(A Dialogue Sermon)
Man: Good morning! It's a pleasure to be here in the pulpit. But you may have noticed that I have someone in the lectern vying for equal time.
Woman: Yes, indeed. This is a feminist age, you know — a time of equality between women and men, a time for women to catch up on centuries of lost time in subjugation and oppression.
Man: That may be, but do you intend to regain all the lost time this morning?
Woman: No, but at least I'd like to make some progress.
Man: I don't blame you. Sometimes women have been badly maligned in our Christian history. Listen to this quote from John Knox, of the early Calvinist tradition. He said: "To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, or empire above any realm, nation or city is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious to his revealed will and approved ordinances." (Knox must be spinning in his grave at the thought of a woman running for president!) By the way, the title of his book was First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, 1558.
Woman: Yes, and Knox should be spinning in the grave until he gets his thinking straightened out! I much prefer the enlightened 1963 statement by Pope John XXIII (Pacem In Terris, Peace on Earth) where he said, "Since women are becoming ever more conscious of their human dignity, they will not tolerate being treated as mere material instruments, but demand rights befitting human persons both in domestic and public life."
Man: You're not converting, are you?
Woman: Hardly. Have you seen any female Roman Catholic priests yet?
Man: No, and with Pope Benedict, I don't expect to see any. I agree with Pope John XXIII, however, and even more with Daniel Defoe who said in 1697 that "Woman… is the glory of her maker." That is why I'm glad you consented to assist with this text regarding two very important women of the Bible.
Woman: We need to hear more about equality for women.
Man: And we have been. I'm reminded of a delightful movie we've both seen. Remember Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda starred in a women's liberation comedy titled Nine to Five. Lily Tomlin is the office manager in a large corporate office. Jane Fonda is the newly divorced newcomer trying to learn the political ropes and newfangled machines of the corporate office. Dolly Parton, successful in her first movie role, plays the boss's secretary.
Woman: Yes, and the boss is played by Dabney Coleman. He is portrayed as the stereotypical male-chauvinist pig who regards female employees as well-paid waitresses and bimbos whose only job is to make the boss look good.
Man: Except for Dolly Parton, the secretary who is not only supposed to make her married boss look good but also feel good by hopping into bed with him. If the Queen Mother advised Prince Charles upon meeting Dolly Parton to look her squarely in the eye, in this movie it is clear the boss's eyes regularly are elsewhere.
Woman: In this lighthearted comedy, Dolly, Lily, and Jane eventually lock up the boss in his own home. While he is there, they introduce reforms into the corporate office — politically correct reforms, like on-site day care, staggered work hours, job sharing, and gender-equal merit promotions. Eventually the boss gets the credit and is promoted to Brazil, with the women ascending in the New York corporate world.
In a delightful way, the movie pokes fun at the stereotypical roles of women. It shows how effective and progressive they can be in the nine-to-five work place as well as in the five-to-nine domestic scene. They can be thinkers and doers.
Man: We have no biblical equivalents of Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda. We do have our text that accents differing roles for women. It is the story of Martha and Mary entertaining Jesus with a dinner party in their home in Bethany, a suburb of Jerusalem. It is a story not about mothers and children, but about two single women without children.
Some scholars speculate that Martha was widowed and that the home belonged to her. Mary apparently had never married and there is no indication their brother, Lazarus, had ever married. There is no mention of children or parents. It is a story not of a typical, traditional family, but of three single people sharing the same household.
Woman: There is no hint about what any of them did for a livelihood. Consequently, what they did in the nine-to-?ve work week is unknown. Perhaps Martha's inheritance was sufficient. But we do have in our text a story that has to do with the after-work time of five to nine. Whether we are mothers, singles, or men, the story has some insight for our family living nine to five and five to nine.
Man: Marthas and Marys have long been contrasted in our churches. We have had the Marthas, the doers, and the Marys, the thinkers. We have contrasted the materialistic Marthas with the spiritual Marys. The two have symbolized two approaches to life, especially the life from five to nine.
I.
Woman: Let's first consider Martha and let her represent the working woman — practical, career-oriented, materialistic, and determined to get ahead.
As we have said, we do not know the source of Martha's livelihood. That she had a house in suburban Jerusalem, we know. That she entertained at dinner parties, we surmise from our texts. On this occasion she planned a several course dinner — we can gather from implications of the text. Whether she went to work, nine to five, we do not know. But we can assume she was working hard, shopping, and then preparing food in the kitchen. In this regard, she was a good role model for some of the traditional notions of womanhood.
Man: Martha also seemed to understand the importance of material things. We can imagine she kept her home well. We also can imagine she knew where to shop for the best foods for her sumptuous dinner parties for celebrity guests like Jesus. We can imagine she knew the importance of money, especially since her husband died. Widows were especially vulnerable once their husbands were gone. As a single woman, Martha may well have had an early appreciation of money and position.
