Living Wittily

When Martha Leaves the Kitchen to Do the Hoovering!

Eileen Kennedy is a contemporary American artist whose telling of the story of "Jesus in the house of Martha and Mary" is a powerful image of contrasts. Jesus is dressed in the traditional white robe, sandals, long brunette hair, beard and sitting in the classic pose of the teacher, hands gesturing towards the listener. Mary is sitting relaxed but attentive, leaning towards Jesus, eyes on his face, hands clasped either in prayer or in restful inaction. The sleeping cat adds to the impression of unhurried, non-stressful space.

A larger than life Martha looms over them, dominating the painting by size, demeanour and colour contrast. Her body language is impatient and annoyed, hand on hip holding the cable, other hand gripping the hoover, looking only at Mary, her whole presence an interruption of the conversation between Mary and Jesus; in addition, imagine the noise of the hoover, and the non-negotiable expectation of every hoover operator that those in the way should move to allow their space to be cleaned.

Yellow roses are variously linked with platonic friendship, wisdom and joy, affirmation of life as reminders of the sun. That they act as a partial screen for Jesus, while by contrast the two women are in full view, and their conflicting moods made plain by the body language. Kennedy has some fun with the rose screen. Beside Martha's elbow are two small bluebirds, looking into each other's faces. Lovebirds? Above them a golden bird with feathered tail in full display; frustrated at being left out? And near Jesus ankle a small red bird, meaning what? A tiny intimation of the Passion which lies ahead?

Whose side is the artist on? There is no sign in the painting of Jesus even noticing Martha, His head is facing directly at Mary, whose own head stays level so we are assuming she is looking up. It is an image of intense and exclusive exchange. Martha is annoyed, and from the composition of the painting the viewer may well have sympathy with her. In contrast to the biblical story in Luke 10.38-42, there is no sign of food, kitchen or hospitality. Martha is doing the housework; the hoover is an instrument of interruption, its noise a drowning down of the voice of Jesus and a distraction for Mary by created by Martha, who is driven to distraction by her sister's supposed selfishness. Is Kennedy hinting that Martha is about to bump Mary's seat with the hoover, which occupies the focal centre of the painting?

Kennedy's painting is cunning in a constructive way; it is also subversive of a story too often framed by pious stereotypes that miss the complexity of relationships put under strain by emotional tensions. The painting doesn't resolve those tensions; it highlights them, leaving the viewer to decide what is going on in the heads and hearts of the three protagonists.

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary: Martha Scunnered in the Scullery!

^{I'm spending a lot of time thinking about this! I am writing a paper on the recepetion history of this passage, and looking at how it has been portrayed in art, as well as explained in recent exegesis.}

^{Luke 10.38-42}  As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. ³⁹ She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

⁴¹ “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

For the best part of two thousand years Martha has been remembered as the woman who got a row from Jesus for her pan rattling annoyance at having to do all the work while Mary just sat there.

Well, to be fair, she didn't just sit there, she was listening to Jesus, paying attention to what he was saying. Ever since, the contrast has been persistently made between contemplation and action, between prayerful devotion and practical service, between sitting at the feet of Jesus and standing at the kitchen sink. Such a dichotomy has created a devotional dualism, a hierarchy of spiritualities ranging from the contemplative love of God, with its attentiveness, love of silence, and single focus on the love of God, and descending towards an energetic busyness in the service of others as a much more practical, physical and material way of loving God, by love for the other. And it is the hands clasped contemplative that is deemed the more spiritual, and the busy hands on activism considered lower league spirituality. The contrast is mistaken, and the dualism is damaging. It pushes apart the two commandments which are the distillation of all Christian obedience - love of God and love of neighbour.

Luke's telling of this story, (and his is the only Gospel to record this incident), is clearly intended to make a point. But is it the point that seems so obvious, that Jesus rebuked Martha for being overbusy, and for complaining about Mary's absence from the kitchen? Along with careful study of the text itself, I'm also interested in Luke's literary skill, and wondering why he placed this story right here in his Gospel. Think of what comes immediately before; the story of the Good Samaritan, told to answer the question, 'Who is my neighbour?" So the second of the great commandments is illustrated in practice - the Samaritan demonstrates love for neighbour.

