Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Luke 10:38-42
August 1, 2004
I don’t know why everybody crams into the kitchen. But every time we throw a party or host a family gathering, that’s where people seem to end up. So last year, when we bought in Bloomfield, we got ourselves the biggest kitchen we have ever had. Not so it can hold all the food, but so it can hold all the people. Apparently, we are not alone. Every time I read real estate brochures, among the descriptions that leap off the page is the one that proclaims “large country kitchen.” Years ago, my grandmother used to say to anybody who ventured into her space: “G’wan, now, shoo. Get out of my kitchen.” Today, even the fussiest cook craves company.
Although company can prove distracting. Thinking about kitchens got me thinking about Dinah, as in:
Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,
Someone’s in the kitchen, I know.
Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,
Strumming on the old banjo.
And unable to get that lyric out of my head, I just had to know what it was all about. Only to discover that nobody knows for sure.
You and I know the text is from the song, “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” But the origin of the tune is unknown. Some trace it back to a Louisiana levee song sung by African-Americans. Others believe it was an old hymn tune adapted by Irish work gangs out west. Texans clearly adapted it for the words “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You.”
As concerns the “railroad” version of the song, I have read arguments suggesting that Dinah is a word that means “locomotive”….a corrupted dialect for the word “dinner” (“dinnah”)….or the name of a female cook. I’ll go with the cook. Which would mean that the horn (as in “Dinah, blow your horn”) is something akin to a dinner bell. I suppose if you’ve been “working all the live-long day” to the point of extreme hunger, and Dinah hasn’t yet rung the bell or blown the horn for supper, you might begin to wonder what’s with Dinah out there in the kitchen. Or, more to the point, who’s with Dinah out there in the kitchen. And what could be happening in the kitchen that’s keeping dinner from coming out of the kitchen? But nobody knows for sure.
At any rate, we’ve got a little “kitchen story” here. And it doesn’t take a Duke Divinity School intern to know that the problem in this text is that no one’s in the kitchen with Martha. She’s out there all by herself….frying and fussing….sautéing and stewing….baking and boiling. Jesus has come by. And her sister, Mary, has parked herself at his feet, lifting nary a finger to assist with dinner.
But if the problem in the text is that no one’s in the kitchen with Martha, the problem with the text (meaning the problem faced by the preacher in preaching the text) is that all kinds of people are in the kitchen with Martha. Churches are full of Marthas….male Marthas as well as female Marthas. Marthas take care of stuff. They cook stuff. They build stuff. They arrange stuff. They oversee and manage stuff. They’re good at it and proud of it. Not much is going to happen, either in life or around church, without a few Marthas. Giuseppe Belli’s 19th century sonnet on this text concludes with Martha snapping back at Jesus when he tells her that Mary’s choice is the better one.
“So says you. But I know better. Listen. If I sat around on my salvation the way she does, who’d keep this house together?”
So let’s admit something from the get-go. Somebody does have to keep the house together. Several years ago, when I preached an entire series of sermons on things that happened when people in the New Testament sat down to supper, it occurred to me (given the abundance of material available for choosing) that Jesus and his followers spent an inordinate amount of time eating. Which must have involved cooking. Or, if not cooking, preparing. And if the Kingdom is going to be modeled on a great banquet or a great wedding feast (which is a subject of no small amount of interest to me at the moment), there had better be a few people willing to go beyond “sitting on their salvation,” if you know what I mean.
A few months ago, I referenced Garrison Keillor (he of Prairie Home Companion fame) who, in a monologue entitled “My People Are Not Paradise People,” suggested that every Lutheran woman in Minnesota, upon entering heaven, nods gratefully in the general direction of St. Peter, and then looks for the stairs that lead down to the kitchen.
I have read commentary galore on this text and have yet to find one that says Marthas are unnecessary or unwelcome. So if Martha is your name or your nature, it’s okay. You’re okay. Don’t take it personally. In other words, chill.
For I have been in Martha’s shoes, if not in Martha’s kitchen. Working hard. Working long. Working solo. Especially solo. Wondering why somebody doesn’t see it, do something about it or join it. At the beginning, Martha suffers in silence….if you can call ever-increasing decibel levels of pot-banging “silence.” When my mother clicked into her silent mode, it was amazing how many ways she had to give indication of her irritation.
And if this were just a little story about kitchen management, there are so many ways it could have been resolved. Jesus and Mary could have conversed near Martha (even with Martha) while she cooked. Jesus could have brought food in or taken the sisters out. Martha could have simplified the meal. When Jesus says, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful,” he is referring to the food. Read correctly, the text really means “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many dishes; one dish is needful.”
And it might have helped had Jesus said so sooner. The time to put a hostess at ease is before she sweats, not after. And when Jesus twice calls her name (“Martha, Martha”), it comes across as parental. If I turn around toward the organ bench and say, “Doris, Doris,” very few of you are going to turn to the person next to you and say, “Look how much he loves her.”
But Martha’s behavior is decidedly uncool when, in order to get a message through to her sister, she channels it through Jesus. And if Jesus doesn’t tell Mary that Martha needs her help, Martha will perceive that he doesn’t care. An acceptable translation might read: “Tell my sister I need help in the kitchen. That is, if you care.” You know what psychologists call this? They call this triangulation. It is about getting a third person in the middle and making the middle person choose sides. Which leaves the middle person feeling as if they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. One of Jesus’ options was to split physically (“I’m outta here. No dinner’s worth this.”). Another of his options was to split emotionally (“Look, this is really none of my business. You two need to fight this out with each other.”).
