Loved as Martha

For as long as I have sat under teaching on Luke 10, I have heard one message repeated in nearly every version: be like Mary, not like Martha. Sit at His feet. Choose the better part. Don’t be so busy that you miss Jesus.

I understand why we teach it this way. But I think we have gotten Martha wrong, and in getting her wrong, we have quietly told an entire category of women and men, the doers, the hosts, the ones who show love through their hands, that their instinct to serve is a spiritual liability. That is not what this passage says.

Harvest table Photo by Anita Austvika on Unsplash

What the Text Actually Says

Luke 10:38–42 tells us that Martha opened her home to Jesus. That alone is worth pausing on. Before Mary ever sat down, Martha had already made the room possible. She welcomed Him.

“But Martha was distracted with much serving” (Luke 10:40, ESV). This is the word Luke chooses: distracted, periespato, pulled around in different directions. Jesus does not say Martha’s serving was wrong. He says she was pulled apart by it. There is a difference between working with a settled heart and working from a fractured one, and that difference is what Jesus addresses.

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:41–42). He does not say, “Martha, Martha, your service is unnecessary.” He names her anxiety. He names her trouble. He does not name her hospitality as the problem.

Martha Was Not the Cautionary Tale

Somewhere along the way we turned this into a competition. Mary good, Martha lesser. But look at where else Martha shows up in the Gospels.

In John 11, after Lazarus dies, Martha goes out to meet Jesus first, while Mary stays in the house. It is Martha who says to Him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you” (John 11:21–22). And a few verses later, it is Martha, not Mary, who makes one of the clearest confessions of faith in all four Gospels: “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world” (John 11:27).

That is not the theology of a woman Jesus was gently disappointed in. That is the theology of a woman who knew Him closely enough, through her serving, through her presence, through the ordinary rhythm of opening her home to Him again and again, to say who He was before the tomb was even opened.

Martha’s hands did not disqualify her heart. Her service was not the opposite of her faith. It was one of the ways her faith took shape.

Some of Us Are Martha

I say this as someone who has spent years in rooms where hospitality, coordination, and preparation were treated as the “lesser” spiritual gift, the thing you do while other people get to encounter God. If you have ever felt that quiet shame while you were setting up chairs, printing programs, cooking for the repast, coordinating the volunteers, or making sure everyone else’s needs were met before the service even started, I want you to hear this clearly: your service is not evidence that you love Jesus less. It may be exactly how you love Him.

We were never meant to pit these two postures against each other. The body needs both the sitting and the serving. It needs people who will stop everything and be still, and it needs people who will notice the practical need in the room and move toward it. Paul writes that the body has many members and not all have the same function (Romans 12:4–5). Martha’s function was not a demotion. It was a calling.

What Jesus Actually Corrected

So what was the “one thing necessary” that Mary chose and Martha missed in that moment? I do not believe it was the discipline of sitting versus the discipline of serving. I believe it was presence over performance. Mary was undistracted. Martha, in that particular moment, was not. The correction was not about the category of work Martha was doing. It was about the anxiety underneath it, the sense that everything depended on her, that the meal had to be perfect, that she could not rest even for a moment in the presence of the One she had welcomed in.

That is a word for the Marthas among us, and I count myself as one. Not “stop serving.” But: can you serve from rest instead of from anxiety? Can your hands still move while your heart stays anchored?

If you have spent your life being the one who shows up early and leaves last, who feeds people, who plans, who makes sure the room is ready before anyone else walks in, hear this. Jesus did not rebuke your gift. He loved Martha. He wept with her. He revealed Himself to her in one of the most theologically significant moments in the Gospel of John. Her hospitality in Luke 10 and her confession in John 11 are not two different women. They are the same woman, faithful in both.

You do not have to trade your serving for your sitting. You are allowed to bring both to the table. Jesus never asked Martha to stop being Martha. He asked her to stop being anxious. There is a difference, and learning it may be one of the more freeing things you do this season.

Keena LeJune writes at the intersection of faith, identity, and the examined life. She is an executive coach and author currently living and working in Germany. Find her on Medium at The Renewal Journal or at Kingdom Health Now.