With last week’s familiar story of the so-called “Good Samaritan” who is the punchline foil to two other characters, we come to the familiar tale of two sisters – Mary and Martha. When faced with two – two siblings, two candidates, two dishes – our instinctual default is to choose one over the other.

Somehow, we are acclimated to a zero sum game of one winner and one not-winner; at its worst binary, two options are distilled to a “good one” and a “bad one.”

So we play along and choose Mary of Bethany over her sister Martha, thinking that Mary chose to be with Jesus and contemplate his teachings while Martha was preoccupied with her tasks. Somehow the choice of sitting at the feet of Jesus and hearing him theologize is the wiser choice than attending to whatever Martha was attending to. I’ve heard it over the years, of pastors and teachers saying Martha was cooking, or Martha was cleaning. Why would one assume that?

What if Martha was attending to preparing an agape meal, or cooking food to take to a hungry family next door? What if one of their “tasks” as sisters was to say prayers for one of the pairs of the 70/72 sent out to proclaim the Gospel, whom we encountered earlier in Luke 10. In other words, I don’t like assuming what Martha was doing. Martha’s “tasks” were important.

In my ministries over the years, I’ve logged in more than 1.1 million air miles, which means plenty of hotel stays along the way. In every hotel I’ve stayed, I give a generous gratuity and a handwritten note where I write a thank-you note and a blessing for the housekeeping staff. I say how grateful I am for their work of making the room clean and comfortable, that I appreciate them and their work, and I offer a blessing to them and their loved ones. I don’t know who they are and I don’t ever see them, but I am grateful nevertheless. Each person is valuable. Each person is important.

Mary and Martha’s story involves us having a holy eavesdrop – being holy flies on the holy wall of Mary and Martha’s home – of this interaction. Through this conversation, the Lukan community, who are the apostolic community of Luke-Acts, show us what community ministry looks like and what ministry in community looks like. What I see described in this story of the two Bethany sisters are two siblings who have been involved in joint “tasks” (serving ministry) and who will be involved in those tasks even after Jesus leaves their home. They are sisters who care for one another, who care about their home, who care about their community. Theirs is a relationship of serving together. Martha’s query asks about who cares for her, who cares for the ministry, who will be a part of what Martha and Mary have been up to even before Jesus came to their home. Jesus’s word to Martha is an invitation to see and behold that the communal ministry is continuing right there in their living room, the three of them with one another. It doesn’t negate her work, it doesn’t uplift Mary over Martha. It is an affirmation that he cares deeply about each and both sisters, and the ministries they are doing. We and the apostolic community, with them, recount this scene because it invites us to behold the presence of Christ in our midst, who invites us to come. The doing is in the coming. The doing is in the beholding the presence of Christ.

This scene comes at the end of a chapter that began with 70/72 being deployed, the proud disciples being able to tread on snakes and scorpions, and the exhortation to be like the Samaritan to “go and do likewise” (10:37). Here, for the Bethany sisters, Jesus doesn’t tell Martha to stop. His word to her is within the hearing of Mary, who likely internalizes the conversation. After all, Mary is at his feet to learn about his teachings; this is a teaching moment.

But his teaching moment is not at the expense of Martha. His is an invitation for both sisters to recognize his presence, to recognize the value of each other, and to care about the holy community of “two or three gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20).  That even when he departs and it’s just the two of them again, Martha and Mary will have a deeper sense of their belonging-ness to one another, and to the ministry tasks to which they will continue to attend to. Who cares about them as people and who cares about the ministries they do? Yes, Jesus does.