Text: Luke 10:38-42 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
Jesus visits Martha and Mary
38 Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; 42 one thing is needful.[a] Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
Just what is the “good portion” Jesus talks about?
Every sermon I have ever heard about this passage, as well as all the ones I have preached over the years, are unanimous that the “good portion” is what Mary does by sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening. This seems to be clearly what Luke himself thought when he wrote this account. Doing the right thing – listening to Jesus – is contrasted sharply with doing the not-so-right thing – getting all wrapped around the axle with preparations for that meal, and by extension, focusing on things that aren’t (ultimately) important. From this we generally conclude that we need to focus our priorities on choosing the good portion. Don’t worry about the pots and pans; listen to Jesus. Certainly, that’s good advice, and a worthwhile lesson. We do very often put the wrong things at the top of our list of priorities. We do very often fail to put God in the driver’s seat of our lives – and then we wonder why we’ve taken a wrong turn or gone off the road entirely.
But I don’t think that it’s as clear-cut or as simple as we might want to make it. Putting Martha and Mary into two neat, tidy little pigeon holes should immediately make us suspicious.
Because the fact is that Martha was doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing that day. As Professor Elisabeth Johnson writes: “Hospitality is exceedingly important in the biblical world in general and in Luke’s Gospel in particular.
“When Jesus comes to Bethany, Martha demonstrates hospitality by welcoming Jesus into the home she shares with her sister Mary. She then busies herself with the tasks of serving their guest (diakonian). Although we are not told precisely what those tasks are, a good guess is that she began preparing a meal.”[1]
Martha was showing Jesus respect in the time-honored way that her people treated special guests. As we have seen before, throughout the Bible, in both the Old Testament and the New, we find example after example of people offering hospitality to strangers and friends alike. Abraham offered a meal and shade to the three angels who visited him and Sarai; in Leviticus 19:33-34, we read “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” This is not a suggestion; it’s a commandment from God. And Job, when he protested his sickness, made the point: “The sojourner has not lodged in the street; I have opened my doors to the wayfarer.”(Job 31:32)
So, for Martha to do anything less would have gone against thousands of years of her culture, been an insult to Jesus and would have brought dishonor to her and her entire household. The Greek noun used to describe what Martha is doing, διακονίαν – is derived from the same word (διακονία) from which we get our term “deacon” – Martha was performing what we have come to regard as a ministry of service. So, in the eyes of her culture, she had also most definitely “chosen the good portion.”
And, of course, making the preparations for a special guest wasn’t just a job for one person – the entire household was involved – a close reading of the text indicates that Mary, in fact, had been helping Martha until Jesus arrived, when she decided to sit at his feet and listen, instead of assisting Martha. So Martha’s annoyance with her sister is not just understandable, but justified; under normal circumstances, her appeal “tell her then to help me” would have caused whoever was head of the household – father, brother, uncle, whoever – to order Mary to go help her sister.
It wasn’t just that Martha was doing the work of two all by herself. Mary, sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening to his words, is not assuming the role expected of women in her culture. By taking her place there, she assumes the posture of a student learning at the feet of a rabbi, a role traditionally reserved for men. This clearly didn’t bother Jesus, but maybe it grated on Martha a little bit: “I mean, really, Mary, just who do you think you are?”
So this was not your normal dinner party. We know, also, that Mary and Martha knew Jesus very well, because it was their brother Lazarus, after all, whom Jesus had previously raised from the dead. He was quite possibly Jesus’ best friend, so it’s likely that he was there that day. It’s probable that Jesus had spent many happy hours under that roof. This was, to all intents and purposes, a family gathering – which goes a long way toward explaining why Martha would commit the faux pas of asking Jesus, their guest, to intervene. And, finally, it’s equally likely that everybody in that house knew what Jesus was doing, what his intention was, and where he was going – to Jerusalem to die.
Given, then, that this was going to be the last time Jesus would ever have dinner with them, it’s no wonder that Martha was working in high gear and got a little frazzled.
So we really can’t make this a choice between getting too caught up in “busyness” on the one hand, and doing the needful thing, on the other. It’s not an “either/or” scenario.
So what are we to make of it, then?
What it all boils down to is simply this: “The problem with Martha is not her serving, but rather that she is worried and distracted. The word translated ‘distracted’ in verse 40, periespato (περιεσπᾶτο) , has the connotation of being pulled or dragged in different directions,”[2] as Professor Johnson tells us.
Distraction. Being pulled in different directions. If this isn’t the definition of modern life, I don’t know what is.
The big problem Martha has is that all her distraction and worry leave no room for the most important aspect of hospitality, which is gracious attention to the guest. In fact, she breaks all the ancient rules of hospitality by trying to embarrass her sister in front of her guest, and by asking her guest to intervene in a family dispute, regardless of how well she knew Jesus. She even goes so far as to accuse Jesus of not caring about her (Lord, do you not care…?).
Martha’s worry and distraction prevent her from being truly present with Jesus, and cause her to drive a wedge not only between her sister and herself but also between Jesus and herself. She has ignored the “one thing needed” for true hospitality. There is no greater hospitality than listening to your guest. So Jesus sets her straight and tells her that Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.
