A woman's place is at the Teacher's feet

I cringe whenever I hear the story of Mary and Martha brought up for a Bible lesson. (Perhaps you know the feeling, if you’ve been at many women’s conferences.) So many times these remarkable women are reduced to caricatures, used to illustrate a simplistic message: “Don’t wear yourself out trying to serve others, like Martha! Make sure you spend some quiet time with Jesus, like Mary!”

No thank you.

Well-intentioned as that sort of teaching may be, there’s much better news in this story. Luke 10:38-42 is not about the value of contemplation vs. active service. This is a story with radical implications for how the church should welcome women and their gifts.

My interest in Mary started years ago, when I was beginning to explore what Jesus might “allow” women to do in the church. The story of the night she anointed Jesus captured my imagination: Mary dared to step into a roomful of men, to interrupt their business, and to give Jesus a gift so extravagant it prompted outrage. Mary gave away a fortune, possibly a source of economic security, to offer something beautiful to her Lord.

What could embolden a woman to do something so lavish, so risky, so foolish according to the standards of the world?

I believe it all begins in Luke 10. We can view this scene as our hero’s origin story, the moment that set her on a path to glory. Jesus’s conversation with Martha and Mary contains an invitation: he welcomes women to spend time with him in study, taking seriously Mary’s desire to learn. In the process, he challenges societal expectations that women should serve men. Mary’s “better choice” not only challenged customs of 1st-century Jewish culture, it confronts similar gender expectations that persist today.

At its most basic, this is a story about Jesus refusing to send a woman back into the kitchen. It’s a story about Jesus rejecting his culture’s gender roles — despite the fact these were designed to ensure his comfort and convenience.

When Jesus and his entourage arrive at Martha and Mary’s house, his male disciples would’ve expected to be treated well. Hospitality was important to Jewish culture, and having a well-known rabbi come to dinner was an honor.1

Hosting a group of this size and importance was no small task. Unfortunately, Martha has often been portrayed as a silly, frazzled homemaker, rushing around and stressing out so much that Jesus tells her to take a chill pill. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As hosts, Martha and Mary bear the responsibility of making their guests comfortable.2 While their brother Lazarus may have been able to sit and talk with the disciples, the work of preparing and serving food belonged to the women.

Anyone who’s ever hosted a large dinner party knows the stress involved. I can imagine Martha taking inventory of ingredients, realizing she needs to butcher an animal or grind some more flour because they’ll need a LOT of bread. As she passes through the seating area, she expects to see Lazarus with Jesus. But then she realizes: Mary’s there, too.

“Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to serve alone? So tell her to give me a hand.”

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Martha’s question portrayed as silly, even selfish — as if she’s just overwrought (or perhaps “hysterical”), making a big deal out of nothing.

But when Jesus answers Martha he doesn’t dismiss her worry, as is so often suggested. Instead, he takes her seriously, because her concerns are legitimate. Martha knew that, as women, she and Mary were expected to provide for Jesus and the other men. It was their job to cook, to serve, to clean up afterwards. Shame and honor were attached to hosting visitors.3 How would it look if this rabbi and his disciples came to dinner and they didn’t have enough food?

Martha isn’t a petty character who resents having to do her chores alone. She feels the weight of societal burdens placed on women, and is doing her best to carry out the role she’s been given. She wants to serve Jesus, and is doing it through the only path available to her as a woman.

Not having Mary in the kitchen was a legitimate risk for this sibling host family. Failing to provide for their visitors would have brought shame on the family, similar to the wedding at Cana running out of wine in John 2. There is a real potential for damage to their reputation, and Martha is pleading with Jesus for help: Your visit is such an honor — please let it remain that way.

When we view Martha from our 21st-century, individualistic perspective, we see her as a complainer who doesn’t like to be inconvenienced. But according to the values of 1st-century Jewish culture, she had her priorities in the proper order. Martha was protecting the family; Mary was the one who looked selfish.

I can imagine the moment after Martha’s question. Perhaps Mary had been waiting for this ever since she sat down. Perhaps she’d been struggling to stay focused on Jesus’s teaching because she knew she wasn’t “supposed” to be there, among the male disciples. When would someone notice?

I’m sure Mary expected Jesus to agree with her sister. Maybe she was starting to leave the room when Jesus spoke up. It was her duty to feed the men, after all. So when Jesus gently rebuked Martha, Mary heard a shocking reversal of cultural values. She heard an unexpected invitation, an affirmation that she was valued — not just for her capacity to serve men, but as a disciple. Jesus was willing to let his dinner be late so Mary could stay with him. Jesus was willing to be inconvenienced for Mary’s sake, rather than expecting her to set aside her desires in order to serve him.

Because we don’t live in 1st-century Jewish/Greco-Roman culture, we don’t catch these undercurrents of meaning. But Mary, Martha, and any men in the room certainly would have.

“Mary has chosen the one thing necessary, and it will not be taken away from her.”

In a culture that said a woman’s “one thing necessary” was to serve men, Jesus’s words were a challenge. But I can imagine the shock, surprise, and joy that flooded Mary’s heart in that moment.

