Woman in Sacred History

Here is made real.
The indescribable
Here is accomplished;
The eternal womanly
Draws us upward and onward."

MARTHA AND MARY

The dramatic power of the brief Bible narratives is one of their most wonderful characteristics. By a few incidents, a word here and there, they create a vivid image of a personality that afterwards never dies from our memory. The women of Shakespeare have been set upon the stage with all the accessories of dress, scenery, and the interpreting power of fine acting, and yet the vividness of their personality has not been equal to that of the women of the Bible.

Mary and Martha, the two sisters of Bethany, have had for ages a name and a living power in the Church. Thousands of hearts have throbbed with theirs; thousands have wept sympathetic tears in their sorrows and rejoiced in their joy. By a few simple touches in the narrative they are so delicately and justly discriminated that they stand for the representatives of two distinct classes. Some of the ancient Christian writers considered them as types of the active and the contemplative aspects of religion. Martha is viewed as the secular Christian, serving God in and through the channels of worldly business, and Mary as the more peculiarly religious person, devoted to a life of holy meditation and the researches of heavenly truth. The two were equally the friends of Jesus. Apparently, the two sisters with one brother were an orphan family, united by the strongest mutual affection, and affording a circle peculiarly congenial to the Master.

They inhabited a rural home just outside of Jerusalem; and it seems that here, after the labors of a day spent in teaching in the city, our Lord found at evening a home-like retreat where he could enjoy perfect quiet and perfect love. It would seem, from many touches in the Gospel narrative, as if Jesus, amid the labors and applauses and successes of a public life, yearned for privacy and domesticity, – for that home love which he persistently renounced, to give himself wholly to mankind. There is a shade of pathos in his answer to one who proposed to be his disciple and dwell with him: "Foxes have holes; the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." This little orphan circle, with their quiet home, were thus especially dear to him, and it appears that this was his refuge during that last week of his life, when he knew that every day was bringing him nearer to the final anguish.

It is wonderful how sharply and truly, in a narrative so brief, the characters of Martha and Mary are individualized. Martha, in her Judæan dress and surroundings, is, after all, exactly such a good woman as is often seen in our modern life, – a woman primarily endowed with the faculties necessary for getting on in the world, yet sincerely religious. She is energetic, business-like, matter-of-fact, strictly orthodox, and always ready for every emergency. She lives in the present life strongly and intensely, and her religion exhibits itself through regular forms and agencies. She believes in the future life orthodoxly, and is always prompt to confess its superior importance as a matter of doctrine, though prone to make material things the first in practice. Many such women there are in the high places of the Christian Church, and much good they do. They manage fairs, they dress churches, they get up religious festivals, their names are on committees, they are known at celebrations. They rule their own homes with activity and diligence, and they are justly honored by all who know them. Now, nothing is more remarkable in the history of Jesus than the catholicity of his appreciation of character. He never found fault with natural organization, or expected all people to be of one pattern. He did not break with Thomas for being naturally a cautious doubter, or Peter for being a precipitate believer; and it is specially recorded in the history of this family that Jesus loved Martha. He understood her, he appreciated her worth, and he loved her.

In Mary we see the type of those deeper and more sensitive natures who ever aspire above and beyond the material and temporal to the eternal and divine; souls that are seeking and inquiring with a restlessness that no earthly thing can satisfy, who can find no peace until they find it in union with God.

In St. Luke we have a record of the manner in which the first acquaintance with this family was formed. This historian says: "A woman named Martha received him at her house." Evidently the decisive and salient power of her nature caused her to be regarded as mistress of the family. There was a grown-up brother in the family; but this house is not called the house of Lazarus, but the house of Martha, – a form of speaking the more remarkable from the great superiority or leadership which ancient customs awarded to the male sex. But Martha was one of those natural leaders whom everybody instinctively thinks of as the head of any house they may happen to belong to. Her tone toward Mary is authoritative. The Mary-nature is a nature apt to appear to disadvantage in physical things. It is often puzzled, and unskilled, and unready in the details and emergencies of a life like ours, which so little meets its deepest feelings and most importunate wants. It acquires skill in earthly things only as a matter of discipline and conscience, but is always yearning above them to something higher and divine. A delicacy of moral nature suggests to such a person a thousand scruples of conscientious inquiry in every turn of life, which embarrass directness of action. To the Martha-nature, practical, direct, and prosaic, all these doubts, scruples, hesitations, and unreadinesses appear only as pitiable weaknesses.

