Preached by the Rev. David Henson
In St. James Episcopal Church, Hendersonville
Sunday, July 20, 2025
I’ve always wondered what happened to Martha after Jesus tells her, essentially, she’d chosen the lesser part. It’s maybe the last thing Jesus says to her, and it seems like an awfully harsh note to end on, especially between two people so close they were almost family. Then I got to wondering, maybe Martha was one of the many unnamed people Scripture tells us Jesus appeared to after his resurrection.
There’s no way to know for sure, but if he did, I’d like to think maybe it went something like this.
Martha knows she should be asleep, not shuffling around in a dark courtyard, lighting the brazier, preparing vegetables, and sinning with every step. It’s the Sabbath after all, the day for rest, not for work.
The Sabbath, Martha thinks, is Yahweh’s most luxurious commandment—and the one she can rarely afford to keep. And so, she works in the pre-dawn hours, as always. What began as a sin of necessity to feed her family, is now a habit of grief, a way to pretend life hasn’t changed, to not feel so alone.
Over the last month, the emptiness of her home has swollen like a bruise, leaving Martha feeling tender and small. The worst part is that her neighbors know the whole strange story: her brother, raised from the dead and now in hiding, her sister Mary, gone who knows where with her ragamuffin rabbi, and her life falling apart.
Martha moves with quiet efficiency, cleaning the house until a knock interrupts her. She exhales, resigning herself to whatever criticism of her forbidden activities await on the other side, but the man silhouetted in the doorway causes her face to pale for a different reason altogether.
“Cooking again on the Sabbath, Martha?” Jesus teases, an eyebrow arched playfully.
“What makes you say that?” Martha replies.
Jesus looks up at the tendrils of smoke from her brazier wafting into the alley.
Martha sighs, and steps aside to welcome Jesus.
“Is your family here?” he asks as she leads him to the courtyard.
“Lazarus left just after you raised him. It’s not safe for him here anymore after the authorities decided they preferred him dead,” Martha says, anger now edging into her voice. “And Mary? You’d know better than me. I haven’t seen her since you were last here in Bethany.”
“I do remember that night,” Jesus says. “It’s actually why I’m here. Do you remember that claypot fish you made for us?
Martha nods, refusing to look up. “Of course, it was our favorite meal.”
“Can you show me how to make it?”
She looks up at him, arms crossed. “Things have changed, Jesus. That is a meal of great thanksgiving, the kind that binds families together. Forgive me if I don’t feel quite up to it.”
“Please, Martha,” Jesus says, in a voice so different than the confident teacher she remembered. “Please. Things have changed for me, too, and I have need of only one thing.”
Those last words bring tears to Martha’s eyes, unbidden, unwanted. It was the same thing he’d said to her that night of the feast. Time hasn’t dulled its sting.
“I’d like to make it for the disciples,” Jesus adds. “After we left, it’s all they talked about, at almost every meal. They kept saying if they could choose their last supper on earth, it’d be your claypot fish.”
Martha, a woman who receives few compliments from others and even fewer from herself, softens.
“Speaking of the boys, where are the Twelve?” Martha had always found his disciples ridiculous.
“They are still in Jerusalem,” Jesus says, lowering his voice in mock conspiracy. “They have no idea I’m here.”
“How did you manage that? They always followed you around like lost sheep.”
“It’s a long story,” he replies, shifting his weight uncomfortably.
As he speaks, Martha glimpses his hands in the firelight—restless, fidgeting, and ruined.
“My God, Jesus! What happened?” she says grabbing his hands for closer inspection.
They are pierced, uneven holes marking them. Questions spill out from her. “Who did this? Were you in a fight? Why didn’t you say something sooner? Let me get some water and bandages.”
He frees his hands and lays them on Martha’s shoulder. “I’m okay, Martha. It no longer hurts.”
“But what happened?” Martha demands.
“It’s a long story,” Jesus says. “Right now, I need you to teach me how to cook.”
“Fine,” Martha says, wagging a finger at him. “But you do know you are a rabbi asking me to break the Sabbath.”
“No more than usual, I hope,” Jesus says, smiling boyishly, pleased he’s gotten his way.
Martha hands him the spices. Together they measure, toast, and grind musky cumin and coriander seeds with sweet rosemary and wild thyme. Jesus crushes the garlic, mixing it into a paste with the herbs and a pinch of salt. The rich aroma pulls the ache for food from his empty stomach to his watering tongue.
