Sometimes the stories in the Bible can feel inapplicable, and even when we have access to the inner meanings behind them they take work to relate to. Here Susan uses the teachings of the New Church to find the humour, interest, and applicability in the story of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. -Editor.
Emanuel Swedenborg explained that laughter is a spiritual (as opposed to celestial) indicator. Reading Arcana Coelestia made parts of the New Testament funny to me, so ‘celestial’ is not me. I will not find myself sitting at the popular kids’ table in the afterlife. I will be snickering along with the other yahoos in the second heaven (I hope).
Martha (Luke 10:38-42) represents the spiritual realm while her sister Mary represents the celestial. Technically, they are the spiritual and celestial of the natural, but I will leave out the details and concentrate on how endearingly hilarious Martha is. Mary is calm, stays home, and has Jesus relating to her emotions. She is bread. She is stable. She goes to Jesus quickly but not frantically. When she weeps, Jesus also weeps (John 11:32-35); I surmise it is a way to show they are both celestial and are on the same page. Mary washes Jesus’ feet and sits calmly taking in His message. Martha, on the other hand, is a churning intellectual mess. She seems to complain about having to work hard while her sister sits, but I see it as less complaint and more an unsettled searching for what to do. Martha is the liquid of spirituality. She is easily disturbed, easily sloshed. She is the wine. She makes me laugh. She makes me identify.
Martha rushes out to Jesus as He comes to Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead. If He had been there her brother would not have died. I notice that when she says that, she gets a lecture, but when the celestial says exactly the same sentence, Jesus weeps. Well, ok, fine then. Jesus asks Martha if she believes He is the resurrection (John 11:25-26). Yes, she assures Him, she does believe. We can tell she is not sure though, because she follows up with whether Lazarus will have a foul odor. She still has a million questions.
This is a great commentary on the story by Bruce William:
[Martha] ‘saith, unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.'...Not doubt, but despair, is expressed by the sister of Lazarus...Sweet smells correspond to perceptions of goodness and truth, and unpleasant smells, to perceptions of evil and falsity. This is the source of spiritual corruption. Evil and falsity...do not stink to those who are in the love of them, but to those who are in the affection of goodness and truth, for the quality of evil and falsity is perceived from their opposites: therefore this remark is made by Martha, who represents a good affection, and those who possess it. (The Commentary On the Gospel According to St. John, 270).
Yes, Martha means well. She does not love evil. Far from it, she abhors the smell.
I enjoy thinking of Jesus being frustrated with us, the spiritual world. It was hard to break through to our minds. He loved us a lot. He often sighed. He was amazed at our lack of faith. We pestered Him continually—He sometimes had to go off by Himself to “pray”, or so He said. We panicked at wind, at being asked if we knew Him, at being told a friend would get his sins forgiven when we had been hoping he would walk again. We asked stupid questions. He kept explaining. His Father’s house had many rooms and He was going to set us up in one (a padded cell, perhaps? A room far far away from His, perhaps?). He endured three long years teaching us, which was probably a sacrifice akin to being crucified.
A concept I love from the Mary, Martha, Lazarus story (with total credit to Swedenborg for encouraging me to think spiritually and for myself whether I hit the mark or not) is that between the celestial Mary's asking and the spiritual Martha's asking, Jesus seems to have overridden the free will of Lazarus, the natural. The celestial plus the spiritual is greater than the natural. Simple math. (C + S) > N. And Jesus recognizes and encourages the spiritual world’s struggle for that reason. He wants us added in.
Susan is a grandmother who lives in the Midwest. She quilts and loves religious ideas.