Several years ago, Reader’s Digest printed a story submitted by Jennifer Whitcomb of Fairfax, Virginia. She recalled something she had witnessed at church:
“I was in line to receive communion one Sunday when the cell phone of the woman in line ahead of me went off just at the moment the priest was giving her the wafer. Without skipping a beat the priest said, ‘Tell them we don’t do takeout.’”
There are many distractions in our lives: technology, work, our mundane daily tasks. In last week’s sermon on the Good Samaritan, we were reminded that hurry can be a big distraction. It can not only push other matters from our mind. It can also blind us to the needs of those around us and make us forget what truly matters. The priest and the Levite who passed by the half-dead man on the side of the road may have been hurrying to complete some important task, but that task was not as important as helping another person in desperate need.
So we see that we can be distracted in matters of faith. I’ve read or heard from fellow clergy numerous stories about people being upset with changes to the worship service. I’m not referring to big changes, like completely revamping the music by replacing the organ and traditional hymns with a rock band and praise choruses. I’m thinking of little changes that upset people: the movement of a prayer from one place in the service to another, the addition of a hymn, the pastor using different words during Holy Communion. People can sometimes become quite upset with these changes. They may complain that they don’t feel like they even celebrated communion: “When the pastor changed those words, well, she just ruined it for me.” Of course, they have been distracted by a matter of small importance. They are so focused on the method, the ritual, the tradition that they fail to encounter Christ at the table. They are so distracted by a few words that they fail to receive the love and grace that God is offering in the bread and cup.
In this morning’s Gospel reading, Jesus is traveling to Jerusalem. When he comes to a certain village, Martha, a local woman, invites him into her home. It appears that she may have had some familiarity with him and his ministry. Jesus accepts and he begins to teach his disciples in one room while Martha goes off to prepare a meal for her guests. Her sister, Mary, however, goes and sits down with the disciples to learn from Jesus. Martha is more than a bit put out. She goes to Jesus and insists that he remind Mary of her responsibilities and send her to the kitchen to help with the cooking.
But Jesus sees the situation differently from Martha. He tells her, in Eugene Peterson’s translation, “Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up over nothing. One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it—it’s the main course, and won’t be taken from her.” [The Message]
Martha is so busy worrying about the dishes that need to be prepared for her guests, that she has failed to fully appreciate that Jesus is sitting in her living room serving up what Stephanie Frey has called “the main course in the feast of life,” the word of God. She was unable to hear the word because she was too busy trying to do something good.
Now Martha has gotten something of a bad rap as a busy body. In her defense, it should be pointed out that she invited Jesus into her home. This was an act that exhibited hospitality to the travelers—mirroring the hospitality shown by Abram in our reading from Genesis 18—and demonstrated a keen interest in Jesus’ ministry. It was, I believe, an act of devotion.
As to her concern with the meal, she was fulfilling her role as host and trying to provide for her guests—both of which are good and important things. And, as a woman living in first century Palestine, she was fulfilling her prescribed social role. She had stepped outside of that role by inviting Jesus and his followers in and Jesus had affirmed her boldness by accepting. But only men could be disciples of rabbis. There were a few exceptions, but accepting a woman as a disciple was very rare. One rabbi even taught that it was better to burn the Torah than to teach it to a woman!
To sit at Jesus’ feet would have been to assume the position of a disciple and Martha may well have believed this to be improper. Certainly she thought that Mary should be helping prepare and serve the meal for all these guests rather than sitting with the men talking about spiritual matters—maybe she thought there would be time for that type of discussion during the meal or afterwards. But Jesus corrects her. He does so gently—witness how he repeats her name, “Martha, Martha,” suggesting affection not anger. He corrects her in a way that invites her to sit down and join the disciples and Mary who, he says, has made a wise choice.
Our scripture is implicitly suggesting that Mary was a disciple. More than that, it is also holding her up as one to be imitated. Martha was on the cusp of discipleship but was held back by social custom. Mary, however, has left social customs behind and, like Peter, James and John, she sits at the feet of Jesus in order to learn. She has become a model of discipleship. And, we should note, that, in John 11, at the tomb of the two sisters’ brother Lazarus, Martha will show herself to be a disciple—one of boldness, deep faith and unusual insight—for she declares first that Jesus can somehow intervene with God on her dead brother’s behalf and then declares of Jesus, “Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”. The only parallel in the Gospels to that declaration of Jesus’ identity is Peter’s famed “good confession:” “you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Martha’s statement is as bold and insightful a declaration of faith as any in the four Gospels.
