Sunday 20th July 2025 Trinity V A reflection by the Rev'd David Warnes
To find an illustration of today’s Gospel all you need to do is to catch a bus down to the Mound and enter the National Gallery. There you will find a painting by the 17th century Dutch artist Jan Vermeer entitled Christ in the house of Martha and Mary. He was only 23 years old when he painted it and it’s very different from the serenely detailed domestic interiors for which he is best known. The room in which the scene is set is only sketchily painted, and because of that our attention is focused on the three figures. Jesus is seated and his face is the only one which is fully lit. Martha is bending over and placing a basket containing a loaf of bread on a table. Her face is half in shadow, her lips are pursed, and her eyes are downcast. Vermeer captures the moment just after Martha, while acknowledging Jesus as Lord, has questioned him in a distinctly critical tone of voice:
“…do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?”
Jesus is looking towards Martha, but with his right hand he is pointing towards Mary, who is seated on a low stool at his feet. Her face is completely in shadow, yet we can see that her eyes are open and that her attention is focused on Jesus. And there’s another telling detail, something that isn’t in the Gospel account. Mary’s feet are naked. She recognises that she is in the presence of the divine, remembering perhaps the story of Moses and the burning bush, and how God commanded Moses:
“…take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
Today’s three Bible readings all reflect in different ways on two linked themes – recognition and response.
In the Genesis reading, Abraham somehow instantly recognises that the three men who have arrived at his tent, three strangers, are in some mysterious way God. He addresses them as “Lord” and offers hospitality. The actual job of providing the hospitality falls to his wife Sarah and the unnamed young man who has to slaughter, dress and cook the calf and we can instantly see a resemblance to our Gospel story of Mary and Martha. Abraham, like Mary, stays with the divine visitors, while Sarah and the young man, like Martha, do all the practical preparations which enable Abraham to act as host. It is Abraham who does the recognising, but the responding is left to others. There’s an enjoyable irony in the fact that the message which the mysterious strangers have come to deliver is as much for Sarah, confined to the tent and to housewifely duties, as for Abraham. God’s earlier promise to Abraham will be fulfilled and Sarah, though advanced in years, will bear him a son.
Martha and Mary both recognise Jesus as someone special. Martha not only welcomes him but addresses him as “Lord”. Yet her responses aren’t appropriate. We hear that
“she is distracted with much serving”
Mary’s response to Jesus is shocking in a way that isn’t at first obvious to us. We are told that
“Mary sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.”
By doing so, Mary is choosing to be a pupil, to be a disciple and that was something that women were not permitted to do. Martha’s irritation with her sister arises not only from the fact that Mary isn’t helping in the kitchen, but that she is defying convention.
What then are we to make of Jesus’ response to Martha?
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
He isn’t criticising Martha for busying herself preparing the meal. We need to remember that this story comes immediately after the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus emphasises the practical, helpful nature of the love that we are called to show to our neighbours. Martha’s problem is that that she is “anxious and troubled about many things”. The Greek word translated as troubled is very strong, suggesting inner turmoil and disturbance.
St Benedict, whose Rule, almost fifteen hundred years after his death, still shapes the lives of monks and nuns and others who have encountered his teachings, believed that work can be a form of prayer and famously taught that:
“To pray is to work. To work is to pray”
By getting into a tizzy of the kind that we all fall into from time to time, Martha has failed to respond to the presence of Jesus by being just as attentive to the preparing of the meal which she will serve to Jesus as Mary is attentive to what Jesus is saying.
In today’s Gospel Martha and Mary both recognise that Jesus is special, but it is Martha who will, shortly before Jesus’ death, express that recognition in a more precise way.
“Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
Her words point us forward to today’s Epistle, which is also about recognition and response. It was written at most thirty years after the Resurrection, and it shows how quickly and how fully Christians came to articulate their beliefs about the divinity of Christ, recognising Him as:
“…the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”
“…by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…”
And the response for which Paul calls is that his readers should
“…continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard…”
That stability and steadfastness can be expressed in work, if it is done attentively and to the glory of God and for the benefit of others, as well as in prayer. George Herbert expressed that beautifully in a poem which we use as a hymn, a poem which is all about recognition and response.
Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see
And what I do in anything,
to do it as for Thee.
And I can’t help wondering whether Herbert had Jesus’ words to Martha, fretting about her domestic duties, in mind when he included these lines:
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
Makes that and th' action fine.