Again, Martha's nature attaches a vast importance to many things which, in the view of Mary, are so fleeting and perishable, and have so little to do with the deeper immortal wants of the soul, that it is difficult for her even to remember and keep them in sight. The requirements of etiquette, the changes and details of fashion, the thousand particulars which pertain to keeping up a certain footing in society and a certain position in the world, – all these Martha has at her fingers' ends. They are the breath of her nostrils, while Mary is always forgetting, overlooking, and transgressing them. Many a Mary has escaped into a convent, or joined a sisterhood, or worn the plain dress of the Quaker, in order that she might escape from the exaction of the Marthas of her day, "careful [or, more literally, full of care] and troubled about many things."

It appears that in her way Martha was a religious woman, a sincere member of the Jewish Church, and an intense believer. The preaching of Christ was the great religious phenomenon of the times, and Martha, Mary, and Lazarus joined the crowd who witnessed his miracles and listened to his words. Both women accepted his message and believed his Messiahship, – Martha, from the witness of his splendid miracles; Mary, from the deep accord of her heart with the wonderful words he had uttered. To Martha he was the King that should reign in splendor at Jerusalem, and raise their nation to an untold height of glory; to Mary he was the answer to the eternal question, – the Way, the Truth, the Life, for which she had been always longing.

Among many who urge and press hospitality, Martha's invitation prevails. A proud home is that, when Jesus follows her, – her prize, her captive. The woman in our day who has captured in her net of hospitalities the orator, the poet, the warrior, – the star of all eyes, the central point of all curiosity, desire, and regard, – can best appreciate Martha's joy. She will make an entertainment that will do credit to the occasion. She revolves prodigies of hospitality. She invites guests to whom her acquisition shall be duly exhibited, and all is hurry, bustle, and commotion. But Mary follows him, silent, with a fluttering heart. His teaching has aroused the divine longing, the immortal pain, to a throbbing intensity; a sweet presentiment fills her soul, that she is near One through whom the way into the Holiest is open, and now is the hour. She neither hears nor sees the bustle of preparation; but apart, where the Master has seated himself, she sits down at his feet, and her eyes, more than her voice, address to him that question and that prayer which are the question and the one great reality of all this fleeting, mortal life.

The question is answered; the prayer is granted. At his feet she becomes spiritually clairvoyant. The way to God becomes clear and open. Her soul springs toward the light; is embraced by the peace of God, that passeth understanding. It is a soul-crisis, and the Master sees that in that hour his breath has unfolded into blossom buds that had been struggling in darkness. Mary has received in her bosom the "white stone with the new name, which no man knoweth save him that receiveth it," and of which Jesus only is the giver. As Master and disciple sit in that calm and sweet accord, in which giver and receiver are alike blessed, suddenly Martha appears and breaks into the interview, in a characteristically imperative sentence: "Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her, therefore, that she help me."

Nothing could more energetically indicate Martha's character than this sentence. It shows her blunt sincerity, her conscientious, matter-of-fact worldliness, and her dictatorial positiveness. Evidently, here is a person accustomed to having her own way and bearing down all about her; a person who believes in herself without a doubt, and is so positive that her way is the only right one that she cannot but be amazed that the Master has not at once seen as she does. To be sure, this is in her view the Christ, the Son of God, the King of Israel, the human being whom in her deepest heart she reverences; but no matter, she is so positive that she is right that she does not hesitate to say her say, and make her complaint of him as well as of her sister. People like Martha often arraign and question the very Providence of God itself when it stands in the way of their own plans. Martha is sure of her ground. Here is the Messiah, the King of Israel, at her house, and she is getting up an entertainment worthy of him, slaving herself to death for him, and he takes no notice, and most inconsiderately allows her dreamy sister to sit listening to him, instead of joining in the preparation.