Now, who will demonstrate the first great commandment, love for God, wholehearted and total devotion by the whole self? Luke has told us often enough; it is the one who hears Jesus Word, who listens to the Word and does it. The disciple is the one who not only listens but hears, who not only looks but sees, the one who is all eyes and all ears in the presence of the One who comes with the Word of the Kingdom of God. So, following the story that illustrates love of neighbour, we have this story of Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to what he said. And while Jesus undoubtedly affirms and defends Mary's attentive listening, the question is whether his words to Martha are rebuke for her actions, or answer to her complaint about her sister.

"She has chosen the better part" is certainly a hard saying to hear, but think of Martha preparing an elaborate menu, when simple food is all that's required, says the courteous guest; and hear the sympathy of Jesus is in the playful affection with which he says Martha's name, twice, and acknowledges she's distracted and upset; and somewhere in all the relational dynamics of a home charged and electrified by the presence of the most honoured of guests, we have two women, not vying to show who loves the most, but expressing each their individual devotion and love as fully as their own personalities, skills and experience will permit. That they collide in the intensity of the occasion is no surprise; but nor is it a reason to devalue Martha's work or uncritically embrace Mary's choice of the better part.

These are initial thoughts. The painting above by Velazquez (around 1618) is a study in the ambiguities of the story. Is Martha the one who is red faced, upset, pounding garlic, and wishing she was elsewhere? And is the older woman pointing at the scene through the serving hatch, at Mary not pulling her weight. Or is she the maid frantically trying to get things done, and in the scene through the hatch we see Martha behind Mary complaining at her inactivity at the very time the house needs to be busy if they are to honour their guest? Either way, the painting captures powerfully the unhappiness and resentment of unappreciated hard work. Velazquez doesn't idealise the interior of the kitchen, nor does he paint Martha as anything other than an overworked hassled woman, with neither time nor energy to worry about her appearance, and near the end of her tether!

Velasquez' painting reflects the popular Catholic piety of his times in the context in early 17th Century Spain. Forty years earlier Teresa of Avila had published The Interior Castle, even by then a virtual handbook on the contemplative life. In that book the story of Mary and Martha is the subject of long meditation about the one thing necessary, and contemplation as the better part, and Mary emerges as the ideal contemplative, and Martha the lay Christian called to the lesser role of ordinariness. But in the next post we'll look at a painting altogether less partial to Mary and more generous to Martha. 

Grant us Wisdom, Grant Us Courage......

Harry Emerson Fosdick used to be a name to conjure with in the first half of the Twentieth Century. He is largely forgotten now. One of the great preachers of a liberal and generous Gospel, he was long time minister of Riverside Church, built by Rockefeller in 1930. Fosdick started off as a Baptist, but was no Fundamentalist, held a progressive view of revelation and a non literalist approach to the Bible, and in social concern and social justice issues was outspoken, influential and often enough controversial.

I was thinking about him this morning, having chosen his famous hymn "God of grace and God of glory" as the hymn opening our worship. Sometimes our hunger for innovation, over-concern with relevance, insistence that hymns reflect personal experience rather than objective affirmation of faith in God, all combine to dull our awareness of that world out there and the realities that have to be encountered and navihated every day. Not so Fosdick, though his hymn was itself thoroughly contemporary, painfully and unuashamedly relevant. But its strength is in its unflinching confession of the mess of things, and its recurring refrain for us to be granted wisdom and courage for this hour, these days, this time. As we sang this there was an unmistakable sense of a congregation in serious agreement with words that spoje with prophetic clarity into the stae of our world, our country and of the heart and mind of contemporary culture. It is a hymn adaptable to our deepest prayers, and an affirmation, if we need it, of our faith in God when a whole lot else is proving transient, unpredictable and uncertain.

