The Sermon Text —Luke 10:38_42

The other day I was visiting with my neighbor and good friend who named her daughter Martha. It turns out that my neighbor, when she was a girl, her Dad often liked to have out-of-town company. She remembers that when she was growing up she was often the one who would have the work associated with having that company in their home, so she could identify with Martha. She knew I would be preaching on today’s Gospel and she said, "you be sure to do Martha justice," and I imagine there are a lot of people here who can relate to Martha. At the beginning of this story, Martha seems to be an example of good Christian conduct. Jesus had been out journeying with his disciples when he comes to the village where Mary and Martha live. And when he arrives there, Martha welcomes him into her home.

Last week we heard the Gospel story of the Good Samaritan where the lawyer comes to Jesus and says, "What do I have to do to inherit eternal life?" and Jesus says, "you know the law – Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself." And Martha seems to know and understand that story so when Jesus comes to her village she says, "Jesus you can stay at my home." She remembered that Jesus had said that foxes have holes and birds have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head, and she was going to make sure he had somewhere to lay his head. So when Jesus arrives at her house she gets busy right away making sure he will have a nice visit. Any of you, just like my neighbor, who have ever had company drop in from out of town know what that’s like. You’re scrambling trying to pick up the house, get the bed ready, and make a nice meal.

And while Martha is busy with all of this, her sister Mary is sitting in the front room at Jesus’ feet listening to him. This is where our story changes, we hear these words from Jesus, which sound like a rebuke, "Martha, Martha you are worried and distracted by many things, there is need of only one thing, which Mary has chosen, and it will not be taken away from her." Now what is going on here? If I had company drop in, my children and husband did not lift a finger to help me, and my guest scolded me, no matter how diplomatically, I wouldn’t be real happy. What went wrong here for Martha, who really seemed to be exhibiting the characteristics of a woman loving her neighbor, welcoming him into her home, making him comfortable, what did she do to warrant this scolding?

Was Jesus just reprimanding Martha for being petty in wanting her sister to help or is there something more going on here?

This little story of Mary and Martha, it is only five verses, comes at the end of ch. 10 of Luke’s Gospel. Often in a book, the climax of the story will come at the end of the book, but a lot of times even at the end of the chapter the author will put important information in. The same is true in Luke’s Gospel. Chapter 10 started out with the story of Jesus commissioning 70 of his followers to go out in the villages ahead of him, healing the sick, casting out demons, and spreading God’s word – it is a story of journeying and action and doing. Last week we heard the story of the Good Samaritan , where we learn that loving our neighbors as ourselves means giving of ourselves in a tangible and real way. It’s after these stories of Christian discipleship that we are given another image of what it means to follow Jesus in the form of Mary who simply sits and listens to the word of God.

Puzzling, isn’t it, after these stories of action and doing, suddenly we hear Jesus saying that Mary has chosen the better part. Now I think it is tempting to gravitate towards the story that resonates most with our own personality. If we are a doer, we say, I’m like those 70 followers going out into the villages and helping people. But maybe you’re more like Mary, a person of prayer who studies the word of God and you think hmm, I do have the better part. But Jesus doesn’t make it that easy for any of us. Because in the middle of chapter 10, in the midst of all of these stories, he turns to his disciples in private and says, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it."

Jesus is forming us in our entirety, in our whole being, as to what it means to be his follower. Yes he wants us to be able to have eyes to see and to recognize anyone as our neighbor. But before we can have eyes that see, we must first have ears that are willing to listen to Jesus. Some of you know that before I was a pastor I used to be a lawyer. To be licensed as a lawyer in Wisconsin you have to have 30 hours of continuing legal education every two years. This is true with many of our professions, doctors and nurses and others are required to have ongoing education and that is based on a belief that learning needs to be continually reinforced, that people need to be exposed to new ideas to be competent as a professional. That is equally true for us as Christians - we have to take time to hear and learn the word of God, to be instructed in Christian conduct for it to become integrated into who we are as people.

Some of you may have heard that news story a few weeks ago from Wichita Kansas of a young woman who was involved in some type of dispute in a convenience store. She was stabbed and lay bleeding on the floor. Several people walked right over her, someone even took a picture of her on their cell phone. 911 wasn’t called for several minutes and she died. The police expressed their absolute dismay at how people responded to the situation. I wonder if any of the people who walked by her considered themselves Christian – we live in a society where we are so worried and distracted by so many things that we can’t even act at times on our own values and this is why we have to keep hearing the word of God, so we can be formed by God’s word.

Yesterday I met with one of our confirmation students. Before our kids can be confirmed at Bethel they must first be interviewed by a pastor. I asked what she liked about the program and how her faith had grown. She was very honest and she said that for people her age who are going into high school, there can be a lot of drama in their lives, which is true. But when she comes to church, she forgets about all that drama and she remembers that God is always with her, when she hears the word of God in scripture and song and prayer – it’s not a lot different then when Mary was listening to Jesus.

There’s another reason why Jesus was so firm that day in saying to Martha that Mary had chosen the better part and that it would not be taken from her and that has to do with giving us hope for the world that we do live in. This last week was a bad news week here in Madison, whether you read it in the papers or heard it on tv. One young mother was arrested for killing her infant child, after a hospital had already found she had abused the child, a Sun Prairie teenage boy was arrested for killing his teenage sister, and a man was shot by Madison police in what the police are calling suicide by cop. How do we process this horrific news as Christians? Do we shut out these stories as one more bad piece of news and become immune to them? It’s easy to understand if we do that, but when we do that we close our eyes to real societal problems. In Dane County alone, there have been 1600 cases of child abuse reported in the first six months. So how do we learn as Christians to live as a people of hope amidst this type of news in our own lives or the lives of others?

Jesus said to Martha, "You are worried and distracted by many things." For Martha that day she appeared to be worried and distracted simply by the busyness of her life and her household chores. Who can’t relate to that? We live in a society where we all multi-task. But in her worries and distractions, Martha missed out on Jesus breaking through all of that busyness to offer her life giving words that were far more important than any tasks that she had that day. But for some of us we are worried and distracted by things far more serious than just chores, problems and burdens weighing us down in our lives or the lives of loved ones, issues like some of the issues that we’ve heard about in the news this week. It is into these worries and distractions, whatever they may be, that Jesus enters our lives offering hope and the life giving word of God if we have ears to listen.

Today we had that beautiful story from Genesis, where Abraham is sitting under the oaks of Mamre by his tent in the noon day heat when three strangers approach him. Abraham is an old man and he is a model of Biblical hospitality. Maybe some of you know someone like this, I do. He greets them, he is humble, he says if it pleases you, let me have a meal prepared for you, he has a calf slaughtered, he offers them bread and milk in the middle of the desert, he waits on them himself. At the end of this meal, the three strangers who turn out to be God, say to Abraham we’ll be back, we’ll be back in another year and when we come back your wife Sarah, who was as old as Abraham, she will be with child. This couple who had never had children, was going to have a son.

These stories tell us who our God is. That God enters our lives in the middle of a hot summer day, in the noon hour heat, and brings us hope where there hadn’t been hope before. That Jesus enters even the busyness of our mundane lives of doing chores and cleaning houses to speak the living word of God, to tell us that in the midst of the many things that worry and distract us, that in the midst of a world filled too often with bad news that God does exist. God’s way is a better way, it is a way of love and kindness and mercy and hope. We know all this when we listen and receive and hear the living word of God. Amen.