On Sunday, September 20, FutureChurch kicked off our celebration of ten years of Catholic Women Preach with a dynamic preaching slam at St. Joseph Spiritual Ministries in the Boston area. Our preachers, Calista Robledo, Kelly Meraw, Crista Carrick Mahoney, and Lynn Cooper, offered thoughtful homilies on the Gospel story of Martha and Mary, inviting us to encounter these familiar women with fresh eyes.
In addition to this Spirit-filled preaching, Julia D’Agostino led a prayer service centered on recognizing the value of each of our voices. In a particularly powerful moment, Dr. Catherine Mooney proclaimed a litany of women: saints, prophets, teachers, ministers, and activists. FutureChurch intern Laura d’Herete and Dunstan Rodriguez, SJ. (both in their second year at the Clough School of Theology and Ministry) led us in music, filling the chapel from floor to rafters with our shared affirmation: all are welcome, and all voices matter.
Below you will find transcripts provided by each of the preachers:
Preaching by Crista Carrick Mahoney
We know this scene. Martha is the everywoman, bustling around, probably a bit manic, tending to the needs of everyone who has descended upon her house when Jesus comes to visit… afterall, it’s not just Jesus, but his disciples and all the other riff raff that follows him around, too! Does she have enough bread? Enough wine? Places to sit? Plates? Cups? Bowls? People have towash before eating, is that taken care of? Are there enough towels, has the water jug been filled?And who brought the dog inside the house? Whose child is that running around my kitchen with a stick? And where is Mary when I need her!?… Martha is breathless, “ burdened by much serving”, and has just about had it up to here!
I think this passage has historically gotten under the skin of so many women because it cansometimes leave those of us who regard caregiving or offering hospitality as a sacred andnecessary ministry feeling a bit misunderstood and underappreciated. Don’t we hear from St. Theresa of Avila that “God walks among the pots and pans”? One of my favorite modern icons is actually an image by Mickey McGrath of the back of St. Therese of Lisieux, raising a steaming, sudsy plate above her head in Eucharistic reverence over a sink of soapy water. What’s so wrong with being of service? Isn’t that what we’re called to? In my family, growing up, the kitchen was the place ofstorytelling, of wisdom.
It is so easy to try to find ourselves in the people who populate the stories in Scripture, to try to glean wisdom and direction. This passage can sometimes be interpreted to laud the contemplative, less the active, but today, I want to offer another starting place: what if we look at this passage through a different lens that does not dichotomize discipleship? What if we ask the question: what is this passage telling us about God?
With a search to better understand who God is in this particular passage as the goal, let’s start with a question: Why does Jesus repeat Martha’s name? I think when we hear it proclaimed in church, we hear it skimmed over, or perhaps even the way I sometimes read it internally, with a chastising tone – “Martha, Martha”, as if to say “come come, Martha, Mary has chosen the betterpart, why don’t you do as she is doing?” But what if we say it differently? “Martha… Martha!”Why do any of us repeat a word, a phrase, a name, a gesture? To emphasize a point maybe, or to catch someone’s attention. What if Jesus repeats Martha’s name because he wants to catch her attention, and ours?
I spent a year living in Montana on the edge of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, and I learned from friends about something called a callback ceremony. In Cheyenne culture, when a persondies, the loved ones step away from ceremonial and ritual practices for a period of time while they grieve.
They don’t dance at pow-wows or participate in other rituals. As it was explained to me, the beliefis that a part of the grieving person’s spirit leaves with the soul of the one who died.Eventually, after a period of mourning, the elders perform a callback ceremony, to not only callthe person back into participation with the circle of family and friends and community, but tocall back the part of their spirit that left. It points to the need to heal and be held together bysomething beyond ourselves.