I can imagine it, because I’ve heard Jesus speaking a similar invitation to me. Not audibly, of course, but through Mary’s story. His words to her can and should be read as an invitation for all women… especially for those of us in the evangelical church who, like Martha, have internalized restrictive cultural messages about our purpose and value.

I spent years feeling like Mary: wanting to sit with Jesus, but worried I didn’t belong among his disciples.

I didn’t start that way. I was raised in the era of purity culture, influenced by messages about “biblical womanhood,” believing a woman’s highest calling was to be a wife and mother. Feminism was dangerous, and any church with a female pastor had likely abandoned the gospel.

But in my 30s, I developed a passion for studying the Bible and learning about theology. I started leading Bible studies at the prison ministry my husband and I were part of, and discovered I loved teaching. This quickly became a source of tension, confusion, and fear.

Complementarianism had already taught me that women who wanted to speak publicly should be viewed with suspicion. Teaching other women was ok, but teaching was dangerously close to preaching, and teaching men — having “authority over” them — was a definite no-go. For example, I worried about how much I could say in our community group discussions, where men and women studied the Bible together. Where was the line?

I wanted to improve my teaching for the women at prison, so I attended a “preaching cohort” at our church. It was designed as coaching for men to give sermons, so even though I was kindly welcomed by the men there, I spent my time anxiously monitoring my words and communication style. Was I showing respect to the male elders in attendance, properly affirming the leadership and manhood of the guys around me, as I was expected to do4?

I wanted nothing more than to learn from and about Jesus. Like Mary, I wanted to sit at his feet, but I was uncomfortably aware I was supposed to be somewhere else.

Women were “equal in value to men, but with different roles.”5 There were plenty of proper roles for women, and most of them involved preparing and organizing the spaces where men would lead. I was already doing these. Hosting and preparing food for our community group, for instance — which included arranging childcare for the group each week. Or teaching kids in Sunday school. I did that too. I could serve women, children, or… food.

Like Martha and Mary, I knew my role. I was expected to stay with the children or in the kitchen, so the men could have their time with Jesus.

But now I wanted to be elsewhere. I yearned to be a disciple, someone who could spend time learning from Jesus. I believed — and still believe! — that hospitality and ministry to children are valuable, but there was something I loved more. Studying Jesus’s words and sharing what I’d learned was life-giving to me as nothing else had been.

Every time I ventured into male-centered spaces in the church, I kept looking over my shoulder, waiting to be told I didn’t belong, that I was needed elsewhere. I stayed quiet, afraid to cross invisible lines, afraid to draw attention to myself. I can imagine similar fears and feelings swirling inside Mary as she sat with Jesus that day.

I doubt Mary would’ve argued if Jesus sent her to help Martha. She knew her “role,” and she had dared to venture beyond it. Sitting with Jesus was a risk for herself and her family. If he agreed with Martha’s request, the message would be clear: a woman’s place is in the kitchen, not at the Teacher’s feet.

This was the message I heard all my life, though never in such explicit terms. No one ever told me NOT to study the Bible, or that I “had” to serve my husband and men in the church. But I’d learned women weren’t supposed to have authority, and that working outside the home was an unfortunate choice, preventing women from properly serving their husbands and children. And I’d seen what happened to women who taught publicly like Aimee Byrd, who was the target of online bullying by male pastors and elders. They made it clear she belonged in the kitchen; a favorite comment was that she should “make me a sandwich.”

If I wanted to study and teach the Bible, I could do it with the women and children of the church, as long as I remained in submission to men. If I wanted to learn, to develop my gifts, I could use any leftover time… as long as I was still getting dinner on the table every night. To be clear, this wasn’t an expectation my husband placed on me — it was the message I’d taken in from countless books and sermons on “biblical womanhood.” My one thing necessary was to remain in submission to the men God had placed in authority in my life.

I suspect this is why the story of Mary and Martha has been so consistently dumbed down and inaccurately simplified. Jesus’s answer to Martha is a threat to patriarchal systems; his affirmation of Mary is a rebuke to the gender hierarchy practiced in so many evangelical churches.

It would’ve made things easier for Jesus if he sent Mary back to the kitchen. It would’ve been more convenient for him and all the disciples to have both sisters prepping dinner. But Jesus doesn’t make that choice. He sets aside his male privilege and welcomes Mary to stay.

We may have missed what Jesus meant to say, but I don’t think Mary did. You belong here with me, she heard. Your desire to learn from me is more important than having you cook for me.

Mary chose the “one thing necessary,” and it was not women’s service to men. Jesus knew she wanted something better than conforming to cultural expectations, where social standing and honor could so easily be lost. Her love for the Lord kept her oriented to a treasure that could not be taken away from her:

“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek:

That I may dwell in the house of Lord all the days of my life,

To gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”

The lesson of Mary and Martha is one that too many churches don’t want to hear. It’s better for women to spend time with Jesus than to serve men. When Mary heard this, I believe it changed her life. I know it did for me.