Woman: Women of today can identify with Martha. Women have been working for a better stake in the economy for centuries. As members of agricultural economies, they have worked right alongside men plowing the fields, milking the cows, gathering the firewood, harvesting the crops, and selling the produce. Indeed, the economy of the past was often centered in the agrarian home, where nine to five and five to nine welded into an inseparable lifestyle.
The separation of home and workplace came largely with the Industrial Revolution. Men, women, and children worked in the sweat shops. But when men began to make enough money, children, and then women, stayed home. Consequently, "the notion of the middle-class home, in which the woman's role is primarily that of a support to her husband and children, is a relatively recent phenomenon," says Anita Shreve in her book Remaking Motherhood (p. 14).
Shreve goes on to point out that it wasn't until the mid-nineteenth century that a woman's exclusive job became that of caring for men and children in the home. However, 20% of American women did work outside the home at the turn of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, a woman was to be the wife, mother, and homemaker.
Man: More than that, she was expected to be the protector of values, culture, and refinement. In the Victorian equation, a rather sexist equation when you think of it, men were regarded as base, vulgar, materialistic, and more interested in sex.
The Victorian woman was thought to be above such materialistic realities and strove to uphold the higher values — values that tended, however, to degenerate into fastidiousness and prudery. Yes, Victorian men put a woman on a pedestal, but then expected her to dust it.
Women did go to work during World War I and by the end of World War II, six million women were in the workforce. In 1947, 30% of American women worked outside the home, but the ideal of women at home as wives and mothers persisted.
But by 1984, fifty million women were working full time, many of them mothers of children who were still at home. Today, of the mothers who have children under five, two thirds work outside the home. About 75% of two-parent families have both parents employed. And nearly one half of all families are headed by a single parent, most of whom are women. Consequently, 80-85% of our children grow up in the homes of working mothers.
Woman: Women are working and working hard. Women now surpass men in the professions. From 1972 to 1982, the number of women lawyers increased fivefold and is still increasing. Women are becoming engineers, mail carriers, physicians and surgeons, insurance agents, heavy-machine operators, and airline pilots. Many mainline seminaries have student bodies that are at least one-half female.
Anita Shreve says that "women now resemble male workers in the strength of their commitment to the workplace…" (p. 18). They have increasing social ties to the workplace and identify themselves more in terms of their career goals and monetary success than they do as mothers, wives, or family members.
Of course, many women are working out of necessity. They are single and have children to support. Others, married or single, have college tuitions to pay or payments to make on the house, the vacation house, the boat, the ski condo, the Mercedes, and the club memberships. With all those obligations, it's hard to make ends meet!
Man: Martha, Martha, if ever women agreed with you, it's today. Good home, good address, good food and entertainment, material success and financial well-being are important. And women know it as never before. Even Jesus knew it, because the money box held by Judas contained contributions from wealthy women, some of whom even traveled with Jesus. (Rather risqué for the time when you think about it.) Jesus was frequently entertained at other dinner parties that cost money to put on.
Martha, Martha, you know the score. It is money that makes the world go round. Everything revolves around money, sex, and power. So use them all to your advantage in this tough world, whether it's nine to five or five to nine.
II.
Woman: But now let Mary take the stage and let her represent the other side — the spiritual, the intellectual, the ethical side of things. What about Mary nine to five and five to nine?
I have long felt that the Marthas of the world must resent the ensuing dialogue that takes place between the sisters and Jesus. I mean the Marthas who have had the almost thankless task of cooking hundreds of church dinners, the Marthas who have taken thousands of casseroles to families in need, the Marthas who have baked ten million dozen chocolate chip cookies for one reception or another, the Marthas who are there when you need some envelopes stuffed, some rooms cleaned out, some nitty-gritty tasks done. Marthas who will do almost all the dirty work — except windows — for no one does windows these days!
Yes, and after the Marthas have done all that; after the beautiful Martha of our story shopped, cooked, prepared, and served so that all, including Jesus, might enjoy a lovely dinner, after all that, Jesus has the audacity to say, "Martha, Martha, you are troubled about many things. Come and sit with Mary, for she has chosen the better part."
At that time, I can imagine Martha was almost ready to bop Jesus on the head with his dinner plate. "Isn't that just like a man," she might have thought, not unlike those guests who tell their hosts, "Come now and chat or sit a while," hoping, of course, their hosts won't until they have finished serving the food and drink.
Man: Martha had had a hard day preparing all this food. Whether her sister Mary had helped in preparation, we are not told. One thing we know, she was not helping in serving. She was listening to Jesus speak to the group during the several courses of dinner. Martha approached Jesus about asking Mary to come help her with serving. Could he not see she was in need of help? And especially could not Mary see that? Of course she could, and she ignored Martha's glowering looks in her direction. That is why Martha appealed to Jesus.