The reply of Jesus went, as his replies were wont to do, to the very root-fault of Martha's life, the fault of all such natures: "Martha, Martha! thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken from her." The Master's words evidently recognize that in that critical hour Mary had passed a boundary in her soul history, and made an attainment of priceless value. She had gained something that could never be taken from her; and she had gained it by that single-hearted devotion to spiritual things which made her prompt to know and seize the hour of opportunity.

The brief narrative there intermits; we are not told how Martha replied, or what are the results of this plain, tender faithfulness of reproof. The Saviour, be it observed, did not blame Martha for her nature. He did not blame her for not being Mary; but he did blame her for not restraining and governing her own nature and keeping it in due subjection to higher considerations. A being of brighter worlds, he stood looking on Martha's life, – on her activities and bustle and care; and to him how sorrowfully worthless the greater part of them appeared! To him they were mere toys and playthings, such as a child is allowed to play with in the earlier, undeveloped hours of existence; not to be harshly condemned, but still utterly fleeting and worthless in the face of the tremendous eternal realities, the glories and the dangers of the eternal state.

It must be said here that all we know of our Lord leads us to feel that he was not encouraging and defending in Mary a selfish, sentimental indulgence in her own cherished emotions and affections, leaving the burden of necessary care on a sister who would have been equally glad to sit at Jesus's feet. That was not his reading of the situation. It was that Martha, engrossed in a thousand cares, burdened herself with a weight of perplexities of which there was no need, and found no time and had no heart to come to him and speak of the only, the one thing that endures beyond the present world. To how many hearts does this reproof apply? How many who call themselves Christians are weary, wasted, worn, drained of life, injured in health, fretted in temper, by a class of anxieties so purely worldly that they can never bring them to Jesus, or if they do, would meet first and foremost his tender reproof, "Thou art careful and troubled about many things; there is but one thing really needful. Seek that good part which shall never be taken away."

What fruit this rebuke bore will appear as we further pursue the history of the sister. The subsequent story shows that Martha was a brave, sincere, good woman, capable of yielding to reproof and acknowledging a fault. There is precious material in such, if only their powers be turned to the highest and best things.

It is an interesting thought that the human affection of Jesus for one family has been made the means of leaving on record the most consoling experience for the sorrows of bereavement that sacred literature affords. Viewed merely on the natural side, the intensity of human affections and the frightful possibilities of suffering involved in their very sweetness present a fearful prospect when compared with that stony inflexibility of natural law, which goes forth crushing, bruising, lacerating, without the least apparent feeling for human agony.

The God of nature appears silent, unalterable, unsympathetic, pursuing general good without a throb of pity for individual suffering; and that suffering is so unspeakable, so terrible! Close shadowing every bridal, every cradle, is this awful possibility of death that may come at any moment, unannounced and inevitable. The joy of this hour may become the bitterness of the next; the ring, the curl of hair, the locket, the picture, that to-day are a treasure of hope and happiness, to-morrow may be only weapons of bitterness that stab at every view. The silent inflexibility of God in upholding laws that work out such terrible agonies and suffering is something against which the human heart moans and chafes through all ancient literature. "The gods envy the happy," was the construction put upon the problem of life as the old sages viewed it.

But in this second scene of the story of the sisters of Bethany we have that view of God which is the only one powerful enough to soothe and control the despair of the stricken heart. It says to us that behind this seeming inflexibility, this mighty and most needful upholding of law, is a throbbing, sympathizing heart, – bearing with us the sorrow of this struggling period of existence, and pointing to a perfect fulfillment in the future.

The story opens most remarkably. In the absence of the Master, the brother is stricken down with deadly disease. Forthwith a hasty messenger is dispatched to Jesus. "Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick." Here is no prayer expressed; but human language could not be more full of all the elements of the best kind of prayer. It is the prayer of perfect trust, – the prayer of love that has no shadow of doubt. If only we let Jesus know we are in trouble, we are helped. We need not ask, we need only say, "He whom thou lovest is sick," and he will understand, and the work will be done. We are safe with him.