Now, I said that Mary in today’s Gospel reading has become a model of discipleship, but let me clarify that statement and put it in context. Last Sunday, we were reminded that the two greatest commandments, the very essence of all the Law of Moses and the core of the life of discipleship, are “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” To illustrate the latter commandment, Jesus told a story about a Samaritan who stops to help a presumably Jewish man lying half- dead beside the road. The Samaritan acted as a neighbor because he recognized the other as his neghbor. This week’s Gospel reading, which comes immediately after the parable of the Good Samaritan, illustrates the other great commandment: what it means to love God fully. Mary’s devotion to Jesus and the word he proclaims is an expression of her love for God. Loving God involves listening to God’s word.
Luke has intentionally placed these two episodes back to back to illustrate how disciples are to live out the Great Commandments. Just as the story of the Good Samaritan demonstrates what it means to love our neighbors and breaks down barriers of ethnic prejudice so that the Beloved Community that is God’s Kingdom can grow in this world, this story about Mary demonstrates what it means to love God and does so by upsetting society’s gender prejudices.
Luke is making two points about the life of discipleship. First, the call to discipleship comes to all people without regard to social distinctions like ethnicity and gender—or anything else we humans can dream up. Everyone has value to God and in Christ God invites everyone into God’s kingdom.
Second, the life of discipleship is concerned with both love of God and love of neighbor. Both are necessary; they are two sides of the same coin. As Jesus said earlier in the Gospel, “My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” This means that there is no separation between worship and service; no separation between contemplation and action; no separation between being and doing. Indeed, how can we know what we are to do or be strengthened to embody love of God and neighbor in our words and deeds, if we are not actively engaging in worship, prayer and study? Melissa Bane Sevier has observed that “just as we cannot have true faith without serving others, we cannot truly serve until we have sat at the feet of Jesus. We show our purest love when we know Christ best. Listening to Jesus helps us keep our motives honest.” Christ is offering us the main course, the word of God. By it, we are nourished and strengthened to be his disciples, to live out our faith. This means that in order to be prepared to serve our neighbors, we must take time to be nurtured intellectually and spiritually. We must set aside time to worship and pray, to study and to listen so that we will be ready to act with compassion and love when the time comes. If we are really interested in embodying God’s love, in living it out in the world, than the most important thing we can do is really listen to Jesus. The doing, the living out will come about as a natural result of being drawn into a deeper love of God.
Clara Beth Speel Van de Water relates a story about a case of a distracted ministry team. Some years ago, in a particular church, there was a Christian Education team that had long organized and prepared a congregational breakfast for Easter morning. It had become something of a tradition. The breakfast was well attended and enjoyed by everyone—well, everyone accept the Christian Education team.
You see, this wasn’t like what we did this Easter and past Easters when we had folks sign up to make breakfast casseroles and the Fellowship Team purchased fruit and Danishes and set the tables. No, in this case, the breakfast was a more elaborate affair and the folks on the Christian Ed team were doing all the cooking, all the baking, all the slicing of fruit, all the serving and all the cleaning themselves. It required so much time and energy that the committee members found they were unable to fully celebrate the miracle of Easter. They were too busy and anxious to be able to hear and respond to the Gospel on the most important of all days on the church calendar.
So, collectively they decided that they would no longer plan the breakfast. But it was such a wonderful fellowship opportunity that they didn’t want to let it die. “What about the Congregational Life team?” someone said. “This is exactly their type of ministry. Let’s see if they are willing to take it over.” So they asked and the members of Congregational Life agreed.
But they too discovered that the breakfast was ruining their Easter. They were too busy preparing food to worship; too busy washing dishes to encounter the Risen Christ. The only “Alleluia” they sang that Easter was when the whole thing was cleaned up and they were able to go home and rest.
So it was that the next year, they all decided to scale back. They agreed that the meal was a good thing, in and of itself. But encountering God through Easter worship was a far better thing, a far more necessary thing. Thus, instead of a full-blown meal made by committee members, there would be a continental breakfast. This proved to be best for all involved: the congregation still had a time of fellowship and the members of the Congregational Life and the Christian Education teams were able to joyfully worship. In the words of the church’s Minister of Christian Education, “Freed from unnecessary distractions of preparing many things for breakfast, were able to give priority to the “one thing…needful,” hearing and heeding the Word of God in the Easter story.”
If, in the church, an activity enhances our worship of God; if it encourages or enables our service of our neighbors; if it builds up mutual care within our community of faith; then it is serving a good purpose and promoting the necessary end of loving God. Anything that distracts from worship, service and community is a distraction and should be reassessed.
So, let us not neglect what is most important. Let us not be distracted from the main course in the great feast of life. Let us not forget that the point of church is not to do more and more good stuff, it is to be Jesus’ disciples. So let us sit and listen. Let us hear and heed the word of God, for that is the “one thing which is necessary.” Then all of our doing and serving will have its foundation and direction. Then we will know God more deeply and we will better be able to actively love our neighbors and our God and thus keep the great commandments and grow as disciples of Jesus. Amen.