Proverbs 8:32-36; Luke 10:38-42
“I want to suggest that one of the great reasons the church is declining during our day,” writes Luther Seminary professor David J. Lose, is that many “people have a hard time connecting what we do at church with what we do the rest of the week.”
He certainly had my immediate attention when I read these words. I’m a practical guy in all areas of my personal and professional life. I pray my grace fueled efforts for our Lord will have tangibly life transforming results. When I hear the phrase “What would Jesus do?” I think it’s helpful but a little too academic. I prefer to ask the more practical question, “What will Jesus do?”[i]
So I eagerly read on to learn more about what might be prohibiting me and other people from more fully living out our faith beyond the time spent in church building spaces. This professor continued to state his view of this problem, saying, “Their faith practices on Sunday are nice, perhaps even comfortable, but they don’t inform their daily decisions at work, home or school. In short, they don’t find their faith particularly useful.” Given that our current culture is a “24/7 world of multiple opportunities and obligations,” he reminds us that biblical stories really do need to be thought about beyond Sunday. Having them in mind and heart on a daily basis grows a faithfully fruitful life.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Luke drops us into a home that has welcomed Jesus. In this home are two practical examples, by way of sisters Martha and Mary, about how to be useful when offering and receiving holy hospitality. Holy hospitality happens in all the times and places we graciously welcome and treat one another in the way Jesus taught in word and deed.
Opportunities for this hospitality happen on special occasions as well as every day for us. After all, there isn’t any space we find ourselves in where the Spirit of our Lord is not present. So whose example should we consider and follow each day? Who is more faithful, Martha or Mary?
Actually, these questions wrongly suggest that the witness of Martha and Mary are mutually exclusive. I believe this Gospel scene teaches that holy hospitality is truly about balancing the Martha and the Mary within us all.
The Martha within us all is diligently dutiful. She does what is expected of her and so is always very, very busy. She spends much of her time making check marks next to all the tasks on her to-do lists. She takes pride in being very productive and in her accomplishments. Hers is quite a hurried life of constantly serving others. This is how she most understands what it means to live for the Lord.
But the Martha within us all is also often full of anxiety. In trying to keep up and do the things expected of her, she worries that she doesn’t really measure up. She finds comfort in reminding herself that her intentions are almost always faithful and honorable. But this also keeps up the constant pressure, for she doesn’t want to disappoint herself or anybody else. And when she gets to feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, she often finds herself angry and resentful about any and all reasons why.
It’s the Martha within us all that knew exactly how to offer hospitality to Jesus in this morning’s scene from Luke. As a faithful servant of her culture, she had busied herself with the tasks of getting the house and meal ready to properly receive her guest. This work of proper hosting, especially for Jesus, continued even after He’d arrived.
While the Martha within us all was doing this, the Mary within us all focused her faith of sitting rather than serving. In the presence of Jesus, she put aside any to-do lists and sat out doing what was culturally expected of her. Helping her sister took a backseat to Jesus’ feet. She found it more useful to sit there and listen intently to what he had to say (even though this was a position only allowed of men of her day). This Mary within us all is deeply devout and cares most about making time to absorb and obey the Word of the Lord. She has a cherished cross-stitch hanging on a wall someplace that reads, “Hear instruction and be wise, do not neglect it.” (Prov. 32)
We know these faithful sisters well, don’t we? Throughout our years of life, I trust we’ve seen them reflected back in our mirrors and in the faces of folks we know. The sort of busyness varies with all the roles and responsibilities we and others have had and continue to have. So too taking the time to honor our intrinsic desire to stop and set aside devotional time with the Word of God.
In that house on that long ago day, Jesus made it clear that Mary is the better example of what to do when offering and receiving the hospitality of the Lord. The one thing we all need more than anything else is to make time for the holy, life giving and forgiving words of Jesus.
In making this clear, however, our Lord didn’t shame Martha for her diligently dutiful service. Some folks do interpret his words to her as a harsh rebuke. But I side with the interpretation that when he said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things” he was compassionately helping her to recognize that she was allowing herself to be dragged in too many directions. He did so to invite her back to the number one rule of hospitality – truly paying attention to and being present to the guest. He did so to invite her to have a more useful, practical balance between serving and listening, between worrying about her life and trusting in Him. Hospitality happens in hurried lives, but it is only understood as holy hospitality when time is set aside to sit with the Word and see the Light of Jesus Christ in the midst of it.
As a congregation, we share experiences together that call upon us to balance the Martha and the Mary within us all. I find this to be especially true every time we welcome IHN. There sure is a lot of hurry up and do beforehand – such as setting-up the community house, going on grocery runs for non-perishables, recruiting meal-makers and overnight hosts. And there are shifting schedules, good communications, and occasional troubleshooting to stay atop of when our guests are here. How many here today experience the Martha within you before and during our IHN hosting?
Yet these are also times to really rejoice in the presence of the Lord … times when the Mary within us humbly delights in being taught more about God’s unconditional love, acceptance, strengthening, and amazing grace. This happens as we take time listen to heartfelt stories shared around the dinner table or out in the parking lot. It happens as we experience the resilient sounds of children, the fun and therapeutic music of Macheis, the affirmations exchanged about how beautiful it feels to love our neighbors as ourselves. And it happens when we lift up prayers aloud and in the quiet of our hearts.
We will regard our faith as useful when we keep in balance the Martha and the Mary within us. As we do this together here in worship on Sundays, we are better prepared to do so in all the other areas of our daily lives. And thus we become a great cloud of witnesses to what is holy in this often terribly hurried world! Amen.
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