About Martha
I wrote Martha to fit our pastor’s Sunday sermon. When we sang the tune, the whole church was rocking, doing the pony and the swim, and dancing and loving it so I knew I would record it. That’s why Martha was my first serious recording experience and the learning curve was painful. Take after take in my home studio, all while learning to use the equipment. It took months of trial and error. I knew I needed help and found a brother named Jeff Nelson in Nashville. Jeff helped me learn DP-10, and brought me a Bass Player Gary Lunn to learn my base line and eventually replace my key board synthetic base with the real deal. Our church drummer Wayne put down a slamming drum track and my wife , who is a hoot lot of fun, nailed the voice of Martha. (No type casting) I was also working on Hangman and Trust The Lord, and so I put Martha on hold while recruiting Jay and Rohn for the other tunes. During those sessions I played Rohn the roughs on Martha and he said “oh I gotta play on that.”
Rohn got to my house at 8:30 pm on June 2nd to lay down his guitar work. I had lined up two tunes. God Is Still Speaking (not yet released) and Martha. On God Is Still Speaking, Rohn added a terrific Nat King Cole Trio guitar bed for Jay’s Piano. (They sound so good, that I can’t bring myself to sing it. Gotta listen to Nat before I try.) At about 9:45 Jay pops over to listen in. I felt real nervous with two master musicians in my home studio. We ran a several takes with rhythm and lead guitar in different registers and tonalities, which I later layered and mixed into the final recording. It was a great time. (I love dancing to this tune. Brings me back to 70’s rock and roll and I pray the tune brings you lots of joy.)
Theologically speaking, what does the tune mean?
It’s a common theme in the Gospel stories.
In this scene: Martha and Mary were the hosts, Jesus and his friends and who knows who else, were their guests. (I suspect Jesus was breaking the rules by allowing men and women to study and learn together.) But while Martha is playing host, Mary is sitting at Jesus feet. As Martha is doing all the work, she gets angry and asks Jesus to tell Mary to help her with the work. But Jesus has none of it, saying that Mary has made the better choice, and he tells Martha to let her be. The message is clear: Followers of Jesus, both men and women, must be humble enough to put aside their busy work and listen to what Jesus is saying. Hence my lyric: “Just a touch of heaven.”
So we’ve got to ask ourselves, is the church really listening to what’s going on? Amidst our mega church productions, can we hear what Jesus is saying about the environment, about illness, about health care, about war, about peace, about black lives and institutional racism, about immigration and human migration, and about true family and friendship. Do we listen to Jesus words “Blessed are the poor” and meditate on their meaning? Do we hear him say “I was naked and you did not cloth me, I was hungry you did not feed me…” or are we too busy “saving souls” and growing our institutions? Do we look outside the bible of our church walls and take time to hear the facts and weigh the evidence about human sexuality, identity, forgiveness, community, and pollution? Are we really loving one another? Are we listening to what God is saying through and in the world around us, or are we just clinging to old ideas? I urge you to read the sermon on the mount and before voting, listen to Jesus parables and read the Beatitudes and listen deeply. If you listen to Jesus words, then when you attend a Trump event or a Black Lives Matter event, or a Biden campaign event, you will be equipped to align yourself with Jesus words: “How Blessed are the poor,” and “in so much as you have do it to the least of these my breathen, you have done it unto me,” and you will know who is a fake, who is a poser, a lyer, and a thief.