Then comes the seeming contradiction – the trial of faith – that gives this story such a value: "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. When, therefore, he heard that he was sick, he abode two days in the same place where he was." Because he loved them, he delayed; because he loved them, he resisted that most touching appeal that heart can make, – the appeal of utter trust. We can imagine the wonder, the anguish, the conflict of spirit, when death at last shut the door in the face of their prayers. Had God forgotten to be gracious? Had he in anger shut up his tender mercy? Did not Jesus love them? Had he not power to heal? Why then had he suffered this? Ah! this is exactly the strait in which thousands of Christ's own beloved ones must stand in the future; and Mary and Martha, unconsciously to themselves, were suffering with Christ in the great work of human consolation. Their distress and anguish and sorrow were necessary to work out a great experience of God's love, where multitudes of anguished hearts have laid themselves down as on a pillow of repose, and have been comforted.

Something – of this is shadowed in the Master's words: "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, – that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." What was that glory of God? Not most his natural power, but his sympathetic tenderness, his loving heart. What is the glory of the Son of God? Not the mere display of power, but power used to console, in manifesting to the world that this cruel death– the shadow that haunts all human life, that appalls and terrifies, that scatters anguish and despair – is not death, but the gateway of a brighter life, in which Jesus shall restore love to love, in eternal reunion.

In the scene with the sisters before the Saviour arrives, we are struck with the consideration in which the family is held. This house is thronged with sympathizing friends, and, as appears from some incidents afterwards, friends among the higher classes of the nation. Martha hears of the approach of Jesus, and goes forth to meet him.

In all the scene which follows we are impressed with the dignity and worth of Martha's character. We see in the scene of sorrow that Martha has been the strong, practical woman, on whom all rely in the hour of sickness, and whose energy is equal to any emergency. We see her unsubdued by emotion, ready to go forth to receive Jesus, and prompt to meet the issues of the moment. We see, too, that the appreciation of the worth of her character, which had led him to admonish her against the materialistic tendencies of such a nature, was justified by the fruits of that rebuke. Martha had grown more spiritual by intercourse with the Master, and as she falls at Jesus's feet, the half-complaint which her sorrow wrings from her is here merged in the expression of her faith: "Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had not died; but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it to thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again." Like every well-trained religious Jew of her day, Martha was versed in the doctrine of the general resurrection. That this belief was a more actively operating motive with the ancient Jewish than with the modern Christian Church of our day, is attested by the affecting history of the martyrdom of the mother and her seven sons in the Book of Maccabees. Martha therefore makes prompt answer, "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus answered her in words which no mere mortal could have uttered, – words of a divine fullness of meaning, – "I am the Resurrection and the Life: he that believeth in me, though dead, shall live, and whosoever believeth in me is immortal."

In these words he claims to be the great source of Life, – the absolute Lord and Controller of all that relates to life, death, and eternity; and he makes the appeal to Martha's faith: "Believest thou this?" "Yea, Lord," she responds, "I believe thou art the Christ of God that should come into the world." And then she runs and calls her sister secretly, saying, "The Master is come and calleth for thee." As a majestic symphony modulates into a tender and pathetic minor passage, so the tone of the narrative here changes to the most exquisite pathos. Mary, attended by her weeping friends, comes and falls at Jesus's feet, and sobs out: "Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had not died!"

It indicates the delicate sense of character which ever marked the intercourse of our Lord, that to this helpless, heart-broken child prostrate at his feet he addresses no appeal to reason or faith. He felt within himself the overwhelming power of that tide of emotion which for the time bore down both reason and faith in helpless anguish. With such sorrow there was no arguing, and Jesus did not attempt argument; for the story goes on: "When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping that came with her, he groaned in spirit and was troubled; and he said, Where have ye laid him? And they said, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept." Those tears interpreted for all time God's silence and apparent indifference to human suffering; and wherever Christ is worshiped as the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person, they bear witness that the God who upholds the laws that wound and divide human affections still feels with us the sorrow which he permits. "In all our afflictions he is afflicted."

And now came the sublime and solemn scene when he who had claimed to be Resurrection and Life made good his claim. Standing by the grave he called, as he shall one day call to all the dead: "Lazarus, come forth!" And here the curtain drops over the scene of restoration.

