Rediscovering—and redeeming—Martha’s story in the Gospel of John
I think Martha, Mary’s sister, gets a bad rap. Ask someone about her reputation, and you might get, “Oh yeah, she’s the one who wasn’t listening to Jesus. She needed to stop bustling around and be still” (Luke 10:38-42).
For years I pictured her as a sweet, slightly frazzled woman whose main joy in life was to make buttery food for guests—a type I know and love from the Midwest.
But when I sat down recently and took a close look at the Gospel of John, I discovered a totally different version of Martha. First, we read that Jesus “loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (John 11:5)—something John says about only one other person, the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” probably referring to himself.
If Jesus loved Lazarus so much, why did he wait to heal him? When they get word that Lazarus is sick, the disciples try to dissuade Jesus from going to him, arguing, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” (v. 8). You can almost hear the incredulity in their voices. Also, they misunderstand Lazarus’s condition: “If he sleeps, he will get better” (v. 12).
Compare that with Martha. The first thing she says when she sees Jesus is, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (v. 21). Now, it’s possible to read that as a complaint, but taken at face value, she’s simply stating a fact. Unlike the disciples, she knows Lazarus doesn’t need sleep; he needs Jesus.
Her second remark backs this up. “God will give you whatever you ask,” she tells Jesus (v. 22). She has complete trust. Jesus responds, “Your brother will rise again,” a much different response than his critical remarks to the disciples.
Martha’s third statement, “He will rise again in the resurrection,” shows her understanding of Scripture. And in her fourth, even before the miracle, she correctly identifies Jesus’s role: “You are the Messiah” (v. 27).
When does anybody else come out of a dialogue with Jesus looking so good?
In John’s Gospel, the Pharisees and other authority figures don’t recognize Jesus at all. Nicodemus does a little, but he’s scared and unready to speak out in the open. The healed blind man and the woman at the well recognize Jesus as a prophet after the fact. Nathaniel recognizes him as the king of Israel. The Samaritans decide he’s the Savior of the world. But only a few people give him his greatest title, Messiah.
The first to do so is John the Baptist, who then tells Andrew. Curiously, John the Baptist “did not know him, but the one sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one’” (John 1:33). Even John the Baptist needs a pretty big clue—there’s even a bird to help everybody out.
In John’s Gospel the only person who—without help—recognizes Jesus as Messiah is Martha.
Whoa.
So Martha has a keen eye, understands Scripture, and doesn’t mind speaking in the public sphere. Her sister, Mary, on the other hand, has a more personal and sensual approach. She falls at Jesus’s feet weeping.
Although that is certainly a sign of grief, the text indicates there’s more to it. Mary doesn’t just fall down on impulse. When her sister runs to tell her that the Teacher is here, Mary jumps into action, surprising those comforting her. “When [the others] noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her” (John 11:31).
Why include these details? What is John trying to emphasize?
In other healings the recipients are fairly passive—the blind man (John 9), the healing at the pool (John 5). The official whose son is healed apparently lacks faith, since Jesus responds to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe” (John 4:48).
If Mary and Martha had merely grieved, Jesus might merely have comforted them. If keeping Lazarus alive was the goal, well, he could have done that a week earlier.
Instead, after their public display of grief, Jesus is “deeply moved in spirit and troubled,” another rarely used phrase that comes back in John’s parallel to Gethsemane (12:27) and when Judas betrays Jesus (13:21).
The divine Jesus understood what was happening. The human man seems to need a little nudge. So we may understand Martha and Mary’s actions as Jesus does: a key moment has arrived for him to prove and announce his messianic role.
When Jesus claims that he is the resurrection, Martha’s response is that the role of the Messiah is to “come into the world” (v. 27).
So Jesus heads over to the tomb. In that culture, it was more of a woman’s space—it was likely Martha and Mary who wrapped Lazarus’s body. Martha even questions whether Jesus is going to be OK with the smell.
In the end, their request is granted. Jesus raises Lazarus. It’s a kind of test and a culmination of the other healings. But a ritual is still needed, to send him off, so he can enact the larger version of Lazarus’s resurrection.
So Martha and Mary throw a dinner party (John 12).
Martha is serving—uh oh. Does that mean she is not listening like she should? Maybe not—that reprimand comes in Luke 10. Perhaps our point of reference in John’s Gospel should be the last dinner party where we saw Jesus: the wedding where he turns water into wine (John 2). In that story, our takeaway is this line: “Woman, why do you involve me? My hour has not yet come” (v. 4).
