Sermon - Martha and Mary Problems

Luke 10:38-42

Martha and Mary Problems

James Sledge                                                                                       July 21, 2013

Here at the church we have a staff meeting every Tuesday morning, and twice a month we have what we call an extended staff meeting. In it, we spend a significant period of time meditating on a scripture passage. Usually we do something called lectio divina or divine reading, an ancient practice that has been described as praying the scriptures.  The passage is read with each of us simply listening for a word or phrase that strikes us. Silence following the reading allows us to simply be attentive to the passage touching us in some way. 

Then the passage is read a couple more times, each time with additional times of silence to contemplate why that word or phrase touched us and how God might be speaking to us through it. It’s quite different from the more typical practice of reading the Bible and trying to understand what a passage or story means. Lectio divina is less Bible study and more a form of prayer.

A couple of weeks ago, as we finished our time of silent reflection and began to share with one another what each of us had heard or experienced, I was struck with what an odd practice this might seem to someone who walked in on it. Here we were, a group of employees “on the clock” if you will, and other than occasional breaks in the silence for the scripture to be read aloud, no one appeared to be doing anything, at least not as doing tends to be thought of.

In terms of the typical workplace, our times of lectio divina are indeed an odd practice. I cannot imagine such a thing going on in many places of employment. For that matter, I don’t know that it happens with that much regularity in churches. After all, churches are busy places. There is a lot to do, and there is limited time to sit around being “unproductive.”

Mary is rather unproductive herself when Jesus drops by to visit with her and her sister Martha. She also steps out of the normal role of women at that time. Sitting at Jesus’ feet is the stereotypical pose of a disciple studying under a rabbi, and that was only done by men.
Meanwhile, as Martha does all those things that need to be done when company comes, as she follows the biblical injunction to show hospitality, she gets more and more frustrated with Mary sitting there, not offering to help.

This is a simple little story, but it wrestles with some difficult issues. There’s an unfortunate tendency to reduce the story to either/or, good or bad choices, but as many have pointed out, “If no one gets dinner ready, what will Jesus and Mary eat?” And I’m pretty sure there was no take out or fast food available.

Our Bible translation doesn’t necessarily help on this as much as it might. Speaking of Martha as distracted by her many tasks has made it easy for some to portray her as a harried, Martha Stewart type, overly obsessed with getting everything just so. But in fact her “tasks” are more normally translated as “service” or even “ministry,” and the word is the root of our word “deacon.” And our Bible translation misses a second chance to note this by not translating Martha’s complaint to Jesus in what seems to me a more straightforward, word for word fashion. “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me alone to serve?”

It’s worth noting that Jesus uses the very same word to describe himself. During the Last Supper, when the disciples get into an argument about which of them would be regarded as the greatest, Jesus says that those who want to be great, to become leaders, must become ones who serve. And he adds “I am among you as one who serves.”

Jesus calls all who would follow him to become like him, to become those who serve. So why then does he rebuke Martha and say, “Mary has chosen the better part”?

I think this is a place where that either/or, right or wrong dichotomy misleads us. Indeed there are people who claim that this passage elevates contemplation over service, but that requires reading our passage in isolation, not considering the rest of Luke’s gospel, or its companion book, Acts. So what are we to do with this tension between serving and sitting at Jesus’ feet soaking in his words?

Moments ago I described how we on the church staff spend time together meditating and reflecting on Scripture, a form of sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to him. If someone were to come into the church during that time, find the office empty, and barge into our meeting demanding that we quit wasting time and get back to doing all that needs doing, I have no doubt that Jesus would respond to such a person as he does to Martha. He would insist that we were doing precisely what we needed to be doing.

But if we were to come to the office every single day and spend all of it in reading scripture, meditating, contemplating, and praying, I’m just as sure that Jesus would speak to us about serving.

Serving and sitting at Jesus’ feet are two sides of the same discipleship coin, and so the issue is not which side is right or better. The issue is how we fully answer our calling to be disciples. And on this, I think Martha’s experience may be quite helpful to us.

When Martha welcomes Jesus into her home and seeks to play gracious host, presumably this is something she wants to do for Jesus. But as she gets angry over Mary’s failure to help, she seems to forget this. She snaps at Jesus, demands to know why he doesn’t care, and orders him to do something about the situation. She has abandoned any pretense of serving and caring for Jesus. She wants, she demands, that Jesus serve and take care of her.

When Jesus gently rebukes her, saying she is “worried and distracted by many things,” he adds, “there is need of only one thing.” I don’t think Jesus means that the one thing is sitting at his feet. That would negate the life of service he demands of his followers. Rather, I think that one thing is a total devotion to and focus on Jesus and God. Martha clearly loses that focus when she jumps in the face of the very one she claims to serve. But the same could be said of a life devoted to contemplation, prayer, and worship pursued only for the warm, spiritual buzz it offered.

When Jesus ceases to be at the center of Christian service or Christian spirituality, things are beginning to get off track. There are faith traditions where this has tended to happen more on the contemplative side, and it probably happens in some of the current fascination with spirituality. But in the typical Presbyterian Church, there is usually more of a Martha problem.

We tend to be more focused on the work of running and managing and orchestrating all those activities of church. But all of that busyness can lose sight of Jesus. It can become activity and busyness that is more about us than about Jesus. At which point Jesus speaks to us as he did in today’s scripture, “Martha, Martha, James and Diane, Joe and Tom, Sally and Jane, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.”

What is the one thing at the very center of your life? What is the one thing at the center of this congregation’s life, at the center of the activities and groups and events you are a part of here?

It’s easy to get a little un-centered. All of us do so from time to time. But Jesus keeps calling us back. “Follow me,” he says. “Keep me in the center, and everything else will find its proper place.”

Thanks be to God!