Colossians 1.15-28, Luke 10.38-42
Corton Denham w Sutton Montis, Weston Bampfylde w Sparkford, Trinity 8, Proper 11, 21 July 2013
Austwick, Clapham, The Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 17 July 2022
At our best, we practice empathy, imagining ourselves in the lives and circumstances of others. This is the bridge across our [...] deepest divisions. And it is not merely a matter of tolerance, but of learning from the struggles and stories of [others], and finding our better selves in the process. At our best, we honour the image of God we see in one another. We recognize that we are brothers and sisters, sharing the same brief moment on earth, and owing each other the loyalty of our shared humanity. [2]
Who spoke these words? Surprisingly, perhaps, President George W Bush, speaking at an interfaith memorial service for the victims of the Dallas police shooting last week. They go to the heart of what I want to share today about Martha.
Oh, Martha, distracted, worried, angry Martha. Martha, taking out her frustrations on her sister, trying to get Jesus to gang up with her against her sibling. Oh, Martha, sadly, we know her well. We have each played the role of Martha many times. Maybe today we will find the gospel being kind to her and helpfully illuminating what makes Martha mad.
The key verse of this story, to which I will return towards the end of our brief investigation, is verse 41, in which Jesus says, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.’ Martha seems to be ‘worried and distracted’ by at least three things. [3]
First, and most obviously, Martha is worried and distracted by the too-many ‘tasks’ that she has taken on.There is a whole sermon in that subject alone - we all know the positive trappings which hard work can bring us, but equally the traps into which we fall through overwork: the ill health, the mental breakdown, the collapse of relationships. And, as with Martha, our hard work, our overwork, sometimes seems to be a displacement activity, a way of ignoring things more important, more difficult, far deeper.
And in Martha’s case one thing more difficult, far deeper, is that she is in rivalry with her sister. This is the second cause of Martha’s worry and distractedness, that she is entirely focused on what Mary is or isn't doing. Have you ever been there yourself - working up a sweat in the garden or the kitchen or at your desk whilst all the time not thinking at all about the work you’re doing, but obsessing about the other person in the situation, who you’re increasingly resenting because you feel they’re not helping you, they’re not there for you? Like Martha, you are in rivalry with an other, which can only end in tears of anger, frustration, and loss.
Martha’s rivalrous relationship with her sister causes her to employ the age-old tactic of trying to ‘triangle’ someone else into her relationship with her sister. In her distracted state of mind Martha asks Jesus to take her side and intervene: ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ Martha’s intention (though she probably isn’t conscious of it) is for she and Jesus to unify themselves against Mary.
And so what has taken shape before us here is a classic example of what psychologists call a ‘drama triangle’. [4] Not a love triangle - though love triangles might become drama triangles from time to time - a drama triangle is a model of human behaviour which involves three psychological roles which sound very familiar, roles which people often take in a situation:
- The person who plays the role of a victim;
- The person who pressures, coerces or persecutes the victim; and
- The rescuer, who intervenes, seemingly out of a desire to help the situation or the underdog.
The victim, the persecutor, and the rescuer - roles we each play out all the time, every day - think about it, you’ll recognise it. But unlike the pantomime formula of the hero, the villain, and the damsel in distress, we’re not type-cast in one role particularly, but we change roles all the time, for the drama in a ‘drama triangle’ comes when people’s roles switch.
And so in Luke’s gospel story we can identify the persecutor as Martha, the victim as Mary, and the rescuer as Jesus - but the drama in this particular ‘drama triangle’ only occurs when Jesus switches role at the end. As Jesus chides Martha for her distractedness suddenly it seems Jesus becomes the persecutor and Martha the victim. What might happen next - maybe Mary would step in to defend her sister, praising her hard work in the kitchen and offering to help? If so, another triangle would be formed - Mary, formerly the victim, would now become the rescuer.
What Martha wants to happen next is for Jesus to take sides with her against Mary - because the more people she gets on-side, the more the persecutor’s cause is strengthened and the victim is thus more likely to remain the victim. I’ve preached on this many times before - the ‘scapegoat mechanism’ which is at the heart of all human society. It’s what makes us send innocents to the cross, or to the tabloids, or to the edge of the playground on their own, it's how people get publicly shamed on Facebook and Twitter, as we play our part in asserting the survival psyche of our social group.