I find the truth of this ritual so compelling and helpful, because there are moments in life when my soul feels scattered, disparate, and in need of something beyond me to hold me together. Wecan all become fragmented in a life that offers so many distractions, responsibilities, and competing needs that burden us to the point of splintering our spirit. The poet Joy Harjo, a member of the Creek Nation who was named the US Poet Laureate in 2019, writes a poem referencing this tradition: “For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet”. She addresses the contemporary experience of feeling fractured and splintered in spirit:
Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.
You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return. Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.
Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.
What if Jesus repeats Martha’s name to get her attention, to call her back to herself as abeloved child of God? To bring the disparate parts of her back together, sent spinning because she is doing so much?
Like a good spiritual director, we see a God who repeats Martha’s name — Martha… Martha… to make sure she hears him. And then what does this God incarnate do? He shows her that he sees her, really really sees her and all she is experiencing in her scattered heart: “You are anxious and worried about many things.” He’s not telling her something she doesn’t already know. And he’s not telling her she is getting it wrong, an assumption we can easily place over this scene like a bad voice over. She is worried and anxious about many things.
Jesus hears her, sees her, knows her. Like we might do with a child who is crying, or a friend who is feeling the burden of caring for a loved one, he slows things down, offers Martha,overburdened and splintered apart, a place to land, to feel seen and heard. He doesn’t fix herproblem for her, but helps her to see herself by mirroring back with compassion— You, Martha, I see you and my heart hurts for the ways that you are anxious and worried. And what do we do with the word “better”? “Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.” Not a comparison of the active vs. contemplative life, but a reminder to Martha that being worried or anxious only keeps her from resting in who she is as a beloved child of God.
What does this exchange between Martha and Jesus tell us about God? As we hear in Psalm 139, ours is a God who searches us and knows us, our innermost selves. A God who is big enough to gather and bring together all of our disparate parts, to call back our spirits, and near enough to say our name again and again, as beloved children of God. And the only response to that kind of love is, as Joy Harjo writes at the end of her poem:
“Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.”
Preaching by Kelly Meraw
My sister and I couldn’t be more different. Growing up, we were four and a half years apart. Where I was climbing trees, skinning knees, and getting into pretty constant trouble; Jennifer was tucked into a corner somewhere reading Jane Austin novels. I had a large network of friends, (even if a tad variable at times). Jennifer really only had one close friend, who remains in her life to this day. In adulthood, I studied Classical Singing and Religious Studies, married young and had kids and ultimately committed myself to a lifetime of ministry and Jennifer married late in her forties, pursued a PhD speciality in ‘Elizabethan Feminist Literature’, is a staunch atheist, and smokes a pack a day. My mom calls me ‘the talented one’ and Jen ‘the smart one’. Somehow we both leave offended by that comparison, so at least it’s fair….
At first glance, this gospel somehow puts us in a similar position doesn’t it? The comparison between these sisters- Martha ‘the servant’ and Mary ‘the contemplative’ is centuries old. Somehow, both women end up extraordinarily one-dimensional. Women in modernity find themselves having to claim the title of being a ‘Martha’ or a ‘Mary’- cramming themselves into self-inflicted, tidy, little boxes. Like some sort of esoteric Cosmopolitan Quiz: ‘12 Questions To See If You’re a Mary or a Martha’. If we’re being honest, no woman is one or the other.
In this passage, it’s tempting to see Jesus’ words to Martha as an admonishment of her preoccupation with service. It’s tempting to see his assurance that Mary has chosen ‘the better part’ and His reminder there is ‘need of only one thing’ as a reprimand of Martha’s busyness, and commentary on her lack of spiritual depth. It’s particularly tempting for women, who historically and currently, face a constant onslaught of scrutiny about the roles they inhabit. We can’t really win. We can’t really have it all. We have to choose: be busy or be blessed.
I imagine Martha feels invisible. She is the head of a household- an unconventional first century-role for a woman. She provides hospitality in Bethany for male guests- greeting them personally at the outset – another rare counter-cultural move. Martha is no typical ancient Jewish woman. It’s notable that this woman who clearly challenges conventional gender roles would be the one who demands that Jesus send her sister to help her in the kitchen!
