Next Wednesday I am speaking to a ladies' meeting in Manchester!  They have even altered their date to fit my availability, so I'd better be good.  I am speaking on Mary and Martha - Luke 10 and John 11.  Two very different tales that give us some different takes on these sisters.

Martha - you know her, careworn red hands, face lined from frowning, always busy cooking and cleaning.  Mary, beautiful, attentive, deeply spiritual... well that's the kind of images I grew up with anyway.  So which one is it who recognises Jesus as who he is...?  Why do Luke and John give us these seemingly contrasting portaits?  Are they, in fact, contrasting?  Or is it just that somewhere I have sold out to an unfair image of Martha (even if she's the one I feel more like, busy, practical and, when all's said and done, is making sure Jesus plus 12 hungry blokes and countless hangers on get the best dinner she can cook - yes, I know, that's Sunday School eisegesis or worse, but you get my drift).

Somewhere in what I share I want to affirm both Mary and Martha, and to recongise the times when it is right to be either or both of them, that actually they both live within each of us.  To note that sitting at Jesus' feet (the good child who knows all the answers in Sunday school) does not automatically lead to recognising him as Lord; to suggest that the busy, practical woman who at times puts family or community before church is not automatically less spiritual than the one who is there every week looking both gorgeous and suitably pious!

There's nothing radical or new here, and I owe a debt of gratitude to Stuart J for his amazing Mary and Martha sermon of a few years back, but I hope that my thoughts will say something to these 21st century women who meet for worship on a Wednesday afternoon and then scurry home to cook tea for husbands and families...