In the world of Aleppo and Haiti, of Trump and Clinton, of Brexit and the fallout in an increasingly divided society, of concern about increases in hate crime, anti-semitism and xenophobia, the rise of international scale emergencies such as mass immigration and the breakdown of international stability and the slow erosion of the authority of the great institutions such as the United Nations, the increasing undermining of the work of the Intenrational Red Cross and Medecin sans Frontieres, to the slow progress in action to slow down climate change and avart permanent damage to our planet and all the living creatures who share it with us - yes that is one long sentence, a whole paragraph!

But it is only a select and small list of what it is our world faces, the world in which I as a follower of Jesus am called to live as peacemaker, reconciler, carer of creation, worker for justice, conduit and inspirer of hope. So I need hymns like this, to remind me, of the brokenness of the world, and the redemptive grace and glory of God.

1 God of grace and God of glory,
on your people pour your power;
crown your ancient church's story,
bring its bud to glorious flower.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
for the facing of this hour,
for the facing of this hour.

2 Lo! the hosts of evil round us
scorn the Christ, assail his ways!
From the fears that long have bound us
free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
for the living of these days,
for the living of these days.

3 Cure your children's warring madness;
bend our pride to your control;
shame our wanton, selfish gladness,
rich in things and poor in soul.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
lest we miss your kingdom's goal,
lest we miss your kingdom's goal.

4 Save us from weak resignation
to the evils we deplore;
let the gift of your salvation
be our glory evermore.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
serving you whom we adore,
serving you whom we adore.

H E Fosdick, 1930

Thinking about Forgiveness 2. A Giving God and a Forgiving God

One of the significant thinkers about forgiveness and reconciliation is Miroslav Volf, whose book Exclusion and Embrace was written out of the tragedy of the Balkan war in the 1990's. His home village was attacked by Serbian Cetniks, and subjected to atrocities such as rape, summary execution and arson. In the Preface Volf remembers being asked a question following a paper he had delivered at a theological conference about forgiveness and reconciliation. The influential theologian Jurgen Moltmann asked if, for all the fine theology and theory, he could now emabrace a Cetnik. Volf's answer was searingly honest, and radically charged. He said no he could not - but as a follower of Jesus he must.

And there it is. The dilemma of the enemy, whether perpetrator or victim. How to do the morally impossible even when it is a moral imperative; how to be obedient to God when the whole being revolts at what is demanded. To witness atrocity against our neighbours, our family, to bear the consequences and memory of cruelty, intentional affliction and hate articulated in word, action and cultural violence; how to even think in terms of forgiveness without satisfaction, redress, indeed justice?

Volf's book Exclusion and Embrace was a watershed treatment of how humans respond to inflicted violence, enacted enmity and deliberate relational rejection. Either the heart builds walls that exclude and reject, or it finds a way to embrace, dismantle walls and pursue friendship as the ultimate security of justice. It's a hard book to read, not only because of the subject matter. It is at times technical, socially analytic, psychologically exploratory, and all this in pursuit of a theological foundation for seeing the other, however hated and hating, as one we will seek to embrace rather than exclude. 

One of Volf's more accessible treatments of this whole nexus of ethical and theological problems is Free of Charge. Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. Even the title is a reset button for many of our assumptions about the drivers and motives of a consumerist and competitive society. Near the start of the book he writes a paragraph that will be unfolded throughout:

God generously gives, so God is not a negotiator of absolute dimensions. God demands, so God is not an infinite Santa Claus. So what is the relation between God's giving and God's demanding? In other words, what is the difference between a Santa Claus God and a gift giving God? The bare-bones answer is this; a Santa Claus God gives simply so we can have and enjoy things; the true God gives so we can become joyful givers and not just self-absorbed receivers. God the giver has made us to be givers and obliges us therefore to give. page 28

And out of that generosity of giving and receiving is born the disposition to forgive. Later Volf speak out of his own experience of the courage and moral faith that enables forgiveness:

We give when we delight in others or others are in need; by giving we enhance their joy or make up for their lack. We forgive when others have wronged us; by forgiving we release them from the burden of their wrongdoing. The difference lies in the violation suffered, in the burden of wrongdoing, offence, transgression, debt. And that's what makes it more difficult to forgive than to give. page 130

