Sermon: Mary, Martha, and Male Space
(The Extension of Love)
Text: Luke 10:38-42
In Korea, I was Mary. I was born Mary, grew up as Mary, and later, in my university years, in marriage and at church, I insisted upon claiming myself as Mary. Growing up, in my small world, I felt like I was surrounded by Marthas, indeed, many Marthas, … They were my friends, relatives, mothers and grandmothers, neighbours, church deaconesses, and so on.
My mother was a high school teacher when she met my father. She was an English teacher; an accomplished professional. After she had me, she stayed at home. She was quite happy about it. Staying at home after marriage or after the first child was born was common among the women in her generation. It was my mother’s great joy to give all of her time and energy to feed and care for her two children, me and my one-year-younger brother. My Mom didn’t mind being a full-time Martha for me. She was Martha, happily Martha, and yet she wanted her daughter to be 100 percent Mary. I, her child, played, studied, learned, explored the world with her full support. Mom wanted me to achieve the full 100 percent of my potential. In the meantime, my aunts, my big mother (my father’s older brother’s wife, so, the highest-ranking auntie), my paternal grandmother, considered me to be different from the other female children in the family. They didn’t know exactly how to treat me, because I wasn’t being raised in the same servant-Martha mold as most of the other girls.
During Korean holidays, Lunar New Years Day and Thanksgiving Day, my paternal family gathered for two to three days at my Big Mother’s home. The typical scene you would see in an ordinary Korean home is that all adult women — aunts, mothers, grandmother, and daughters-in-law — are in the kitchen, with their respective roles: food prep, cooking, tasting, ordering, directing, cleaning, serving those in the living room – the men. All male adults and their sons are sitting, talking, laughing, enjoying the plentiful food and liquor on the tables, with no obligation or expectation to help or even enter the kitchen. Most Korean foods require lots of prepping, constant attention and busy hands. It’s like Christmas or Thanksgiving, without a turkey, but twice as many side dishes that have to be cooked and ready to serve.
In the living room, sometimes my boy cousins would be invited to sit at the table and join the adult conversation. I was the only female child, among my cousins, and what I did was, rather than waiting for an invitation which would not be given to me, I would “intrude” on the male space and sit beside my father for a bit. I was a child Mary in the male space, and I insisted on it. I needed to feel that I was not subordinate or expected to only belong in Martha’s place of servitude.
My story of being a child Mary, figuring out where to place myself between Martha’s place and the male space influences how I read and hear the story of Mary and Martha in the Gospel. I would ask what ‘better portion, better choice’ Mary would have actually looked for… What was she claiming? Sitting quietly at the feet of Jesus and listening, or actively figuring out her place in the world to know and hold herself as the child of God, God’s word and wisdom flaming like fire in her heart?
It would be interesting to imagine and figure out where Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, might have been at the dinner. Among Marthas, my grandmother, who never showed any enthusiasm for being in the kitchen, was raised in a society which preferred and elevated males and sons. She had not known any alternative understanding about equality. She projected and practiced the only values she had been taught and learned herself — girls need to know that they are worth less than their brothers and male cousins, and women are worth less than fathers and husbands. One year, when the family gathered again for the Lunar New Year holiday, all my cousins and I were given a ‘blessing’ envelope with money, very traditional, and when I found out that I was only given half the amount my younger brother and male cousins got, I was furious. Unhappy and frustrated, I made a complaint. I was in grade 6.
Every holiday, as many Korean families still do, we had the ritual of remembering and honouring our ancestors. It was painful to me to stand in the line of Marthas — my mother, aunts, female children — and watch my boy cousins and my younger brother come to the front to light the incense and pour the liquor for our ancestors, one after another.
One more story about being Mary. After the wedding, Min-Goo and I, newlyweds, started our first home in the makeshift house the church built for their assistant ministers’ family, on the roof of the four-story church building. Min-Goo, newly ordained, became the new assistant minister of the church … The birth of a new prince in the church, while I was recruited as a silent, smiling angel. I remember one lunch at church, so vividly. I was a new bride, and that day, I got a phone call from a lay deaconess who was hired full-time to cook and take care of the kitchen at church. With great delight, she asked me to come down to the kitchen and have lunch together. “Lunch is ready.” All the ministers were called too. I knew that joining the lunch was not an option to accept or turn down – it was mandatory. I went downstairs. In the warm, small room beside the kitchen a wonderful Korean lunch was set up for everyone. About the time when everyone had finished eating, someone lifted their jaw up, like this (show the gesture – its arrogance cuts across cultural barriers). An indication, more than a hint. Looking at me, then, looking at the kitchen sink, messaging me to get up. Start cleaning. What are you waiting for? Many Marthas prepared this table. Are you not one of them? Do your job.
