that is, Greek) culture, and many Jews were tempted to adopt it. But as they did, they found that their own culture and identity were threatened. For this reason, Greek culture was resisted by many Jews and its influence was uneven.

For example, Nazareth where Jesus grew up was a conservative town that clung to traditional Jewish culture. But only a few miles away the town of Sepphoris showed strong Greek influence, with a Graeco-Roman theatre capable of seating 5000 people. So it is difficult to generalize about the impact of Greek culture. Nevertheless, its influence was pervasive, and eventually altered European thought and culture.

An aerial view of the ruins of Sepphoris, and a colonnaded street there that Jesus and Joseph may have helped to build

In 63BC the Roman general Pompey occupied Jerusalem. From that time until after the time of Jesus, Palestine was governed as a vassal state by the Romans. The ruler of Palestine from 37-4BC was Herod the Great, who was a great builder, founding among other things the seaport of Caesarea and the fortress of Masada. He rebuilt the Temple (the present-day Wailing Wall in Jerusalem dates from this time). He also helped to finance the Olympic games in Greece!
In 4BC Herod was succeeded in Judea by his son Archeleus, who mismanaged state affairs so badly that he was removed from office by the Romans, and replaced by an official called a procurator, who supervised the troops, gathered taxes, and administered criminal justice.

During these later years, most of Palestine was undergoing a serious economic recession. Despite the fertility of the land, there was unemployment and poverty throughout the country. The great building programs of Herod the Great had come to an end, throwing thousands of tradesmen out of work. Without a modern social security system to fall back on, the families of these unemployed men were in a serious situation.
The gospels show evidence of social dislocation and political unrest. Jesus’ arrest, trial and execution took place in a climate of political instability and economic uncertainty.

ATTITUDES TO WOMEN AT THAT TIME

Gospel stories are often discussed as if they happened in isolation, outside the real world. But in fact they occurred within a historical context, against a cultural background quite different to our own. Knowing about the world of the gospel gives the reader a better understanding of the stories.

Greek philosophy was greatly admired at the time of Jesus, and it had a profound impact on the way that people saw their world. One of the greatest philosophers, Plato, proposed the theory of dualism, suggesting that everything in the cosmos had an equal and opposite other. This theory had a profound impact on the way that women were viewed, and it was not to women's advantage. 'Woman' was placed in a category containing elements that were viewed as negative:

   Man   -                 Woman
  Civilization   -      Nature
  Reason/logic   - Emotion
  Good   -               Evil
  Light   -                Darkness

Keep in mind that
   Civilization was the ideal; Nature was mistrusted and potentially dangerous
   Logic and reason were admired, and emotion was to be subordinated.
   Goodness was always preferable to evil.
   Light, especially in the pre-industrial world, was preferred to darkness.

These are examples only, but they show that Platonic dualism placed women in a negative category. They were seen as closer to the natural/animal world than men. By nature they were irrational and untrustworthy, and therefore unfit to make their own decisions and govern their own lives. They had to be looked after and controlled, never treated as equals.

This differed from the traditional Jewish way of looking at the world, which saw all things in creation as integrated and complementary, rather than as opposites of each other. An example of this is the creation story of Eve, which relates that the first woman was created from a rib taken by God from Adam's side, thereby suggesting that a man could never be fully complete unless he was in partnership with a woman.

Jewish and Jewish/Christian women resisted the ideas of Platonic dualism, which patronized them and diminished their status. While Christianity remained a Jewish sect, the status of women within the Christian communities was high.

But as the ideas of Christianity moved out into the Gentile, Hellenised world, the first Christians found they had to use the Greek philosophical framework to explain their beliefs and be accepted. So Jesus' original ideal of mutual respect between the sexes was watered down and changed. Women found they were given roles that were acceptable in the outside, Hellenistic culture. In doing so, the Christian church stepped back from the radical ideals of the first Jewish/Christians.

Women were still powerful in the private sphere, but were shunted to the side in the public arena. This shows up, for example, in 1st and 2nd century re-tellings of the biblical stories. Where these stories had often had women as central characters, they now focused on men and male activities.

An example of this is the story of Moses’ birth in Josephus’ Antiquities (Josephus was a Jewish writer and historian of the 1st century BC).
In the original biblical telling of the story (in Exodus 1 and 2) the baby Moses is saved by the two midwives, by his mother, by his sister, and by Pharaoh’s daughter – all, obviously, women.

In Josephus’ retelling of the story written in about 94AD, the focus is largely on Moses’ father Amram. He performs many of the actions previously attributed to the women. Female characters in the story are changed. The mid-wives in Josephus’ retelling
   are Egyptian, not Hebrew
   are unnamed
   are not present at Moses' birth
   kill Hebrew babies, not save them.
The basic story of Moses’ birth remains the same, but the female dimension has been lost.

There were reasons for the changes Josephus made to the story. He was trying to counter the anti-Semitism that existed in Rome at the time, so he wrote about Jewish women who behaved like decent Roman matrons! This ideal of Roman womanhood had been vigorously promoted in a ‘back to basics’ program by the emperor Augustus and the Roman authorities.

The ideal Roman woman, they said, was a mother of many children, content with her household duties. She kept to her traditional role, in the home, and did not speak assertively to the men in her family. She did not enter the public world.