Dear Friends,
Growing up in Staten Island, one of my favorite activities to do with my mom was to go thrifting. It was where I could carve out my own identity through off-beat fashion and hunt for interesting books and art – and one book I remember seeing countless copies of on those shelves was “Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World.” That tracks with the timing (the book came out in 2000 and I started thrifting regularly around 2002), but what was the power of this book, that so many people bought it, and its shortcoming, that so many tossed it aside?
In this Sunday’s Gospel passage, we see another snippet of Mary & Martha, not the most famous one in which Martha is chided for her focus on work over sitting at Jesus’s feet. Rather, this passage, focused on the moment when Mary anoints Jesus’s feet with oil, though it does include a note of Martha’s service, is actually focused on a different critical question: What about the poor?
Chided by Judas (of all people!) for “wasting” the valuable oil to anoint Jesus’s feet, Jesus responds with a critical statement: "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me." Much like a parable in its opacity, this passage forces us to ask, what did Jesus mean?
Despite knowing that of course we must serve the poor, that this is one of the most fundamental things we are called to do as Christians, this passage has often been used to justify a certain coldness toward them. If the poor will always be with us, why do anything? Nothing can change. It’s read as permission to ignore the poor, instead of attending to their needs. So, what did Jesus mean?
In order to understand this passage, we need a degree of Biblical - specifically Old Testament - literacy that most of us don’t have, but that those present in the room with Jesus or hearing this story would have easily understood. To say “The poor will always be with you…” in those times was to hear the automatic response, “Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land,” a passage from Deuteronomy.
In this moment, we see both Mary’s heart and Martha’s service in conjunction. We must have Mary’s heart for the works and words of the Lord, but we must act on them, be of service, be at work, in the manner of Martha. They work together. Having Mary’s heart is not enough. Being Martha without the faithfulness is not enough. We shouldn’t just have a Mary heart in a Martha world. They are inseparable.
As we head into Easter, and really as we head into Holy Week and the foot washing of Maundy Thursday that this story presages, it is a good time to think about what service means in our lives and what motivates it. What is the difference between doing service at a distance so that we don’t have to be confronted with the poor and being ready to meet the needs of those in our midst? The former tends to be easier, and we often see this as helping the absolute poorest, or doing the most good, but we are not actually called to rank the poor and, as parents, caregivers, and role models, what does it mean when we walk past the poor in our midst or blame them for their plight in full view of the young people we should be teaching compassion and generosity to?
The other question is, how do prepare ourselves to be generous? Often it starts with knowing how to receive. It’s part of what makes having your feet washed harder than washing another’s feet. Receiving service and generosity is hard. We’re lucky to be part of a tradition that actually asks us to practice this.
Holy Week Prep, Pt. 3
So far we’ve covered Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday, which leaves us with Holy Saturday & the Easter Vigil, and Easter, of course! You can head to the main Wiggles & Wonder page for the last two newsletters with those earlier ideas if you missed them.
Holy Saturday/Easter Vigil:
For many people, Holy Saturday is the quietest day in the lead up to Easter, and even as someone who runs a Sunday School, this is the day I don’t really need to worry about much except, y’know, the next morning! That’s because Holy Saturday’s liturgy is actually the shortest in the Book of Common Prayer. It is little more than a pause. The Vigil, though! Now that’s something else!
I love the Easter Vigil, and my first exposure to it was the sort of church where we gathered at 4:30 in the morning to begin this great rite, which I know is impractical for most. With kids, though, oh the things you can do, and one thing I’ve seen posited is a Godly Play Vigil.
Though certainly a large undertaking and has some potential variables, imagine telling:
Creation
The Great Flood
The Great Family
Exile & Return
With simple songs, even! I love this list of age-appropriate Holy Week & Easter Songs shared on BuildFaith some years back, but the options are endless. The key is to help children see the full arc of the story that leads us to the Resurrection. While we may go on one journey with stories like the Faces of Easter, traveling through Jesus’s life, the vigil invites us to see the greater story of Covenant from the very beginning - because Jesus’s Covenant with us is not a replacement for that made with Israel, but a continuation of it, another branch on a great tree.
We are approaching the Great Mystery of Easter, which is not a mystery to be solved, but a bewildering and joyous impossibility made real in word and deed. Like with parables, we so often want a clear answer where there isn’t one. We are called to live into the story and to discover it more fully in its living.
Peace,
A. Bird