Over the years, I met many Marthas, and they all had something to tell me. Comments, advice, criticism, questions, complaints… “What’s your plan after graduating from theological school? (Meaning, the wife of a minister is not supposed to become the minister.)” Mocking me, “You have been educated so much, but look at yourself. You are just a mother with a child, living in this shabby house.” To sum up, why are you trying to be so Mary, when you are, and should be, Martha.
I confess that, even after many years, I worked hard to not move from the place of Mary. I was afraid of my “better portion” being taken away, and being placed in Martha’s position, involuntarily, in the patriarchal hierarchy. Partly, “struggling to be the Sun again”, taking the path of ordination, being ordained, preaching, organizing new projects, looking for and initiating new possibilities with those who spark my desire for learning and teaching, has been the way I continue to claim myself as Mary in traditionally male or culturally White spaces.
Then, over time, especially as I grow older, and the Marthas in my life get older too, “us” verses “them” reversed… Mary versus Martha and Martha versus Mary reverse…
I have become more willing to understand and care for the Marthas in my life. I now see their weakness and their strength, their fragility and their perseverance in making their lives work for themselves. I started to forgive them for trying to force me into their own mold; I started to accept them as who they were, as resilient people whose actions lived in the context of their generation and culture. On her passing away, in the last moment of her peaceful leaving, I got a phone call from an aunt to come quickly and visit my grandmother and greet her. My grandmother was not able to move any part of her body, her face unable to make any expression or words. And yet, in the last moment, my heart saw her quickly smiling, perhaps an illusion, but I saw her greeting and her smile that accepted my complicated feelings. Mutual forgiveness didn’t need words, and exchanging the words was impossible anyways, but the extension, the reaching out of love was present.
This past summer, my family made a long-overdue visit to Korea. All of my paternal-side family members gathered again for the anniversary of my grandmother’s death. My uncles, fathers, boy cousins, all sat in the living room and exchanged lots of conversation over the Korean delicacies my Marthas prepared in the kitchen. Meanwhile, the Marthas were happy to cook, sitting around their kitchen table and chatting pleasantly. There was a difference from my childhood. My older relatives, now in their seventies, did not hide that they were tired. Their energy, their hands and feet were not the same as when they were in their forties or fifties. I changed too. Over the years, I learned to value how serving others in love, feeding the hungry, caring for children and the elderly, sustains the family and community. On my grandmother’s anniversary, I took the job of Martha, making myself busier than my aunts and mother. I learned the “better portion, better choice” for Mary includes solidarity, holding our sister’s hands, learning to be resilient, loving and revolutionary. Intergenerationally. Interculturally.
So, this Sunday, I may not be standing here to present to you a sermon-smart, preaching-powerful “message”, or a lesson. I take this prestigious opportunity to share my story with you and how I approached this Gospel story, based on my lived experience. We bring ourselves, when we engage each story. I love this phrase from T.S. Eliot, “The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.” If blood means life, I find my life’s story, my lived experience, the journey of struggling to be the Sun again, in the ink of the Bible. If I had a magic wand, a Gospel wand, and could make the story end with an open-ended question, I would ask Martha and Jesus, (who represents the “male space” in the Bible) to sit with me, somewhere that is neutral, not the kitchen or the living room — creating a third, brave space — , and actively wonder what truly the “best portion, the best choice” for Mary can be; whether we can create a space of “trinity”, not “pyramid (hierarchy)”. The trinity acceptance of Mary, Martha and Jesus to co-create and co-facilitate the empowering love that seeks understanding, solidarity, and transformation of all three parties, like a “family” of God, who is not male, nor female… and which has no segregated corner of what Martha’s task is and what Mary’s better portion is.
Extend the love that flows through generations and across cultures; us versus them is outmoded thinking. Mary versus Martha, Martha and Mary versus Male Space… If we intend to seek one another in faith and understanding, all spaces, of service and learning and teaching, need to flow into each other – no separation, no barriers, a community of all, for all.
“We have not known You as You should be known.” (Rumi)
Extend your love…
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