However, it seems, Jesus isn’t interested in playing into the narrative that hospitality is a female responsibility, nor is He interested in perpetuating the willfully obtuse idea that women aren’t invited into the wisdom tradition. Jesus, in His typical fashion, remains a feminist, even in the face of a strong female attempting to recruit him into limiting her own sister.
Jesus isn’t asking us to be ‘one thing’ in this Gospel, He is reminding us we only need ‘one thing’.
Don’t we have so much empathy for fiery Martha, unafraid of saying exactly what is on her mind? Haven’t we all been in this position? Exhausted from service, which has gone completely unrecognized, looking face to face at Jesus and asking “Do you not care?”. If you’re a woman in the Catholic Church, I challenge you to say you haven’t had this moment. Catholic Women make up the majority of active parishioners, religious educators, lay ministers, and global charity workers- all while remaining excluded from the ordained hierarchy. We’re in the kitchen and we’re all asking Jesus to see us. Even if we ourselves aren’t feeling confined, we definitely know and love someone who does.
A recent New York Times best selling novel ‘Yesteryear’ provided a dark and riveting saga of a modern expanding Christian-cultural phenomenon: The Trad Wife. While much of Western society is embracing the expansion of possibility for women, some Christians are ensconcing themselves in rigidity; and dangerously binding that rigidity to holiness.
The Church teaches that all people share in the same nature, origin, and divine calling. They share equal human dignity. Feminism too articulates the fundamental equal dignity of men and women. Feminism in its own way articulates God calling women in as varied and dimensional ways as men and attempts to expand their access to respond to those calls. Here, in this gospel and far beyond, Jesus is a feminist.
I admit that in my own parish life, when I see a woman with a pew-full of children, veiled, and receiving the Eucharist on the tongue, something bubbles up in me. It isn’t envy. It isn’t judgement. I recognize her expression of devotion as a genuine gesture of desire for sainthood. It’s beautiful. The thing that bubbles up in me is futile comparison. It’s a sense that somehow her own spirituality diminishes my own.
Martha sits, from her view in the kitchen threshold, with comparison bubbling in her as well. Is it that Jesus doesn’t see her? That he doesn’t ‘care’ or is it that she wants her sister to conform to the same image of discipleship as her own?
However, Jesus isn’t interested in sending more women to the kitchen. Neither does Jesus, who knelt to wash feet (and asked us to do likewise) not also recognize that deep contemplation isn’t possible while in the act of service. Kneeling to wash feet, we look into the heart of God. Afterall, it’s Martha who recognizes Jesus is the Messiah, revealing her deep ability to see beyond the dirty dishes. Jesus is inviting Martha to continue to expand, not contract the role of women in His Church.
So what is ‘the better part’? The best translation of that expression Jesus uses is actually ‘the better portion’. Like sharing in a beautiful meal, each of our plates is going to look slightly different. I’m going to favor the tenderloin, while my sister’s plate might be more carb-heavy. In this moment, Jesus may be compelling Martha to see that from her kitchen view she is missing something. Or perhaps Jesus is just asking Martha to continue to expand her view of what is possible for both herself and her sister, not contract it. Perhaps Jesus is waiting for Martha to invite Peter into the kitchen.
Jesus is calling us to the thoughtful nurturing of an individual’s unique call. To resist the urge to compare and conform. To give ourselves permission to live into our own gifts and stop asking the people around us to yield to our preconceived notions of what they ‘should’ be. Perhaps the better portion is simply to engage more deeply in the silent conversation with the Spirit in each of us; to honor that same Spirit in our sisters; and in unrelenting hope to work toward a Church who won’t think first of asking Mary to do more, but would look at every disciple in the room and demand they respond more like Jesus does.