With two extra hands helping, the meal doesn’t take nearly as long this time, but the memory still chafes Martha. To celebrate Lazarus’ raising from the dead, she had hosted a feast for the whole town. She spent the entire day preparing, cleaning, cooking. Even still, when Jesus finally arrived, there was much left to do, and Mary, her younger sister, had stopped helping the moment the rabbi walked in, installing herself at his feet. Meanwhile, Martha toiled on, even sacrificing her own meals throughout the day.
The teacher had not noticed, had missed the offering of her soul she poured into the feast. At one point, she had asked Jesus to send Mary into the kitchen to help for a bit, and he had taken exception.
“There is need of only one thing, and that one thing is not a flawless feast, Martha,” he had announced in front of the whole group. “Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Mortified, Martha had returned to the kitchen. There was still a feast to finish, after all, mouths to feed, things to be done. Maybe it wasn’t the better part, but at least it was her part.
The memory dissolves in the steam rising from the pot. Jesus is now beside her, watching his teacher carefully as she shows him how to prepare each dish from that painful day long ago. When it is finished, Jesus sits down in a heap and mops his drenched face with a rag that smells of spice. He cups his punctured hands against his face and inhales the pungent stain of garlic and cumin on his fingers.
“The fragrances of heaven,” he says, a smile at the corners of his mouth.
“Why is that funny?”
“It’s a long story,” Jesus replies.
“Then how about you finally tell me what happened to your hands instead,” she says.
Jesus doesn’t acknowledge her question, but looks around the courtyard. “I never really knew how much of you it took to make that feast for us.”
“Well, how could you?” Martha replies, nudging an elbow into his side. “You were always too busy telling your stories about great feasts and eating them instead of actually preparing them yourself.”
This draws laughter from Jesus, deep and loud, and the sound washes over Martha with healing like anointing oil.
“Would it help to know that my body will be preparing feasts for a long time to come?” Jesus asks.
“You, a cook? Let’s at least taste this first before you decide to change jobs entirely.”
Martha prepares his plate and hands it to him.
“I hope it’s good,” Jesus says, and it’s so strange to her to see him nervous.
“Well?” Martha asks.
“It’s divine,” Jesus whispers.
Martha takes a bite, too, and nods. “If everything you cook turns out like this, you should be in charge of every feast, from here to eternity.”
Martha stands and collects the dishes and walks away to the basin where she’ll clean them later.
“I have a confession to make,” Martha says, her back still to Jesus, “When you left after that last meal, I thought I’d never see you again. You had your face set toward Jerusalem and I just had a bad feeling. I had only just gotten my brother back and now my friend and my sister were heading to almost certain death. I was so scared. I had to do something to keep the anxiety and grief from consuming me, body and soul. It’s such a relief to see you in the flesh.
“And speaking of flesh, will you finally tell me about the wounds in your hands?” Martha says, turning to face him.
But the courtyard is empty.
“Jesus?” she whispers. “My Lord?”
There’s no reply.
He’s gone just as unexpectedly as he arrived.
She’s alone again. But there is peace now in the silence, and it fills both the courtyard and her soul. Martha cleans her hands and goes to her room to bury herself in her bed.
It’s Sunday, the first day of the week, and the blanket on her skin feels luxurious. Life feels new again, and at long last, Martha rests.
Maybe something like this happened. Maybe not.
But I hope it did. Because Martha is so often cast as the foil—or even the antagonist—in this story. Mary is the faithful one and Martha, the busy one who misses the point. We’ve even reduced them to a question: Are you a Mary or a Martha?
But when we reduce some one to one trait, one moment, one mistake, we lose their full humanity and edge toward what one author calls the “danger of a single story.”
When I look at the world—with its turmoil, chaos, and confusion–there is a very real temptation to create a single story to explain it. Mary or Martha. Faithful sister or busybody sister. Good guys or bad guys. Allies or enemies.
If we can imagine more than one story about Martha, what would it take to do the same for others, to put ourselves in their shoes? To believe that, even when someone’s actions strike us as obviously wrong, they might still be motivated by deep goodness?
Have you ever, like Martha, felt like your gifts have gone unnoticed or unappreciated, by your family, your community, your church, or even God?
Have you ever, like Martha, been so consumed by worry at the state of the world you just wanted to do something, anything, to stay busy enough to outrun your anxiety?
Have you ever felt like you had to keep it all to yourself—your grief and anger, anxiety and fear—keep it even from God?
I wonder what it would be like to have a conversation, or an afternoon, where instead of asking God to be revealed to you, you simply reveal yourself, your whole self, to God?
I wonder if that might just be the better part.