Note that in the drama triangle each 'player'’s psychological needs are met in a manner that makes them feel justified, whilst sidestepping the broader dysfunction in the situation [4]. Hence the ‘victim mentality’ [5], hence the certitude of the persecutor, and hence the self-esteem of the rescuer - consider how many times Martha’s story has been told to boost the status of Jesus as a champion of silence and contemplation in religion, how many sermons on this subject have pitted the quietists among us against the activists and made the activists feel inferior, for surely this story shows that Jesus is on the side of those who prefer to study and contemplate... [6]
Well, if we left our investigation there, that might be the case. If we settled on the story as a drama triangle in which Jesus, the rescuer, and Mary, the victim, gain at the expense of Martha, the persecutor, then it would be a neat analysis. But it would not be the gospel, it would not be good news to any of them - stuck in a cycle of behaviour from which they can’t escape.
But if we believe anything about Jesus then surely it must be that he is the One who can step outside the triangle. He is the One who is able to break the cycles of destructive self-interest which otherwise imprison us. Changing our hearts, thus altering the way we act towards others. And so our investigation returns to the key verse of this story, verse 41, in which Jesus says, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.’
What is Jesus doing here? He's breaking the triangle. He’s stepping out of the role of rescuer to Mary - but without damaging Mary in any way. He’s expressing empathy for Martha. He’s getting alongside her, telling her what he can see when he looks into her heart, he’s taking steps to rescue her from the distractions which harm her.
‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.’ The one thing which will rescue her from her rivalry with her sister, and all the distractedness that rivalry causes, is to focus instead on learning from Jesus. For:
... He is the one person above all in whom our focus and fascination can begin to untangle us from our webs of rivalry. He is the one who came to do the desire of his Father without rivalry. When we learn to imitate him, we become more focused on what is most needful to do, the most needful tasks [...]. We are more apt to notice [others in need] and to respond with compassion, [to be] 'Good Samaritans' ...
[As we prayerfully practice] being rooted in Jesus [then we find ourselves beginning] to disentangle from our many rivalries - without triangling Jesus into them. [As we] attend to a healthy relationship with Jesus, we can find healthier ways to attend to, and mend our relationships with others. [7]
This was the lesson Jesus was trying to teach Martha. The story would have been the same if the characters were the other way around: if it had been Mary who was distracted by her intense desire to be devout and studious sitting at Jesus' feet, while all the while she was focussed on Martha happily working away in the kitchen, so much so that Mary was not really listening to Jesus at all, but to the nagging inner voices of her rivalry with her activist sister.
In his letter to the Colossians Paul gave a powerful description of the role Jesus plays in human society. ‘In him all things hold together’ (1.17), he wrote.
‘In him all things hold together’ - for Jesus steps outside our pernicious drama triangles to promote a different way of being. In Jesus, relationships cease to be forged in rivalry, and situations can always become win-win. Note how Jesus empathises with Martha and supportively offers her a better way; whilst affirming Mary for the good way she has already chosen.
‘In him all things hold together’ - and thus, outside him, things fall apart. In our prayers let us ask Jesus to help us to identify the source of our distractions, our worries, our anger; let us permit him to open our eyes to the damage this is doing to others and to ourselves; and let us allow him to show us a way to step outside of our drama triangles, to find a different way of being in which we and those with whom we live, are each affirmed and held together in empathy and care.
Notes
[1] Previously preached at Whitegate and Little Budworth, July 2013.
[2] READ: Full transcript of Former President Bush's speech at memorial service.
[3] I'm grateful as always to Paul Neuchterlein’s notes on the lectionary readings for today, which inspired my approach to this subject, and from which much of this sermon’s analysis draws heavily: Girardian Lectionary, Proper 11C.
[4] ‘Karpman Drama Triangle’ at Wikipedia.
[5] ‘Victim mentality’ at Wikipedia.
[6] For a deep discussion of this opposition playing out through history, see Diarmaid MacCulloch: Silence: A Christian History
[7] Neuchterlein, Girardian Lectionary, Proper 11C.
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