All things considered, this is not a pretty scene. This is a home where, allegedly, Jesus has felt comfortable before, and has reason to believe he will feel comfortable now. Instead, the occupants of the home wind up in a struggle over spending time with…and serving….Jesus. Which is not so hard for someone like me to understand, given that it happens in churches all the time. People choose how they are going to function in the house of the Lord, or what activity they are going to undertake for the sake of the Lord. Then they get upset because other people don’t embrace it, join it or applaud it. Then, sure as shooting, two things are going to happen. First, they are going to feel like martyrs. Second, they are going to bug me to bug the rest of you to get with the program.
Bill, you’re just going to have to stand up in the pulpit (preferably, just before the sermon when you get the most undivided attention) and tell the rest of those people what’s needed.
So I do….week after week….because I know how churches work. And because I am more than a little bit of a Martha myself. And because I hate to see a need go unmet….a call go unanswered….a job go undone….or a frustrated volunteer go unsatisfied. And because I know that the occasional push of my finger on your guilt button will, more often than not, get the desired results.
So I play Jesus to your Martha because, by nature, I am more Martha than I am her sister. Which is true of most ministers. So I stand up here in the pulpit and tell the Marys out there: “Help Martha, for God’s sake….for the church’s sake….for the program’s sake….for my sake….for all our sakes.” And, if I’m good at it, you will. Which will calm the troubled waters in the kitchen. Or wherever. That’s what I do. That’s how it works.
The problem with the text is that Jesus doesn’t do that. Of course, Jesus doesn’t know how to run a church. Jesus never had to run a church. Or a kitchen, really. Jesus tells Martha to chill. “Don’t fuss and get yourself all worked up.” Can’t Jesus see that there are pots boiling over, bagels popping out of the toaster, with the timer on the oven going ring-a-ding-ding? To which Jesus simply says: “Don’t stress out.” Surely Jesus must know that his speech does less to relieve the stress than add to it.
Yet, if I am going to let the text have its way with me beyond the mere fact of having its day through me (as in “Okay, I preached it, now I can ignore it”), I had better listen to it and then do something about it. For where this text is concerned, I am no longer Jesus trying to lower Martha’s stress, but Martha trying to let Jesus lower my stress.
Actually, when it comes to stress, I know a few things. I know that some stress is good stress. And I have learned a slew of stress management tricks (well, let’s not call them “tricks,” let’s call them “stratagems”) that have worked across the years. I know that the hardest stress to face is when I come up against situations (or people) that I cannot fix, change or do much of anything about, but must simply endure. The worst stress comes from being boxed in (by something or someone) and seeing no way out or through. In the main, clergy stress over situations to the degree that the solutions to those situations are out of their control.
But control is a two-edged sword. Too little causes stress. But too much also causes stress. Because it perpetuates an illusion….the illusion that life is controllable….that I am in charge here….and that I have, at any given time, everything I need to keep it all together. But that’s not true. I have a lot of the things I need to keep it all together. I have a lot of the people I need to keep it all together. I even have a lot of the money I need, the skills I need, the experience I need, and the authority I need to keep it all together.
But notice the little word that keeps coming to the fore in that extended paragraph….the little word “I.” Which betrays the illusion that life really is about me.…ministry really is about me….running the house, the kitchen, the family, the workplace (whatever it is I run) really is about me. “Lord, get them to help me do it. Get her to help me do it.” It’s the fallacy of the misplaced center, don’t you see.
The tension in Martha’s house is related to her belief that it all falls on her and, at that moment, that it is all falling down around her. As, sooner or later, it always will. And there’s Mary enjoying Jesus. Listening to Jesus. Learning from Jesus. All caught up with Jesus. And when Martha points that out to Jesus, he not only allows it, he defends it.
Which is not, on Jesus’ part, an endorsement of idleness when there’s work to be done. Nor is it an endorsement of the quiet and contemplative Christian life over the activist, hands-on Christian life. Nor does it endorse the idea of feeding one’s self and one’s soul when there are hungry people in the world and the old clock on the wall is rolling around towards supper time. No, the story doesn’t reward one kind of Christian activity over another (those who moon and swoon over Jesus versus those who roll up their sleeves and go to work for Jesus). The story is about knowing where the center of faith is….that it’s not with me and my needs, me and my tasks, me and my agendas, but with him and his.
Several years ago, a gay activist Episcopal priest named Malcolm Boyd wrote a popular book of prayers entitled Are You Running With Me, Jesus? Fortunately, the prayers were better than the title. Because the title assumes that it is in the nature of Jesus to fall in step with us. Whereas the Gospel, at least as I read it, seems to assume our falling in step with him. If you hang around young clergy very long (not our young clergy, but a lot of young clergy), you hear endless talk from their lips about “my ministry” (“I need to go where there’s a need for my ministry….where I can exercise my ministry….where there’s an expressed desire for my ministry….or where a position can be created around my ministry.”). Which, in small doses, is understandable. But, as a district superintendent once told me: “When you hear it in steady doses, it can make you puke.”
* * * * *
And then, in closing, there’s this. Tension is often the outgrowth of too many tasks to be done and too little time in which to do them. Which is when people tend to get testy with one another.
Everyone in this story is testy with one another. So Jesus says to Martha: “Focus on the relationship and the tasks will fall into place.” Relationships take priority over tasks. Not the other way around.
As you know, we are in the middle of wedding plans at our house….big wedding plans….complex wedding plans….cross country wedding plans. Which could be tense, to the point of making people testy. Except that’s not happening. Because we are keeping our primary focus on the relationships involved. Or as Kris says, concerning the resolution of potential disagreements: “Five years from now, we won’t remember what the fight was about. All we’ll remember is that there was a fight.”
So whenever you have a meal,
an evening meal,
a wedding meal,
a sacramental meal,
even a church supper,
remember that it is first and foremost about the relationships and only secondarily about the chores.