Woman: Does every family have a Martha and Mary? We did. While most of the family might be involved in preparing or serving a dinner, one daughter would have her nose in a book, oblivious to the pressing demands of the home. It is annoying and irritating to be working so hard to provide for our material well-being and have someone sitting there reading, thinking, or, God forbid, praying.
"I mean Jesus, can't you make those people see what's really important? Can't you get them in gear, get them to realize how tough it is to succeed in today's world, get them to realize how much they depend on our material and financial success? Come on Jesus, tell these thinking, researching, reflecting, praying, spiritually minded Marys of the world to get with it and help us in the really important things of life."
Man: If we can calm down a little and listen a little, we can hear him say, "Martha, Martha, you are troubled and anxious about many things. One thing is needful and Mary has chosen the better dish."
Woman: The Martha in us fumes, "Better dish indeed — as it turns out, no dish at all. She hasn't carried a single dish from the kitchen."
Man: "Martha, Martha, you are indeed a wonderful hostess and cook and a delightful connoisseur of fine food and wine. But despite all that, Mary is a connoisseur of things even more important — things intellectual and spiritual, things of lasting and even revolutionary value, things that will reverberate throughout history long after this excellent dinner is digested and forgotten."
I would imagine Jesus might note with sociologist Lyle Schaller that the primary place for socialization now is not the home, but the workplace. I imagine he might point out how our homes are designed to eat and sleep and watch television, but not to converse and share and nurture. Some of the homes of the past looked as though people really lived together there, knew each other, shared a lifestyle and value system, rather than just nodding in the hall on the way to the next activity with iPods in their ears.
Woman: If we identify primarily with our work rather than with family or spiritual values, if we are primarily money, power, and success-oriented, what does that say about child rearing and the values we pass on to the next generation?
Harvard's well-known physician-professor T. Berry Brazelton says, "The old myth of raising a child by instinct has disintegrated as our culture has become less certain of its values." He goes on to say, "How can we raise children by the principle of 'do what feels right' if we don't know where we're headed?" He then adds, "With the breakdown of the extended family and the disintegration of our cultural values, today's parents are working in a vacuum. We have," says Dr. Brazelton, "lost the kind of instinct that is directed by a culture or an extended family, and unfortunately, there's nothing to replace it yet" (quoted in Shreve, Remaking Motherhood, p. 125).
Man: "Martha, Martha, you are fussing and fretting about many things. One thing is needful, the spiritual center of life, and Mary, for all her faults and failures at dinner parties and material success, has chosen the better course."
Woman: I'm reminded of Tom Wolfe's sarcastic description of Manhattan social climbers, women in this case, who work hard, dress to the nines, and starve themselves into a chic, skeletal thinness that makes an x-ray technician's work superfluous. Joey Adams says, show me a woman like that who exercises morning, noon, and night, who diets to look chic and thin, and I'll show you one hungry woman!
Man: Hungry indeed! But hungry for what? Hungry for yet another material acquisition? Hungry for yet another social event, to see and be seen in all the right places with the right people, or to be seen in the latest "in" restaurant? Hungry for more success at yet a higher level in the career? Or increasingly hungry for spiritual truths that last and satisfy the soul and family for eternity?
Jesus said Mary chose the better portion. For her the issue was not so much living to eat, as eating to live; not so much the daily bread, as the bread of life. For her it was not so much a question of how we look or dress or eat or vacation or exercise, but how we think and pray and worship and nurture and teach and share and relate and serve and yes, how we love. Do we really love anyone but ourselves?
Woman: However, the spiritual breakdown of our society surely isn't due only to working women. Most of the people involved in the Wall Street scandals, corporate scandals, and the government scandals have been men. The breakdown of the family surely cannot be blamed on the working mother. Many men long ago abandoned family, church, and school for the sake of their careers, identifying themselves primarily by their jobs.
Man: If moral integrity and spiritual depth are to return to our homes and families, men and women will have to take responsibility. We need to stop giving approval to cheating in school, lying to authority, abusing drugs and alcohol, and cheapening and making banal the sexual experience. If our children are to become something more than worker bees in a mindless drive toward more, parents need to give up worshiping at the shrine of the dollar. The Marys of the world call us to our spiritual and ethical foundations.
Woman: The Marthas of the world are important and crucial. They get the research into practical application. They get the architects' drawings into a real building. The newly conceived product gets from concept to production, then to sales by the Marthas of the world. Without them the world, the practical everyday world, would screech to a halt and the trains and planes would never be on time.
Man: Nevertheless, Jesus said, "Martha, Martha. You are anxious about many things. One thing is needful. Mary has chosen the better." And what did Mary do? She sat at the feet of Jesus and listened as he said the true reality, the eternal reality, comes by way of self-denial and worship of God. With prophetic intuition, she anointed his feet with costly oil, anointed the feet of him whom millions would follow, anointed the feet of him who would turn the heads of history. Mary chose the better part.
Woman: Martha, Martha.
Man: Mary, Mary.
Woman: Who are you?
Man: Who am I?
Amen.
