I remember a book series that was popular during my elementary school years called the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. These books were not written to be read through page by page. Instead, when it came to a particularly climactic point in the story, you had to make a choice about what you thought happened next. This particular biblical story would be perfect for that kind of book because, for me, this story is far from over. I can imagine reading:

If you think Martha throws a pan at her sister, turn to page 11.

If you think Mary is still gloating the next day about how Jesus likes her best, turn to page 12.

If you think that the sisters had a good laugh and spent the evening talking with Jesus and sharing the clean up later, close the book, because that seems highly unlikely.

Sisters - since I have one, I feel as though I can speak with some authority on this subject. My sister is someone who has a unique perspective on who I am because of our growing up years together. She has become my lifelong friend, but at times I’ve also thought that she might just as easily have been my lifelong competition. It has taken time for the rivalries of our youth to mellow. Just this past week when we were standing in my Mom’s kitchen together, she reminded me of the time she pulled me feet first off the kitchen countertop – just for effect. My mother would tell you that disproportionally often, those types of things happened when she was trying to take a shower. It did make it hard not to laugh when she came running out to yell at the two of us soaking wet. Fortunately, we’re both mostly responsible adults now, so the time of pulling each other’s hair and taking each other’s Barbies has long since past.

But for some siblings, the difficulty in getting along lasts well into adulthood. Exacerbated by the event of a parent’s death, or a divorce, or the problems of a child – sibling tensions can make a bad situation seem that much worse. Our closest family members can become our harshest critics. Just being in the same room becomes unbearable. The offhand remark becomes the putdown that grows into the 10 year silent treatment. Why is this? What makes us at the same time so mean-spirited and yet so vulnerable when it comes to family relationships?

It’s the therapist’s conundrum. Just about everyone, from the early analysts like Freud and Jung to today’s counseling gurus whose insights reside on my bookshelves, has something to say about those universal tensions found in family relationships. So just whose method will we use to help us interpret and resolve our own particular situations? We inherently know that what we work out in our family lives together is important, crucial to our well-being and indicative of our later capacities for growth and change, and yet we are often dumbfounded as to how to turn those tensions into opportunities for a blessing. Everyone seems to have a method for naming and blaming what or who might be at fault. Some of these family studies can be used to change lives. Some of them are about as useful as reading your horoscope in the newspaper.

Edwin Friedman, who, for me, happens to be on the more realist side of the family counseling spectrum reminds us, “In emotional life, every cause can produce exactly opposite effects and every effect could have come from exactly opposite causes, with the result that the more polarized things seem to be in a family, the more likely they are somehow connected.” What this means is that placing blame can be overrated. His first example of this is that intense parental involvement can produce either overachievement or underachievement depending on the kid. The same parents, with the same values and rules, can have offspring, a Martha and a Mary who turn out to react in opposite ways to the family system. Martha turns out to feel hyper-responsible to hosting her guests, and Mary decides to lounge in the living room and have another glass of wine while they talk. We know all too well how this could cause tension in the relationship, but Friedman would tell us that both Martha and Mary are responsible for their own actions and choices regardless of any “cause” they can point to that “made them that way.”

The text gives us all the clues we need to understand that Mary and Martha were turned different – to use a phrase I grew up with. Martha asks Jesus to intervene when she’s feeling swamped with responsibility. She wants him to come to her rescue and help Mary “do the right thing” by washing dishes in the kitchen. Jesus not only refuses to buy into Martha’s stereotype of what a woman “should” be doing, he affirms Mary’s choice as the “better one.” Getting between sisters in this regard may not seem a wise thing to do. Maybe there should be another choice in our “choose your own adventure” ending to this text – that Martha hit Jesus over the head with her spatula and then ran off all those free-loading disciples who ate all her food and didn’t lift a finger to clean up the mess.

Oftentimes, we “react” in situations like this rather than allowing ourselves the time and the luxury to formulate a response. Anger, hurt, embarrassment – any of these things could be typical Martha-like reactions. I know because I have been known to display some of those “Martyr Martha” type reactions myself. Mary too might have used Jesus’ compliment to get a dig in at her sister. I can imagine her sticking out her tongue behind his back having gotten away with ditching her duties. Sisters – those early imprints hang on for way too long sometimes.

So what really is Jesus telling us about Mary and Martha? What good is it to put this story in scripture without the real ending? (In my humble opinion) Perhaps the gentleness behind his soft eyes was enough to allow for real change to take place between the two sisters. Maybe their appreciation and fondness for each other did grow that day. Families, whether it’s parent and child, sibling to sibling, or any other configuration, happen to give us those opportunities to learn where we can grow the most. Maybe Martha was able to hear an invitation in Jesus’ comment to pick up her wine glass and listen for a while. Maybe Mary offered to help the next morning so Martha could sleep in. I wonder, just what was that “better thing” that Jesus had in mind? Was it time spent talking and laughing with friends? Was it listening to Jesus tell important stories about God’s love? Was it Mary’s ability to let go so that she could learn and grow beyond anyone else’s expectation? Again, I desperately want to read the next page and it isn’t there for us.

It is no secret that our own health, well-being, satisfaction, and growth benefits any time and every time we are able to heal or redeem those painful family moments. Family may be a source of stress, and yet those very people are also some of our best sources of empowerment and love. Now for those who have experienced abuse or heartache or neglect at the hands of a family member, this can be more difficult. For certain, some things are not easily forgotten or set aside, and not allowing those experiences to be repeated is crucial to healing as well. Nevertheless, more often than not, those disagreements or misunderstandings we have with a sister, or brother, or parent, or child, or life-partner can be changed when we become willing to seek understanding, or make amends, or simply say, “I love you.”

In what I know to be true, families are the basic building block we have for understanding the huge web of human interrelationships. So, what we learn from our families is what we take with us into our communities, our workplaces, and just about everywhere else I can think of that people happen to go. Jesus intervened in what easily could have been a family feud between sisters. I think he did so because what we learn there is just as important, maybe even more important, than our factual knowledge, or our financial gain, or our popularity or recognition in our chosen field. Mastering “life” may ultimately be the better way, the main course, and the one thing that cannot be taken away from us.

In our church family, that means our relationships define who we are both from within and from looking in from the outside of this particular family. Jesus articulates this in so many ways. Freud and Jung, and all the other family counseling yahoos would do well to pay attention. Over and over again, Jesus says that it’s about love, which means compassion for ourselves, caring for each other, and the appreciation we can articulate for the God of love. Jesus talks often about the depths of our friendships as the pathway to learning and growth. He defines all relationships by how we treat “the least of these” and whether or not we think too highly of ourselves. Scripture, more than being a rulebook, is a relationship manual. It’s all about this huge, extended family of faith, and whenever we dig around a little, we will find someone in there that reminds us, maybe a little too much, of ourselves.

So let’s pray today for families: sisters, brothers, parents, children, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents and everyone who has ever contributed to making us who we are today. If you are holding on to a grudge, loosen its grip as much as you can. If you have a concern, share it, but share it in love, treating the other person as they would want to be treated. If you haven’t told your sister, or brother, or parent, or child lately – tell them you love them exactly as God made them to be.

Amen.