Martha: a diaconal figure

Without a doubt Jesus loved both his friends Martha & Mary dearly. But in today's Gospel he's clear about Mary, in that situation, choosing the better part. In fact, by stating that he will not take away the better part from Mary by asking her to get up and help, he mildly rebukes Martha. Now, you can perhaps argue the reason for his rebuke is her complaining. But rebuke her, he does. That Mary chose the better part is really the point of this short pericope.

This is a passage that should resonate with deacons. It should resonate with us not simply because diakonian and diakonein are the Greek words originally used to describe Martha's activity in this passage. It should resonate with deacons because, during the Eucharistic liturgy, like Martha, we have many tasks. In this regard, we need to keep in mind that when serving at the Table of the Lord, we serve in what has been described as persona Christi servi (i.e., in the person of Christ the Servant. It is Jesus, who later in Saint Luke's Gospel, insists he is among them as "one who serves" Luke 22:24-30). So, he is among them as "a deacon" because, in Greek, one who serves in this way is a deacon. Jesus is the model deacon.

Jesus at the home of Martha and Mary, by Johannes Vermeer, 1655

The use of the correct forms of the verb diakonia with regard to Martha are significant. By the same token, the appropriate from of diakonia, which means something like serving at table, would be the ordinary Greek word for what Martha was doing. We have to be careful not to place too much weight on the use of these "deacon words" in this passage. This different from according them no weight. What follows is a section from doctoral disseration about Martha and Mary:

“Burdened” by her table service (in Greek διακονίαν- diakonian), Martha complains to her revered guest, Jesus, that her sister Mary, rather than helping her serve him, is just sitting at his feet, listening to him. Because Jesus is “the servant,” he tells the troubled and anxious Martha that Mary chose the better part. There is a great lesson here concerning diaconal spirituality. It consists precisely in developing the ability to distinguish between serving others in persona Christi servi and letting one’s self be served by the one who came to serve. Being served, in this instance, means taking the time to listen to the Lord. If a deacon does not allow Jesus to minister to him in the manner of Mary, it becomes impossible for that deacon to serve others in the Lord’s name for the building up of God’s kingdom, like Martha.

All three Johannine occurrences of deacon words are found in the twelfth chapter of the fourth Gospel. Again in John 12:2, Martha of Bethany, the same person who serves in the last pericope [from Luke 10] is considered. According to John, in addition being the sister of Mary, Martha is also the sister of Jesus’s good friend, Lazarus. The context in which the deacon word διηκόνει (diakonei, serving) is used as Martha is serving Jesus and her brother as they recline together at table.¹ Once again, it is Mary, Martha’s sister, who renders the Lord fitting service. As Jesus eats, Mary takes “a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard,” anoints Jesus’s feet with it and then dries his feet with her hair. As a result of this extravagant act, the house was filled with a lovely aroma. It is Jesus the anointed One, who anoints us, which is why Paul can exclaim: “For we are the aroma of Christ for God…”² A deacon is not anointed at ordination. Rather, through ordination the anointing received in confirmation is further strengthened so that the deacon can absorb it more deeply and, like Mary, cause the world to be filled with the aroma of Christ for God

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1 Novum Testamentum graece, Luke 10; See John 12:1-11.^↩
2 2 Corinthians 2:15.^↩