16th Sunday of the Year

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Erasmus II Quellin

Today's readings are about hospitality. Our Gospel for this Sunday is clearly about hospitality — but whose? At one level, it is true, the hospitality is clearly that of Martha, who accepts Jesus into her home. But it is also the hospitality of Jesus, who thinks that it is permissible and proper to be with women and to talk to them about the things of God; like the three men in our first reading, Jesus actually honours the house of the two sisters simply by being there and not worrying about ritual impurity. Jesus is, Luke tells us, on the journey, and we already know that it will take him to Jerusalem and death; furthermore, he has just had an aggressive encounter with the lawyer that provoked the deeply subversive story of the Good Samaritan. The tone here is far gentler (Luke is, in the end, a very gentle gospel); but it is also subversive, for the last thing that we should expect is that a woman would give hospitality. And not just one, but two; for Martha has a sister, Mary, who "sat at the feet of the Lord, and listened to his word", and inevitably we remember that other Mary, in the second chapter of Luke's gospel, who "kept all these things in her heart". There is drama, however, and tension, for Martha has allowed the hospitality to be a drain on her; and she flips, and starts giving orders to the Lord (this is hospitality gone horribly wrong), "don't you care that my sister" (she can't bring herself even to utter her name) "has abandoned me to serve? Tell her to help!" Jesus is incredibly gentle in the face of this aggression, the repetition of her name ("Martha, Martha") robbing his reply of all venom; and he says that Mary's portion 'shall not be taken from her". Who is giving hospitality to whom?

Rublëv's Icon of the Trinity