We do not see this family circle again till just before the final scene of the great tragedy of Christ's life. The hour was at hand, of suffering, betrayal, rejection, denial, shame, agony, and death; and with the shadow of this awful cloud over his mind, Jesus comes for the last time to Jerusalem. To the eye of the thoughtless, Jesus was never so popular, so beloved, as at the moment when he entered the last week of his life at Jerusalem. Palm branches and flowers strewed his way, hosannas greeted him on every side, and the chief-priests and scribes said, "Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? Behold the world is gone after him!" But the mind of Jesus was wrapped in that awful shade of the events that were so soon to follow.

He passes out, after his first day in Jerusalem, to Bethany, and takes refuge in this dear circle. There they make him a feast, and Martha served, but Lazarus, as a restored treasure, sits at the table. Then took Mary a pound of ointment, very precious, and anointed the head of Jesus, and anointed his feet with the ointment, and wiped them with her hair.

There is something in the action that marks the poetic and sensitive nature of Mary. Her heart was overburdened with gratitude and love. She longed to give something, and how little was there that she could give! She buys the most rare, the most costly of perfumes, breaks the vase, and sheds it upon his head. Could she have put her whole life, her whole existence, into that fleeting perfume and poured it out for him, she gladly would have done it. That was what the action said, and what Jesus understood. Forthwith comes the criticism of Judas: "What a waste! It were better to give the money to the poor than to expend it in mere sentimentalism." Jesus defended her with all the warmth of his nature, in words tinged with the presentiment of his approaching doom: "Let her alone; she is come aforehand to anoint my body for the burial." Then, as if deeply touched with the reality of that love which thus devoted itself to him, he adds, "Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached throughout the world, there shall what this woman hath done be had in remembrance." The value set upon pure love, upon that unconsidering devotion which gives its best and utmost freely and wholly, is expressed in these words. A loving God seeks love; and he who thus spoke is he who afterward, when he appeared in glory, declared his abhorrence of lukewarmness in his followers: "I would thou wert cold or hot; because thou art lukewarm I will spew thee out of my mouth." It is significant of the change which had passed upon Martha that no criticism of Mary's action in this case came from her. There might have been a time when this inconsiderate devotion of a poetic nature would have annoyed her and called out remonstrance. In her silence we feel a sympathetic acquiescence.

After this scene we meet the family no more. Doubtless the three were among the early watchers upon the resurrection morning; – doubtless they were of the number among whom Jesus stood after the resurrection, saying, "Peace be unto you"; – doubtless they were of those who went out with him to the Mount of Olives when he was taken up into heaven; and doubtless they are now with him in glory: for it is an affecting thought that no human personality is ever lost or to be lost. In the future ages it may be our happiness to see and know those whose history has touched our hearts so deeply.

One lesson from this history we pray may be taken into every mourning heart. The Apostle says that Jesus upholds all things by the word of his power. The laws by which accident, sickness, loss, and death are constantly bringing despair and sorrow to sensitive hearts, are upheld by that same Jesus who wept at the grave of Lazarus, and who is declared to be Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and forever. When we see the exceeding preciousness of human love in his eyes, and realize his sympathetic nature, and then remember that he is Resurrection and Life, can we not trust him with our best beloved, and look to him for that hour of reunion which he has promised?

The doctrine of the resurrection of the body is a precious concession to human weakness and human love. How dear the outward form of our child, – how distressing to think we shall never see it again! But Christ promises we shall. Here is a mystery. St. Paul says, that as the seed buried in the earth is to the new plant or flower, so is our present mortal body to the new immortal one that shall spring from it. It shall be our friend, our child, familiar to us with all that mysterious charm of personal identity, yet clothed with the life and beauty of the skies; and then the Lord God will wipe away all tears from all faces.

THE END

notes

1

Michaelis, Laws of Moses, III. 5, § 95.

2

The marginal translation reads "fair to God."

3

Micah, who prophesied in the reign of Hezekiah, represents the Divine Being as thus addressing his people: "I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt; I sent before thee Moses and Aaron and Miriam" (Micah vi. 4). This is an indorsement more direct than any other prophetess ever received.

4

Jüdische Merkwürdigkeiten. Frankfort and Leipsic, 1714.

5

Winer's Bible Dictionary, art. Judith.

6

The sources from which these are drawn are the apocryphal books of the New Testament.