One of the delightfully weird gifts of being Christians in the year of Our Lord 2025 is that we get to reflect on some of the more unique and quirky Christian narratives that have made up our religious history. The people, stories, and power of our sacred text did not survive 2,000 years without some interesting side-quests. Some of my favorites are stories from the Middle Ages, because things got wild back then. This week, I learned of The Golden Legend from France, around the 1500s—a narrative that images what Mary and Martha’s life was like after Christ ascended. According to the legend, they hopped a boat with Lazarus (their brother), but no provisions, oars, or any other navigation systems other than the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and they found themselves on the banks of Southern France. The two sisters’ lives take diverging, but equally faithful and fascinating paths. Mary occupies a castle and becomes a Christian mystic, studying and praying, much like she is seen doing at Jesus’ feet in our gospel lesson this morning. Martha, who insists on her discipleship being active and engaged in a different way, finds herself living the life of one who slays dragons that are half beast – half fish, saving poor people from the ravages of evil, directing them to follow Christ. Other details about this legend, like the fact that Saint Maximin was also supposedly on this boat with them but lived in the 3rd century are not important.
To be honest, there are parts of this Golden Legend that are less…sticky…for me, I suppose, than our gospel lesson. I struggle with this passage from the gospel according to Luke, because we see Martha welcome Jesus to extending teachings to her fellow disciples, offering hospitality to not only him, but likely to all who were present. Some level of me seems sure that there is joy and maybe even delight in this work for Martha. It is expected of women like her, but sometimes, the boxes that society puts you into matches with your gifts; but no one likes to carry a burden alone. Martha’s sister, Mary, carried those same societal expectations but in this instance, surrounded by the other disciples of Christ, she chose to abandon the norms and to sit at the feet of Jesus. This angered Martha, and while I only have a brother, I’ve met enough women who have sisters to know that this anger likely isn’t purely about this current situation. Martha approaches Jesus with the righteous anger of an indignant eldest daughter, speaking from personal experience, and asks/demands that Jesus makes Mary get back to the kitchen and do the work she is supposed to do and help Martha out. But Jesus responds to Martha’s petitions with what sounds like a condescending correction, telling her that Mary has chosen the better path.
As an eldest daughter who is inclined to be the one in the kitchen cleaning up, I have often felt shamed by this passage, and I’m pretty confident that it’s been how it’s been taught and preached to me, not how Luke is relaying it, but regardless, I find the dynamic between Mary, Martha, and Jesus to be tricky. We could uphold Mary’s bravery to sit at Jesus’ feet, or Martha’s devotion to the needed service. We could break down the ways in which Jesus seems to uphold Mary’s choice as the better path, yet the millennia of suppression of women who sought to follow in this exact path. But what really is compelling to me, especially in the sort of complexity of this passage as I prayed through it this week thinking about St. Andrews, is something far more interesting. One of the messages I hear from the story of Mary and Martha is one that asks us not to choose sides, but rather to remember what we are about.
“Martha, Martha,” Jesus says, “you are worried and distracted by many things.” As someone who has identified with Martha all my life, I found that line to be particularly compelling. But who among us isn’t worried and distracted by many things these days? The core of the words “worried” and “distracted” are quite visceral and imply a disconnection between us and the things that we value; to “worry” is to strangle and suffocate and to “distract” is to drag apart something that should be whole. I can almost hear Christ gently saying, “Becca, Becca, you are worried and distracted by many things.”
What I hear in Jesus’ (hopefully) gentle correction of Martha is a reminder that if we are a soul that is divided by sin or by busyness, then we feel lost, no matter what good works we seek to do. What I hear in today’s gospel is a calling for us to ground our work to the world in devotion before we get busy. What I hear in today’s gospel is actually an invitation….to do less.
Now, this may come as a surprise as we begin this partnership as Faith Community and Canon Missioner once a month, and y’all talk on back if you hear something else, because this is the gospel for all of God’s people. But what I hear is a calling for the gathering of God’s people of Saint Andrew’s to scale back and sit at Jesus’ feet. A calling to lay our worries and distractions collectively at Christ’s feet and to lean into our God-given wholeness and belovedness. And I hear a calling to pray boldly, yet humbly naming before God all of those worries and distractions outright as we lay them down. For Martha in our story, all that is recounted is that a bit of repressed sister rivalry and delayed appreciation caused her worries and distractions, and I know that for so many of us, it is identity, local and national politics, family issues, personal realities, as well as the logistics of keeping up with the life of St. Andrew’s that all risk severing our attention from the one and most important thing: the teachings of Christ. And perhaps most importantly, in my prayer, I have heard a calling to be persistent in that prayer, to weave our energy and attention into the teachings of Christ, to be open to the Holy Spirit, and to be willing to lean upon each other as God leads through these next days.
A sermon delivered on July 20, 2025 to the people of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lexington, Kentucky for Proper 11C on Luke 10:38-42.
Becca Kello 