The cost of forgiveness, and the connection between Christian forgiveness and the Christian experience and understanding of God are major strands in all of Volf's writing. The giving God is a forgiving God - but forgiveness is not indulgence of evil, which would neither be justice nor mercy. The dynamics of forgiveness, the anatomy of justice in relation to both mercy and punishment, the moral imperative not to hate and the equal demand to protect the vulnerable and bring justice to the victim, mean that forgiveness is no simple wiping of a slate, no ignoring of offence, no obscuring of the consequences of evil. The Christian faith instinctively turns to ponder the cross and its meaning in the heart of God and for the life of the world. While the ideas of a giving and forgiving God can be spoken as a sound byte, in reality they are truths rooted in the eternal love of God and the tragedy of a broken creation. Hence the focus of the first post in this series.

Thinking about Forgiveness 1. Living From and Towards Reconciliation.

When it comes to forgiveness Christians should be well ahead of the game. At the dark centre of the Christian message is a cross, occupied by a crucified Messiah, whose last words were a howl of abandonment (Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthami - My God why have you forsaken me? Mk 15.34), followed by the brokenhearted sigh of resignation (Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Lk 23.46).

The earliest Gospel is unflinching in its storytelling, and offers no comment on that anguished cry of dereliction. Several decades later it would take Paul at his most penetrating as out of that story of crucified love he forged a theology adequate to the Christian experience of forgiveness. "God made him who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Cor 5.21)

And those words only tiptoe to the edge of the abyss;there is much more, hinted at earlier in Paul's argument about the necessity, meaning, cost and consequences of reconciliation: "He died for all that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for him, who died and was raised again." (v15)

Sixteen hundred years later the quiet Anglican parson, George Herbert, also teetered on the edsge of the mystery. In a poem that demolishes human pride, whether from complacency or defiance Herbert distilled words into such a concentrated sequence of images that his poem remains one of the most potent analyses of the anguish and cost of forgiveness. In "The Agonie", the forgiver is the Holy Creator redeeming fallen humanity and absorbing into the eternal heart of God the sin and suffering of a broken creation, turning judgment to mercy and guilt to forgiveness in an alchemy of holy love condemning sin to nothingness. But at a cost both fatal and vital.

The Agonie

Philosophers have measur'd mountains,
Fathom'd the depths of the seas, of states, and kings,
Walk'd with a staff to heav'n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.

Who would know SIn, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments bloody be.
Sin is that press and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through ev'ry vein.

Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach, then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.

Paul's magnificent argument for reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5 is anchored in the granite of a grace that is eternal, infinite, unsearchable, and embodied in Jesus. "No one has ever seen God; the only son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known...and from his fullness we ahve all received grace upon grace."  Herbert takes that bedrock truth of grace unspeakable and unthinkable and uses it as a lens to look at the passion story of Jesus. And the mystery, abysmal and beyond any horizon reachable by reason, is that the man so wrung with pains is the one in whom the holy love of God confronted and suffered the deepest sin, the darkest hours, the fatal consequences, of the soul abandoned by God to the point of extinction. Reading that poem, entitled "The Agonie" is an education in the greatest mystery of human life - the existence of evil and suffering as negations of hope, joy and life itself.

Herbert is not offering explanations; neither is Paul. To "sound" sin and love, to plumb the depths of that eternal antithesis, is beyond human capacity. But out of that antithesis came a reversal of reality so potent with creative power that it is best described as a new beginning. The death and resurrection of Jesus called in question, indeed contradicted, the powers of hate, the destructiveness of violence, the permanence of despair and death as the ultimate threat to life. That's why Paul could say, "If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come." (2 Cor 5.17)

Forgiveness is the reality that is called into being by a holy love that confronts sin and nullifies it by absorbing its cost and consequence, by an eternal patience that both judges and suffers the worst sin can do, and by a grace of such rich mercy that through it God evokes and answering love, a grateful gladness and a hope both durable and plausible.  

The photo was taken by my friend Graeme Clarke - sunset on one of the iron crosses on the cloister railings of Paisley Abbey