Rain, gales, thunder. A cheering postcard arrives from my dear cousin, the one I was recently reunited with after we absentmindedly lost touch with each other 15 or so years ago. Sent from the National Gallery, the postcard shows Velazquez's beautiful and mysterious Christ In The House Of Mary And Martha, one of that great gallery's greatest treasures (though not, I imagine, one of its most popular). My cousin - like most women, I fancy - has a soft spot for poor Martha, who busied herself with preparing food and wine while her sister sat at the feet of the visiting Jesus. This was work that someone had to do - why Martha, unaided? 'Distracted by her many tasks', Martha complains, perfectly reasonably: 'Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me.' To which Jesus, no doubt already enjoying the fruits of Martha's efforts, replies, 'Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.' Hmmm. This is not Jesus at his most sympathetic, and it's hard not to feel sorry for poor Martha after that withering retort. However, when their brother Lazarus dies and Jesus comes to raise him from the dead, it is Martha who walks out to meet him on the road, and strongly professes her faith in his powers and his divine nature, and it is to her that Jesus utters the words: 'I am the resurrection and the life...' Traditionally, Martha is seen as representing action (love of neighbour, good works) and Mary contemplation (faith and devotion). Which has precedence? Probably, in the end, action: as Jesus says, 'If a man love not his brother, whom he has seen, how shall he love God whom he has not seen?' And if a woman toil not in the kitchen, how shall anyone, son of God or not, be fed?
The answer to that is loaves and fishes.
ReplyDeleteThanks Nige - I'm not particularly religious but it's curiously satisfying to have something like this to ponder on. We don't really get much religion nowadays (Thought for the Day? Stands back and waits for explosion). McCulloch's History of Christianity on BBC4 though is very good indeed - totally unMarred.
ReplyDeleteRe Mary versus Martha: isn't this incident of a piece with the perfume pouring incident? That is, not to worry about cooking or saving money to give to the poor - instead make the most of Jesus as he was the son of God and might not be back that way for a while.
I think there can be no doubt that Mary is the model for the true follower of Jesus, who comes before all material concerns, even altruistic ones. Obviously justifiable in those terms, but it hasn't half given the Church an excuse to blow money on flashy chasubles, blingy chalices, etc..
Yes indeed Maw - in fact it was apparently the same Mary who did the perfume pouring. I think there's a tension in what's come down to us as 'the gospels' between Jesus's own words and actions based on the conviction that we were all living in the last days (therefore nothing mattered) and the subsequent realisation that actually, er, they weren't the last days. The Mary-Martha tension is one of the things that embodies this. I guess that tension between contemplation and action had a long afterlife too and, as justification by faith versus justification by deeds, fed into the reformation and all that mess...
ReplyDeleteI've not read any feminist interpretations of the NT (and I'm not a masochist so will not seek one out), but yes, if I was a feminist NT-interpreter I would observe that the Martha story shows that the Gospels were written by men.
ReplyDeleteRaising Lazarus was the cruellest trick Jesus ever pulled, though he only does so in John, so he probably didn't.
Nige, I don't think the tension is between contemplation and action. I think it's between worldliness and worship.
ReplyDeleteMartha's 'works' can't be regarded as a potential act of salvation. If the way to heaven lay through doing the dishes, I'd be halfway there.
Brit, I'm not sure how you can come to that conclusion. Surely Jesus is telling Martha she shouldn't have regarded the housework as important; but that now she has, she'd better get on with it. The lesson to take is the non-gender specific one of 'hang spring cleaning' - or cobbling, road mending, legal drafting - as none of it's important compared to worship.
Feminists can come to all sorts of conclusions, Gaw, but men with their feet up, being worshipped by babes, are liable to downgrade the importance of keeping on top of the laundry.
ReplyDeleteIt's a wonderful painting, I must get down to the National Gallery and see it for myself. The way the view through the hatch (?) is presented and Martha looking aside, out of the painting, both suggest that what is happening may only be happening inside her head, or our head. It is so easy to fall prey to the resentful notion that whatever we are doing is just a tiresome impediment to what we think we ought to be doing instead, and so we go through the day permanently unsettled and never really there.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Martha on this one. If I had to choose between a good cook and a good guru, I think I'd choose the cook. After all, why wait ages for your guru's instructions on going to heaven when a good cook can transport you there this lunchtime in a single mouthful? Dogen Zenji wrote his famous "Instructions for the Head Cook" because he knew that without a good one morale in a monastery would quickly plummet.
It is so easy to fall prey to the resentful notion that whatever we are doing is just a tiresome impediment to what we think we ought to be doing instead, and so we go through the day permanently unsettled and never really there.
ReplyDeleteAh, the human condition yet again. Well put, Mark.
Well put indeed - and it's so true about the view of Jesus and Mary, if it is a view - Velazquez is so good at these teasing images, pictures within pictures...
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