Whether Jesus’s mother was wise in that moment is debatable. Perhaps she was. “Of course, that hour hasn’t come yet, Sweetie, but you can at least start the feast of the King.” Or perhaps Mom is meant to be a contrast to Martha and Mary.
In any case, as Passover approaches, Martha knows truly that Jesus’s hour has come. And Mary, once again the sister with a more personal touch, anoints him, wiping his feet with her hair.
We might imagine she is concerned for him, a young man not used to dead bodies as women of that culture were. Perhaps Mary felt it was a kindness, that he wouldn’t have to smell his own flesh in the tomb. But this was not merely a personal action. It was a symbolic act performed in front of everyone, a ritual, a way to actively shape the public perception of Jesus.
I once heard a pastor describe this scene where Mary unbinds her hair (a big cultural no-no at the time) as Mary “disgracing” herself for Jesus—and called us to do the same. To some extent, perhaps that’s true. Mary surely knew how the people in the room would react. She created a provocative image of a woman with unbound hair, perfume fragrant through the house, and an unashamed yet intimate one-on-one sharing with Jesus.
Perhaps she reminds us of our own relationship with Jesus. A level of closeness, like husband and wife. Or perhaps she depicts how the Church should be united with Christ. Maybe she reminds us of Eden, with a new Adam and a different kind of Eve—the Eden that is to come.
Or maybe the Song of Songs: “Your love is more delightful than wine. Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out” (1:2-3). Perhaps Mary is indicating that she wants more from Jesus than wine, unlike the first dinner party. Though she doesn’t speak as much as Martha, it’s likely Mary knows Scripture just as well.
The disciples’ conversation about the jar—what it cost, what to use it for—misses the point, as they often do. The two sisters publicly love, recognize, test, and then anoint Jesus. Immediately afterward, Jesus enters Jerusalem as King and predicts his own death.
Martha and Mary, along with John the Baptist, make Jesus the anointed one, the Christ.
Here’s a detail that’s helpful to consider: John’s Gospel does not include the story of Jesus’s birth. We hear no origin story, no list of ancestry. Like the Gospel writer Mark, perhaps John felt it necessary to approach Jesus’s commission in a different way. Jesus needs to be the Son of God and also the Son of Man.
So John the Baptist gives an anointment that’s divine, with water, which comes from heaven. And Martha and Mary give one with perfume, which grows from the earth, carefully crafted by the human community. Water is cleansing; perfume is enriching.
Both happen at places called “Bethany.”
John’s baptism is a kind of political act, outdoors, in the wilderness. It affirms Jesus’s connection to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. John sends him into his ministry.
Martha and Mary’s anointment is personal, within the home, and domestic. It affirms that Jesus’s body belongs to the human community. The women send him into his death and resurrection.
One is a kind of new birth, the other a kind of new burial. Jesus elaborates on these themes in the chapters that follow each anointment. In John 2 and 3, Jesus changes water into wine and explains the new baptism to Nicodemus. In John 13 and 14, Jesus ritually prepares his disciples’ feet, in an echo of Mary, and explains how to pass from death into life.
It’s possible Martha and Mary did not recognize the full symbolism. Remember that John the Baptist needed a divine hint to recognize Jesus. But all three deserve the benefit of the doubt as we celebrate their participation in these cosmically important rituals.
When I started to figure this out, I got shivers. How incredible, that our Lord Jesus felt it necessary to be anointed by humans as well as the Spirit!
God made it possible, through the free will of Martha and Mary, for humanity to reject Christ. Perhaps it is the same as the other Mary, the mother of Jesus—who we must assume could have said “no.”
God truly humbles himself. And yet these moments of humbling are transcendent.
Let me add one final thought—I still picture Martha as a sweet, slightly frazzled Midwestern woman. But the more I go to church, the more I realize how ridiculously loving, scripturally knowledgeable, and canny these women with the cookies are.
And I can still get uncomfortable about what Mary does with her hair and the perfume—the braveness of her act and the sensuality. But I try to put aside my first response, which has more to do with me, and perhaps our culture, than the truth of that moment.
So I don’t critique Martha and Mary the way Judas does. I praise them for their love, for their knowledge of Scripture, for the wisdom and boldness of their actions.
