Martha still served

A fresh look at an old story

By Virginia S. McHenrý

I First Encountered the characterization of Martha as someone encumbered with responsibilities when I was a young wartime bride in a small southern town where my husband was being trained as a pilot. I was left much to myself because of the demands of his job. One Sunday after church, two women invited me to dinner. Following the meal, I got up to help them wash the dishes. "No, no, we aren't going to be Marthas," they insisted, and we spent a quiet afternoon chatting on the porch. Was this a Mary pursuit? Was the person coming the next day to clean up, the Martha?

A disparaging typecasting of Martha deprives us of lessons we can learn from her experience. It was Martha, for example, who, at the time of her brother Lazarus's death, left the weeping Mary and the other mourners to go out to meet Jesus as he approached. At this time the Master said to her, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die" (John 11:25, 26). When Jesus asked Martha if she believed what he had just told her, she said, "Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world" (John 11:27). In the gospel record, the great disciple Peter made a similar declaration of faith in Christ Jesus, and he was blessed by his Master for it. Martha must have been similarly blessed.

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