“Who Are We Trying to Impress?”

Luke 10:38-42

If you attend meetings to plan other meetings, you might be a Presbyterian.

If forced to choose between decency and order you chose order, you might be a Presbyterian.

We Presbyterians are an orderly lot. And as Sandy said after her first exposure to a presbytery meeting, we’re too often too much in our heads. Ignorance isn’t bliss, but knowledge and intellect have their limits. A lesson seminary graduates need to learn very early in their first call is that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

We Presbyterians have always made good Marthas: diligent, orderly, and well prepared. We get the head part. We get the work part. But sometimes we miss what Jesus called “the better part.” We get so caught up in the work of the church that we forget just who it is we’re working for and why.

We Presbyterians, especially we pastor-types, often fall into the workaholic category. Or become control freaks. There must never be a loose end left untied or part of a plan not nailed down. Years ago I loaned a book out to a colleague and never got it back. But I do remember one of the things the author wrote: “If you’re working more than fifty hours a week, who are you trying to impress? God? You must be kidding.”

Who was Martha trying to impress in today’s text? Jesus. As a good hostess in a culture that emphasized hospitality she was determined to feed Jesus a good meal. Thus it was that she was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, attending to this that or the other detail. To paraphrase The Living Bible, she was jittery and worried. As the NRSV puts it, “[She] was distracted by her many tasks.”

And in the midst of her frenzy she saw her sister, Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to and drinking in his words. So she stormed out the kitchen into the living room, and, as The Message paraphrases her words, said, “Master, don’t you care that my sister has abandoned the kitchen to me? Tell her to lend me a hand?”

Still reading from The Message, Jesus replied, “Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up for nothing. One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it – it’s the main course, and won’t be taken from her.” Jesus had no need to be impressed by her busy-ness and hard work. He wasn’t concerned about what she put on the table. She wanted to give him a feast. He wanted her to do what Mary did: spend some quality time with him and listen to him. A sandwich and some chips would have been fine.

Having said that, I must admit that, if not for a certain number of Marthas in churches I’ve served, things would have pretty much fallen apart. Most of them were women. Many of them didn’t like this text. They felt as if they were being judged for their willingness to do what had to be done.

There is no judgment in this text. Every church needs its Marthas. Every church also needs its Marys. The truth is that living a balanced Christian life requires us to be both Martha and Mary.

A lot of people who dislike this text do so for all the wrong reasons. They see Mary as being lazy. Her poor sister is working her fingers to the bone, and what is she doing? Sitting on her fanny making goo-goo eyes at Jesus. They confuse Mary with those navel-gazing Christians described by Paul in Second Thessalonians.

Mary was not making goo-goo eyes at Jesus. Nor was she indulging herself in navel-gazing. She absolutely was not lazy. She was being a faithful disciple. Faithful disciples sit at the feet of their masters absorbing as much of his or her knowledge they can. Faithful disciples of the risen Christ feed on his Word and spend time communing with him in prayer.

Part of Martha’s anger probably had to do with her belief that Mary wasn’t playing the role dictated by their culture: she didn’t know her place. In the words of N. T. Wright, “Mary had crossed a boundary, entering the man’s world of discipleship; Jesus had affirmed her right to be there, indeed the desirability of her being there rather than simply staying in the kitchen. Once Mary had drunk in the rich teaching of Jesus, she too would be on her feet [working], but not simply in the background.”

Martha had become a prisoner of cultural expectations. She understood her place to be in the kitchen, in the background, preparing meals and such for the real disciples of Jesus. And only men could be real disciples. Mary stepped out of the prison of cultural expectations. She became a disciple. She would work for Jesus, even in the kitchen if necessary, but first she had to learn from him.

In Christ’s Church men and women are equals in the enterprise of discipleship. Women don’t have to stay in the background. They may be in the kitchen, as may some of their male counterparts, but only because that is where the Lord wants them to be.

Somebody has to cook the food, wash the dishes, and take out the trash. None of us has the luxury of becoming so heavenly minded that we’re of no earthly good. Somebody has to play the part of Martha – in fact, all of us must play it at certain times, but only after we have joined Mary in sitting at the feet of Jesus. In the words of Robert J. Dean, “A life of effective service is a life rooted in prayer, worship, and the study of the Scriptures.” And those of Robert Obach and Albert Kirk, “One loves God by listening to Jesus and attending to his presence.”

A life of effective service is rooted in prayer, worship, and the study of the Scriptures. We love God by listening to Jesus and attending to his presence. Prayer, Bible study, listening to Jesus, and attending to his presence is a vital part of our discipleship. One of the frustrations I had with one of my former churches is that they had their priorities backwards. They were great workers and dedicated doers who did much good in the church and in the community. But they wouldn’t come to a Bible study on a regular basis.

Furthermore, in their eyes, if you weren’t building something, growing something, cooking something, painting something, or cleaning something, you were considered lazy. Laziness is often confused with the deadly sin of sloth.

Nobody has better illustrated this than Frederick Buechner: “Sloth is not to be confused with laziness. A lazy man, a man who sits around and watches the grass grow, may be a man at peace. His sundrenched, bumblebee dreaming may be the prelude to action or itself an act well worth the acting. A slothful man, on the other hand, may be a very busy man. He is a man who goes through the motions, who flies on automatic pilot. Like a man with a bad cold, he has mostly lost his sense of taste and smell. He knows something’s wrong with him, but not wrong enough to do anything about. Other people come and go, but through glazed eyes he hardly notices them. He is letting things run their course. He is getting through his life.”

We all need to read that at least once a year. We all need to be reminded that busy-ness doesn’t always equate with faithfulness. I came out of seminary, where I had already been identified as a budding workaholic, and approached ministry much like the young man described in one of Jimmy Buffett’s songs. I wanted to be that guy: “He was impressive; young and aggressive; saving the world on his own.”

But God doesn’t require is to be impressive or aggressive. He has never expected us to save the world on our own. It’s bad theology to even think that we can! But sometimes our inner Martha takes over, and off we go into a whirlwind of busy-ness and activity. If we’re not careful we end up like the man described by Frederick Buechner: flying on autopilot and going through the motions as we run really hard in order to get nowhere on our self-made treadmill of a life. We lose touch with our spouses, our children, and even ourselves, but worst of all we stop attending to the presence of Jesus. We cut ourselves off from our main source of spiritual food.

Years ago a DJ in Radford, Virginia signed off every night with these words: “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” Feeling important is nice. So, too, is feeling useful. The late Henri Nouwen wrote about the desire to be useful, “[It] can be a sign of mental and spiritual health… it can also become the source of a paralyzing lack of self-esteem. More often than not we not only desire to do meaningful things, but we often make the results of our work the criteria of our self-esteem… we not only have successes, we become our successes… we are worthwhile because we have successes.”

Martha based her worthiness on her success as a cook and hostess. Her worthiness wasn’t based on such things at all. Her worthiness was, just as ours is, based on the reality that she was a child of God, a child who was being invited to get out of the kitchen and sit at the feet of Jesus. How does one act out faithfulness to such a loving Father. One loves God - obeys God - by listening to Jesus and attending to his presence. Amen.