Jesus’ words to Martha are not a rebuke, but an invitation. The one thing Martha really needs is to receive the gracious presence of Jesus, to listen to his words, and above all to know that she is valued not for what she does or how well she does it, but for who she is as a child of God. Take the pots off the burner. Sit down, rest, and listen. The work, as important as it is, can wait a few more minutes.
One of the women in the church I served years ago in Fremont was a lot like Martha. She was always on the go, always busy, always involved in professional work, church work, and volunteer work; and when she wasn’t doing any of that, she was busy with her family. Oftentimes, she was busy with all those activities at the same time. I remember a moment when her best friend said to her “You know, you can’t do everything” and she replied, “Well, I can try.”
There is certainly some Biblical justification for being busy with God’s work. James 2:17 tells us flat out that “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead;” but the opposite is also true – doing works without remembering why you’re doing them, allowing works to become the end rather than the means to the end, which is living your faith – is also a dead end.
But we tend to forget that. In our culture of bloated, merciless schedules and the single-minded pursuit of productivity and efficiency, two of the most Protestant words in our language, we are tempted to measure our worth by how busy we are – the phone rings, and you say “Sorry, gotta take this,” by how much we accomplish (“my status report this week prints out to 10 pages!”), or by how well we meet the expectations of others, we become living examples of works righteousness. It’s the notion that we can earn spiritual green stamps by doing good things. We figure that, if we rack up enough of these green stamps, we’re a shoe-in for eternal salvation when we finally cash in.
It simply doesn’t work that way. And that is a really good thing. It is a sure and certain sign of God’s love and grace that it doesn’t.
Christianity, unlike every other religion, does not say that people are saved by good works. Even though there is a red thread running through Christianity – one example being the letter of James I just quoted from, which seems to open the door to salvation by works – I need to note here that James simply makes the point that faith leads to good works and that good works are not a substitute for faith. We affirm that God, and God alone, saves us, and that there is nothing we can do to earn it. The theological name for this is “righteousness coram deo,” or “righteousness in the eyes of God.”
The other kind of righteousness – the one we usually think of – is called “righteousness coram mundo,” or “righteousness in the eyes of the world.” The Reformers also called it “active righteousness,” “civil righteousness,” or the “righteousness of reason or philosophy.” A person is righteous in this way when he or she is in a “right,” or harmonious, relationship with her or his neighbors, and with creation in general.
But, if we’re not careful, we can fall into that same trap Martha did, and everyone who believes that beefing up their spiritual resume with all kinds of good deeds, does.
Elisabeth Johnson goes on to say, “It is true that much of our busyness and distraction stems from the noblest of intentions. We want to provide for our families, we want to give our children every opportunity to enrich their lives, we want to serve our neighbors, and yes, we want to serve the Lord. Indeed, where would the church be without its ‘Marthas,’ those faithful folk who perform the tasks of hospitality and service so vital to making the church a welcoming and well-functioning community?
“And yet if all our activities leave us with no time to be still in the Lord’s presence and hear God’s word, we are likely to end up anxious and troubled. We are likely to end up with a kind of service that is devoid of love and joy and is resentful of others.
“Both listening and doing, receiving God’s Word and serving others, are vital to the Christian life, just as inhaling and exhaling are to breathing. Yet how often do we forget to breathe in deeply? Trying to serve without being nourished by God’s word is like expecting good fruit to grow from a tree that has been uprooted.”[3] But we must stop to listen.
Back in the Middle Ages, nobles who had spent their earthly lives fighting and killing other nobles (and peasants) for wealth and land, often bequeathed endowments to churches, or monasteries, or universities on their deathbeds – but they didn’t do that out of faith, but out of fear. They wanted to hedge their bets.
Serving others in the name of Christ, which we are all called to do, is to be done as a response to the grace of God, not as a way to earn that grace. When we think of service in that way, the joy of it is restored; our “Martha moments” become fewer and are replaced by “Mary moments.”
William Alfred Quayle was a Bishop in the Methodist Church. “Quayle was a worrier. He used to sit up half the night worrying. Then one night an amazing thing happened. He said that he ‘heard God’s voice as clearly as if it had been someone sitting in the same room.’ God said, ‘Quayle, go to bed. I’ll sit up for the rest of the night.’ The impact of the experience on the bishop was transforming…’And thereafter there was in Quayle a wonderful serenity, for he had learned to cast his burden on the Lord.’”[4]
Sisters and Brothers, when we serve, let us serve not out of distraction or worry, but out of joy and gratitude!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Johnson, Elisabeth, “Commentary on Luke 10:38-42,” https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1723
[2] Johnson, Elisabeth, “Commentary on Luke 10:38-42,” Working Preacher, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1723
[3] Johnson, Elisabeth, “Commentary on Luke 10:38-42,” Working Preacher, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1723
[4] Link, Mark, S.J., Jesus: A Contemporary Walk with Jesus, Allen, Texas, Resources for Christian Living, 1997, p. 353