One-Up-Manship

Understanding the deeper dynamics of sibling rivalry

07/29/2025

Luke 10:38-42 Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me." The Lord said to her in reply, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her."

There is nothing more normal or natural in the world than sibling rivalry. Children feel an acute sense of one-up-manship. What you can do, I can do better. As you know, I have an older brother and a younger sister, which makes me the well-adjusted middle child. They dealt with all the issues of being the firstborn and the youngest.

While growing up I wanted to do everything my brother did. If he played soccer, I wanted to play soccer. When he pursued the Marine ROTC program, I wanted to enroll. If he liked a particular video game, I pursued that passion as well. But there was only one difference: I wanted to do all those activities better than he did. I wanted to one-up him at every turn.

It was later in high school, and especially in college, that I began to discover my own interests and gifts and started to set my own goals. My brother’s more mathematical mind led him to Christian Brothers College (now university) and my liberal arts head took me to the University of Dallas and the priesthood. But we still wanted to one-up each other. If he became the CEO of a company, then I had to become the pope.

Today we celebrate the feast of the saintly siblings Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. They lived in Bethany, two miles east of Jerusalem. We know that Jesus often visited them to relax because they were easy company. In the gospel of John he performed his greatest miracle by raising Lazarus from the dead. Jesus’ human closeness and love for them was on full display in the shortest sentence in the Bible: “He wept” (Jn 11:35), when his close friend had died.

Each sibling had their own unique relationship with Jesus. The brother Lazarus does not have any speaking parts in the Bible but he is raised from the dead, present when the siblings host Jesus during Holy Week, and quite possibly the subject of Jesus’ parable about the rich man and the poor beggar Lazarus in Luke 16. That is the only parable in which Jesus mentions someone by name. But again, the silent saint has no speaking parts.

And we are all familiar with the sibling rivalry between Martha and Mary. Today’s gospel was the same one we heard a couple of Sundays ago, about Martha’s frustration with what she interprets as Mary’s “laziness.” By the way, in case you haven’t noticed our Sunday gospels lately are normally from Luke because we are in Year C of the three-year cycle of Sunday readings. A-B-C corresponding to Matthew-Mark-Luke. But I’m sure you knew that.

But can you catch the sibling rivalry subtly as play beneath the two sisters’ relationship with Jesus? Martha feels she is doing the better part by being the hostess with the mostest and Mary by contrast is falling behind. But Jesus corrects her thinking and teaches her that Mary has chosen the better part by drawing close to Christ and feasting on the banquet of his words and wisdom.

It is good to serve our Lord earthly fare (like Marthat), but it is far better to be served by our Lord the heavenly Food, the Bread of Angels, the Word and Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist (like Mary). In other words, a saintly sibling rivalry inspires both sisters to vie for Jesus’ approval, and in this instance, Mary wins the crown from Christ.

My friends, we all find ourselves vying for victory in many different situations, competing sometimes with our siblings, sometimes with our friends, and if you’re like me, trying to get more “likes” on Facebook than my brother priests when they post a picture or their homilies. And all these rivalries are friendly and fun.

But the saintly siblings of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus show us there is a more serious and spiritual rivalry in being the one who most pleases the Lord and receive his crown of approval and praise. Winning that crown from Christ is the goal of all healthy and holy sibling rivalry. That is the end for which God made us competitive.

Let me leave you with a quotation from C. S. Lewis that captures this beautifully: “To please God…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son – it seems hardly possible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.” And so it was for Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.

Praised be Jesus Christ!