PRIDE 5

So goes life for the Marthas of this world. “Martha” decides to host a party. She opens her home. She wants to impress others with how well she can cook. She wants to be known as a good hostess. When her guests arrive, she is psyched. However, something happens during the evening. No one is helping serve the food. Suddenly a remark is made by a guest and taken the wrong way. She is sure a couple of her guests do not like her cooking. No one notices the special decorations. Suddenly, she is exhausted and angry. All the work that seemed to excite her now turns into a burden. Her guests become a bore. She becomes annoyed and filled with self-pity. Humility and service energize. Pride and self-pity demoralize.

Martha did something that even surprised Martha. She suddenly came charging out of the kitchen and in an angry voice said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” After Jesus arrived, Martha stood back in the kitchen listening to Mary and Jesus talk, at first thinking that surely Mary would realize all that she was doing and come back with an offer to help. When she didn’t come, she consoled herself by knowing that at least one person in that house cared. When she realized that she wasn’t going to get everything prepared and that Mary wasn’t coming to help, she lost it. Martha violated a very important rule of hospitality—drawing a guest into a family dispute. By this time she felt Jesus had it coming. After all, he didn’t care either since he didn’t send Mary back to help.

Few of us take it well when we fail to receive what we are entitled to. Martha was tempted to put on a humble smile, assure others and herself that she could handle it, and sucked it up and moved on. Then later, out of nowhere, out came her “Wicked Witch of the West” routine. That is pride in action.

Pride is aware of hurt but it does not properly acknowledge it. Instead it says to you how strong and forbearing you are. It draws strength from the self-pity that forms in the pit of the stomach. It gathers the hurts endured and begins to blend them into a witch’s brew of bitterness and resentment. This brew is very volatile. Eventually even pride can no longer digest it. There is finally an explosion of anger or a retreat into helplessness and martyrdom, and you become nothing more than your role as victim.

Asking for help is the way to break the spiral down into self-pity. Martha waited too long to ask for help. By the time she asked, her request was poisoned with accusation (“don’t you care”), blaming (“my sister has left me to do the work by myself”), and hostility (“Tell her to help me!”). How different the scene might have been if Martha had approached Mary earlier and asked for help. If she could have stated her need in the first person “I”, instead accusing and blaming, and listened to Mary, she may have discovered what Mary was doing and put aside the kitchen work and sat down with Mary. But that takes patience, which we will examine in the next section.