If only I could learn.

It seems such a simple lesson, and Jesus has made it clear that he thinks it’s important, but I just can’t seem to learn it.

You see, when Jesus visits us, he needs a meal.  He always works so hard and must be utterly exhausted at times, the poor lamb.  I can’t just leave the food to make itself, now, can I?

It’s easy to say that listening to him is more important, but that’s the whole point.  What happens to things that are merely important if we spend all of our time on things that are more important?  Important things are still important, and feeding Jesus is important to me.  He speaks truth from God that we all love to hear; he heals people; he refutes the foolish arguments of the Pharisees – and we need all of those things.  He deserves to get fed so that he doesn’t have to keep on working as a carpenter.  He is far more valuable to us as a preacher of righteousness than as a carpenter.  At times I have been made very happy by the thought that I am doing the work of God by feeding Jesus.

Yet I also feel that I miss out because my sister Mary won’t help me.  Instead, she gets all of the benefits that I would so dearly love to have myself.

What a mix-up it all is in my mind!

If Mary would just come and help me for a while, it would only take us away from Jesus for a little time each.  
As it is, she gets to listen to Jesus while I’m left straining to hear what he is saying from another room above the sound of bubbling food.

Lazarus, our brother, always goes and listens to Jesus too, and I wouldn’t want him helping anyway.  He has always been a bit sickly, and after all, it was only two weeks ago that Jesus raised him from the dead after that horrible time when we felt that Jesus had deserted us.  Jesus taught me a lesson then too – not to worry about practical details when God is at work.  It was Practical Martha lacking faith all over again.

Anyway, it’s up to Mary and me to make the food, and that has caused some arguments between us.

I want to give Jesus the best feast that I can arrange, and that means a lot of work.  Mary says that she is willing to help with making simple food, but that Jesus would actually prefer a simple meal that allows us to listen to his father’s words rather than a feast that has kept us busy with hours of preparation.

Being the oldest, I still feel that the others should obey me, but maybe they have lessons to teach me.

I suppose I should tell you a bit about us.  We are three siblings: one brother, Lazarus, and two sisters, Mary and me, Martha.  I am the oldest and the house we live in is mine.  I am the practical one – and the one who had to look after the family from an early age when our mother died.  Naturally, I was the one who did the cooking, the cleaning, the shopping, the mothering, and everything else around the house while father was out earning the money to buy our bread.  Two years later, our father died too, and then life got really difficult.  I was still too young to earn any money, and too busy anyway, because the other two are quite a few years younger than me.  After a while, we had to sell the house and find a smaller one to live in.  I had to be both mother and father, and there was no time for rest or relaxation.  No, I worked hard all the time.  Slowly, over time, I earned enough money to buy a house of my own – a house in which we three could live together in happiness.

I never had time to find a husband, nor parents or relatives to help me in the search.  It’s too late now.  I run our family instead.

We have always been very close to each other, we three, and close to God as well.

My parents lived in Bethany partly because it was close to Jerusalem.  They loved God and enjoyed being near the temple.  When they died, we stayed in Bethany because we knew everyone there and were used to being able to visit the temple whenever we wanted to.

Hard work and godliness.  Those are the principles that have filled my life – particularly the hard work.  It’s become a habit, and I always thought it was a good habit until Jesus came along.

It was in the temple that we first met Jesus.  He was attending a feast, as all Jewish men must do three times each year.

Jesus is different from other people.  The logic he uses isn’t practical logic, it’s idealistic and completely God-centred – and for people like me, that’s difficult.  In fact, so far I have found it impossible, but maybe sometime I can start to do better.

I love to listen to Jesus’ teaching.  I listen all I can, but when food needs preparing, it just can’t wait.  If I were not the owner of the house, and the leader in the family, maybe I could just let go of the work and leave it undone, but really, who could do that?  Jesus is welcomed into the houses of many rich people – I can’t feed him and his followers with dry bread and water!

And yes, Mary has already reminded me of the two occasions when Jesus fed huge crowds of people and chose to feed them with bread and fish.  No sauces, no condiments, no extra courses, no spices – just bread and fish.  I know it’s true, but that was outside and in the country. In our own home we have no excuse for feeding Jesus anything less than the very best.

I keep arguing with myself, fighting the obvious.  I’ve been doing so ever since Jesus chided me.  Jesus never likes anyone complaining about somebody else’s behaviour, so I shouldn’t have been surprised at his response.  I suspect that I am just trying to dodge the obvious answers that Jesus wants me to come to.  I love to listen to his words, but what I keep coming back to is the fact that I think the work really does need to be done.

Now, Jesus told me that Mary had chosen a better option than the one I had chosen.  Since I don’t think that he objects to the food that I give him, he must be telling me that Mary’s priorities are better than mine.  And, really, I already know that.  It’s the very reason I complained.  I wanted her to suffer with me while we both missed out on listening to him.

But is that the only option?  Can I find a way to avoid either of us missing out at all?  Maybe I can find a way to prepare the food before Jesus comes.  It’s true that most of the time we don’t know when he is coming until he walks into Bethany or we meet him in the temple – he has to be so careful nowadays to make sure that his enemies don’t know where he is going – but I suppose we can normally predict reasonably accurately.  He is always in Jerusalem for the major feasts, and I can at least make sure that I am ready then.  Ready with food that has already been prepared.  It does mean that the food won’t be freshly cooked, but there are some recipes that are genuinely better with some time to allow the flavours to mingle.

There must be a way to do this properly – after all, Jesus knows that we need to eat.  He didn’t come to kill us all with hunger!  But he doesn’t want food to take us away from listening to the word of God.

Now that I think about it, I once heard that when Jesus went into the desert after he was baptised, he went without food for 40 days.  He says that we don’t live by bread only, but by the words of God.  Those are the words he speaks, the words Mary always makes sure that she hears, and that I just wish I could hear.

It seems that if I want to feed Jesus, I will have to make sure that I can do so without missing out on what he says.

Finally, I think I have the answer.

Simple food, simply prepared – pre-prepared if possible.  That’s what I need to give.  Jesus isn’t around for me to listen to very often, so I need to take every opportunity I can.