Preaching by Lynn Cooper
“St. Martha, Beguiler of Dragons: God Working in and Among us”
In The Golden Legend, a 13th century European manuscript, we encounter a series of stories of an amazing woman. She was one of Jesus’ friends who headed west after his ascension, converting and baptizing thousands. She traveled with her brother and sister, by foot and by boat arriving in Marseille, modern day France. She distinguished herself as a great orator and healer. She was deeply connected to the Holy Spirit—she preached to Kings, resurrected a drowned man and pacified a great beast. This woman, is Martha. Our Martha.
At first glance, it might feel like this hagiography of St Martha could not be farther from the New Testament passage of today’s liturgy. A modest home in first century Palestine meets the banks of the Rhone River, the water way that connects the Swiss Alps to the Mediterranean Sea. But I invite you to embrace that rich sacramental imagination, the one that transcends time and space, that enchanted/mystical world of our tradition, and come along for a ride with me, dwelling in the power of story—the stories we tell in our beloved community and the stories we tell of ourselves.
The section of the Golden Legend that features Martha begins by situating her uniqueness, her call. She’s an eloquent speaker, framed as intelligent and courageous. In other medieval hagiographies, female saints are uplifted for being chaste, beautiful, pure, often imbued with herculean capacities to deter sexual advances. Which is no small thing, by the way. I do not mean to look down on these traditionally held feminine virtues, its notable however that in contrast, Martha is lauded for her courage, communication skills and her spiritual care of others—these are also feminine virtues though often not acknowledged. Martha is active—preaching, baptizing, healing. She’s still on the move, still getting things done just like at home, doing it all in the name of Jesus.
Martha is seasoned in her ministry when she encounters the dragon. It is said to have been half beast, half fish born partly of the Leviathan we know from Job and Isaiah. This dragon has been tormenting the town, consuming livestock, killing human beings. When Martha approaches the river where the dragon resides, however, she pours out holy water and holds a cross up in the air. The dragon is stunned, subdued by her witness to Christ. She binds the pacified dragon with her sash and takes it into town where it meets its end, slain by the villagers and their spears. It is not uncommon for medieval saint stories to feature the killing of beasts—the symbolic act of eradicating evil. This part of the story is gory and a little grotesque but I imagine that’s what made it even more compelling.
In the painting I brought with me today, St. Martha by Sue Ellen Parkinson, you see Martha almost befriending or beguiling the dragon. In my mind, I always thought she slayed the dragon herself, but the text tells a different story. It is she who disarms the beast with her faith and courage, but she empowers the community to take the next step together—dismantling the evil in their midst. She invites them into their own place of spiritual authority and righteous action.
We must not overlook the fact that medieval communities authored and shared these stories of a women preaching, teaching and healing. These were popular stories from well-shared and well-loved collection of saints lives. Today we are celebrating 10 years of Catholic Women Preach, but as y’all know, we’ve been preaching for a long time. And our people have been telling stories about us preaching for a long time. And we continue to answer the call to celebrate those spirit-filled disruptions that point our hearts toward justice, toward the honoring God’s beautiful diverse creation.
The efforts to diminish and deny this history, our history, its relevance and legacy, continue. But we know that the stories we tell matter. Sometimes they reflect that which is already there or that which is deep within the heart. Sometimes they cajole us into new spaces, allowing us to imagine a new future, a new present.
I’m going to say something sounds obvious, but I think it needs to be stated:
People told stories of Martha because she mattered to them. It mattered then, and still matters now. It mattered what she did after she left her home in Palestine. They imagined who that woman would grow into, what her ministry and her discipleship would look like. And this is who they visioned. I ask you today, in this dreamy moment: what does your discipleship look like and what could it look like? What shape does your spiritual boldness take? (in the words of Sr. Simone)
There is evil in our time. We know. How are we recognizing it? How are we naming it? And what are you doing about it? No…what are we doing about it? As Martha teaches us, this is communal work. This is the work of solidarity and subsidiarity. This is the work of the people. God empowers us and emboldens us, but we must act. God didn’t strike down the dragon, it was beguiled by Martha and defeated by the community. God won’t be striking down our dragons, but is working in and among us to bring forth a future where we will continue to be faithful and thrive.
