Dear
friends: grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our
Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ
Let's
pray:
I
have been thinking about my mother quite a bit this week, and I
couldn't figure out why until this morning when I woke up. During
the past week I have read the bible readings for this morning, and I
like to say they have been “percolating.” They bubble and boil
and filter through my experiences and my thinking and my
sub-conscious and my study and my interactions with people. God's
Word colours our thinking when we let it in, when it dwells in us –
so I encourage you to make it a part of your daily diet. Read it –
every day. Let it percolate. Let it dwell in you richly. Well,
with all the percolating, I woke up this morning thinking about my
mom again, and I'll tell you why in a minute.
The
reading from Luke today is this: Jesus has come to visit Mary and
Martha. This is before the death and raising of their brother
Lazarus. Luke
records this just after the sending out of the seventy and the
telling of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Mary and Martha live
in the village of Bethany, and it seems like the telling in Luke is
the record of Jesus' first visit with them. He came to their
village, and Martha took him into their home. Just like he told
the 70 to do, Jesus depended on the hospitality of the villages he
visited. In Bethany, Martha and Mary gave that hospitality. Bethany
is about 2 and a half kilometres east of Jerusalem.
I
tell you where it is, because I want you to know that these were
actual people, in actual places, in actual time. It really happened.
It's not a fable or a myth or some kind of made up story. Jesus
actually lived – born about 4 BC, when Augustus was Caesar – the
Emperor of the Roman Empire. Died around 30 AD when Pontius Pilate
was governor of Judea. In 1961, a stone tablet was found in a Roman
theatre on the Mediterranean coast between Tel Aviv and Haifa. Cut
into limestone was a tribute to Tiberius – the Caesar after
Augustus. The inscription has the name Pontius Pilate, and the stone
is dated to 26-37 AD. Real events, real people, Jesus really
God-come-in-person.
So Jesus and his
disciples came to Mary and Martha's town, and Jesus, at least, came
to their house. It may have been the whole crowd of them, but maybe
the disciples stayed somewhere else. But two things happened at
martha's house; Martha went into overdrive, getting busy with
preparations for lunch or dinner for their house guests. Feeding a
dozen is no easy task. Feeding one – if it's Jesus – demands
one's best. So a dozen or one, Martha was busy with the
preparations. And the other thing that happened? Mary sat Jesus's
feet. This is the same Mary who, John says, poured oil on the Lord,
and wiped his feet with her hair. Here Mary sat at Jesus' feet,
listening to Jesus teaching.
And in comes Martha,
complaining to Jesus: “Lord, don't you care that my sister has
left me to do all the work? Tell her to help me!”
Totally
understandable. Martha is run ragged getting ready. She's left
alone to do it, and certainly Jesus would ask her sister Mary,
“Shouldn't you be helping your sister? Ran along, like a good
hostess, and ready everything with your sister.”
But Jesus is not your
typical houseguest. Jesus is not above criticizing his hosts, even
though he is guest. When the host is a Pharisee,
we like it when Jesus criticizes the host. In Luke 7, Jesus says to
Simon the Pharisee, “Look, I came to see you, but you didn't wash
my feet, you didn't greet me with a kiss – but this sinful woman
did.” Yeah! Give it to him, Jesus. That lousy
working-to-earn-God's-love Pharisee!
But here
the host is hard-working Martha. No husband in the house. Lazy
sister. We have a hard time understanding or justifying Jesus' words
here. Wouldn't you feel like you needed a little help getting ready,
a little assistance in the kitchen?
But maybe with our
microwavable meals, our ready to eat M&M Meats, or Hoffman's Fine
Foods, or our Costco cuisine – we don't get what Martha was up
against. If she wanted tortillas, she had to grind the grain and
make them by hand. Salsa? Pick your own tomatoes, grow your own
spices. Meat? Kill your own lamb, your own chicken, your own
goat. Butcher it and slow roast it. (Looking back at my menu, I
realize I am hungry for Mexican food...) But for Martha, there were
no ready to eat meals. It was done by hand.
So Martha is all -
Hello? A little help? Mary? Jesus? Poor Martha. No help from
Jesus. Nada. Bupkiss. Nichts. No shooing Mary into the kitchen.
And Mary? Seems like
Mary is the sinful woman from Luke 7. Funny, in my head Mary and
Martha are two ladies from the woman's group at church. Fine
upstanding young women in their community. Bible study attenders,
members of the choir, faithful worshippers. Turns out different than
I thought. Mary is the sinful woman who has been forgiven much. Was
she an adulteress? Did she just sleep around, or was she the town
hooker? That's Mary. She sat at Jesus' feet before – pouring
perfume, wiping with her hair – forgiven much. So she sits again,
captured by Jesus.
And Jesus is saying,
“Mary has chosen something more important, even more important than
hospitality, more important than eating – she has chosen me,
because in me the Kingdom of God is near.”
And poor Martha? Well,
maybe Martha's a little more self-centred than she appears. "Lord,
don't you care that my
sister has left me
to do the work by myself?
Tell her to help me!"
Two short sentences and the personal pronoun is used four times. My
sister left me
by myself.
Have her help me.
The
trouble with people like Martha is that they can tend to derive their
self-worth from their own accomplishments. Look what I
am doing over here! Look how well I
am doing! Look at how caring I
am, how clean I
have made this place is, how much care I
give to my
cooking, how I
care for myfamily
and
my
guests. Marthas can get caught up in the doing thinking the doing is
what makes them acceptable, makes them worthy, makes them good.
And
my mom? Well, my Mom's name was Martha. And she was
a Martha. I love my Mom, and I am grateful for who she was, but from
time to time over my life, I wish my Mom had not been so busy with
things. Always busy doing and getting things ready and cooking and
organizing. Granted, she had 5 kids and she was a pastor's wife, so
not being busy would soon signal disaster in our household, because
we did not all share Mom's sense of cleaning things and putting
things away.
But
what I am afraid of is my Mom felt like “doing” was the only way
she got any sense of self-worth. My mom was a believer, grabbed by
God's grace, but I fear she struggled with her self-worth, thinking
she was only validated by her doing.
And
Mary is all about Jesus. Jesus is in the house, and he is the focus.
He is the one forgiving sins – and we need to be forgiven. He is
the one teaching – and we need to be taught. He is the one we
centre on - not on us, not on our preparations for him, not on our
abilities and accomplishments – which can be misdirected and
misplaced. We focus on Jesus because He
is the one who makes us acceptable, who makes us worthy, who makes us
good. It's not our abilities, or our hospitality, our kindess or our
good cooking that gives us worth. God-come-in-person, Jesus is the
one who gives us worth. So we focus on Him.
How
do we focus on Jesus? Through getting into the Bible, through
attending to worship, through prayer, through getting together with
other believers. We sit a Jesus feet, learning, bringing our worship
and our concerns, gathering with other followers.
And
our doing?
Our doing is in response to the mercy love and forgiveness of Jesus,
God-come-in-person. It's not about us, it's about Jesus. So, by the
love of Jesus for us and through us we do things bigger than
ourselves. By the love of Jesus for us and through us we help
refugees, we serve at the food bank, we go to Pikwitonei
(Pik-WIT-on-ay), Manitoba to teach the community about the love of
Jesus for and through us. By the love of Jesus for us and through us
we built Luther Home. By the love of Jesus for us and through us we
serve our families, our neighbours, our co-workers, even our enemies.
And by the love of Jesus for us and through us we move forward to a
future God knows and holds for us.
Paul
wrote that Jesus, God-come-in-person, is the only way to know the
invisible God, so our focus is on Jesus.
