The Better Way

Deacon Pierce homily given on July 21, 16th Sunday Ordinary Time

M&M candies: who doesn’t like them? They melt in our mouths, not in our hands, so the tagline goes.  M&Ms are like Martha and Mary who are the chocolate M&M sisters in today’s Gospel. These women have different M&M-colored shells, so to speak. They have different appearances and behaviors described to us by Luke.

Martha is burdened with much serving. She’s anxious and worried as she rushes to prepare their home for a meal – one we can assume is for a house-church service, typical of Luke’s time near the end of the first century. We can just imagine Martha’s hair in disarray with sweat pouring down her forehead.  Mary, on the other hand, seems calm, cool, collected, and she quietly listens to Jesus.

Martha and Mary give us a close-up view of two ways to follow Jesus. Luke shows us through these two sisters the red M&M way and the green M&M way – the red way of Martha involves passion, fire, and leadership with the green way of Mary being about life, love, and hope.

Martha serves.  She represents those who are passionate about charity and with fire in their hearts serve others and lead others to do the same. She is about feeding, welcoming, clothing, healing, and caring for people. Jesus said, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me (MT 25:35-36).”    Can his message be any clearer?

On the other hand, Mary listens. Mary represents those who listen carefully to what Jesus says; are devoted to him through prayer and worship; and follow him by loving God with all their heart, being, strength, and mind.

So, whose way is better:  Martha’s or Mary’s? Luke tells us “Mary” because Jesus says, according to Luke, that Mary has chosen the better part – like a part or role in a stage play. She’s Luke’s star of the show.

Why does Luke make Mary his leading lady?  Some Catholic scholars and theologians have said Luke puts his own words in Jesus’ mouth to sway public opinion of Luke’s day.  Women were more visible and involved in public ministries. They were becoming influential leaders.

Men might not have wanted or appreciated women taking on important leadership roles. Most men of Luke’s time and world likely would have thought women belonged in the household with their focus being on prayer and worship only.  Leadership was for men.

We’ll never know what Luke meant or what Jesus said about Martha and Mary.  Frankly, it doesn’t really matter because we’re well into the 21st century with women being valuable leaders and key figures in service to others. Women tend to work hard in the trenches.

And guys, let’s face it.  Many of us don’t stack up very well when compared to women on the love, kindness, and compassion meters. Although, we must admit that here at Christ the King men are at the top of the performance scale as well. Witness the Food Pantry and the Knights of Columbus as just two of many examples.

Here’s another example of service provided by the HBO movie entitled “Mary and Martha.” It premiered in 2013 and told the story of two very different women who lost their sons to malaria in Africa.  They weren’t sisters by blood, but they certainly were sisters in shared grief – the loss of their only sons. They turned their personal losses into a political cause trying to get our government to provide more aid to combat malaria.  Malaria is a preventable disease that kills more than 500,000 children each year – ½ million children.

This Martha and Mary remind us we’re all obligated by our God and through Jesus’ commands to serve and love others.  In these two sisters’ case, simply through buying mosquito nets for the children and their parents where malaria is rampant and a daily killer. Ten dollars buys a net that protects children and their families as they sleep at night when mosquitos search for blood.

So, once again we ask ourselves, “Which way should we choose?” Perhaps we should choose neither the way of Mary nor the way of Martha. It’s not a question of picking one or the other. We need to embrace both ways.  Jesus probably would have said we need the green for life, love, and hope tied to prayer and worship. He would have insisted we need the red of passion, fire, and leadership for service.

I end by saying as I began that Mary and Martha were the chocolate M&M sisters. We need to be chocolate as well. First of all, for many of us chocolate is the food of the gods.  We Catholics are the food of our God used to feed those who are hungry in body and spirit.

Second, chocolate is brown.  What do we get when we mix together the colors red and green?  We get the color brown.  Brown is the color of the earth, and it represents warmth, peace, and healing.  Now, that’s Jesus in a nutshell.

Next time we eat some M&Ms, remember: red for Martha and green for Mary. And Jesus?  He’s the brown M&M – the best one in the bag.

Deacon David Pierce