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Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, 18. July 2004 |
Luke 10:38 Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42 There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” (NRSV) Serving or sitting? Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Wait a Minute!!! I’m confused. That’s nothing new, I admit. But I’m getting mixed messages from Jesus and it isn’t easy to sort it all out. We who follow the Revised Common Lectionary just heard last week that eternal life is caught up in the serving of our neighbor in need. Jesus even pushed our buttons and our envelope challenging us to serve and be served by people whom we consider somehow outside of God’s care and concern. We got the message. Go out and be “Good Samaritans.” Enough said. Then comes this story, following right on the heels of the “Good Samaritan” both in our lectionary readings and in Luke’s Gospel. Martha appears to be doing the right thing by serving Jesus. Mary, on the other hand is just sitting and listening. Ignoring for just a moment that women were not allowed to learn in this way in Jesus’ day, we don’t need much imagination to see that Mary is doing the household equivalent of “walking by on the other side” where the needs of her sister, if not Jesus are concerned. Jesus has been known to say that he came “not to be served, but to serve” with the instruction along the way to the disciples that Jesus followers are to live likewise. Entire biblical curricula are written around the them of following the “Servant King” into loving service. And suddenly Jesus rains on our “loving service” parade. With one statement, he throws the whole system into doubt. And we are left to puzzle out what this could mean. Of course, for Lutherans like me, the “Mary” answer seems all the better anyway. It gives us an excuse to see our faith as a matter of intellectual pursuit. We, who are champions of “saved by grace through faith and not by works of the Law,” have merely to cite this and other verses like it to get ourselves off of the “works” hook. See, we say with typical smugness, the nurturing of our faith is “the better part.” Don’t chastise us about not doing our “Christian duty” to brother or sister. We are sitting at the feet of Jesus. We are learning from the Master. We don’t ask the lawyer’s questions of self-righteousness. We do not seek to justify ourselves with our actions. Not us. We are good little “Marys,” not angry “Marthas.” And wtih that we walk away, ironically self justified. Of course there is more going on here than meets the eye. The answers articulated above do not satisfy at any level. Following Jesus must be more than intellectual pursuit. At the same time serving must be more than getting the job done without regard to God’s purpose for our lives. And Jesus, as always, is at the center of the mess. We ARE better at serving. One doesn’t have to look far to see that our churches are filled with far more folk like Martha than Mary. Even our pastors and leaders do not often set a good example. Every pastor’s conference that I have attended in the last several years has included at least one, if not a multitude of admonitions that a Pastor’s first responsibility is to study and pray, to attend to our own spiritual journeys. And all of us nod, both in assent to the “goodness” of doing such a thing, as well as in secret admission that we are not likely to do any such thing in earnest any time soon. Pastor’s spend much of their time attending to the mundane details of congregational life. In my own life I must admit that I spend more of my day attending to the spiritual needs of congregation members than I do my own. And this is only if I can’t find other details to attend to: churchly household chores and other non-pastoral duties consume much of a pastor’s day, and not because there aren’t other people to do them, but rather these practical things are easy to find and take care of. They are concrete. They are in front of me. So I do them. I solve simple problems and complex problems that others could handle, but for my efficiency. Then I can point to what I’m doing and say, “See, I’m busy all day long. I earn my keep. I am a good Pastor.” All the while I wonder whether that’s true. And the lay people in most congregations react to their over-functioning pastors in one of several ways. Some will follow this example and become extremely busy. They might think about salvation by grace through faith, but make no mistake, they believe in works, and lots of them. Still others become discouraged by the pastor who over-functions, and they shut down. Why even try if the pastor will do it all. We’ll just pay the pastor (and other staff) to do our serving. That way, we feel good, they get to serve, which they seem to like, and everyone is happy. Until the complaining starts. We hear it in church committee meetings and pastoral conferences alike. “Where are the volunteers?” Where are the people who would save us from burn out and despair by picking up some of the load. Where is that freeloader Mary, who needs to pull her own weight around here? What we do not realize is that we are victims of our own way of life. Though we try to justify ourselves through all the work that we do, we only find that we are just as broken as can be. We also find that we never seem to accomplish what we set out to do, which requires the whole body of Christ, and not just a few super servants to get done. And it is our separation from each other, and from the Lord who alone can bind us in God’s love and grace that is both the cause and the result of our efforts at self justification, even through service. Apart from Christ we do nothing I am at the moment of this writing between congregations. This sermon is the first that I will preach for my new flock, in a new location. I can think of few better texts that will describe what God intends for all of his flocks, and specifically the people of Tree of Life ( Lutheran Church, Conroe, Tx.). Surely we are called to be God’s servants, but we must understand that apart from Jesus we can do nothing. It is for this reason that Jesus called Mary’s action the “better part.” Apart from Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, we are tempted to see our serving as a way to justify, to set up a right relationship with God. We see serving as a way to get something, be it reward, approval, or just a right to grouse about the lazy louses who have not yet conformed to our pattern. We do not see serving through the lens of Jesus self giving love. Jesus did not come into the world to get anything, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. A slave serves knowing that there will be no reward at the end of things. (Note that in describing Martha’s serving, Luke uses a different Greek word than the word for slave.) When Jesus dies, he dies carrying our sin and despair, alienated from friend and God. He has lost everything, given everything in a different kind of servanthood than we would do on our own. Who knows what Martha wanted to get out of her busy work. But I know what I expect to get out of mine, and that in and of itself is the problem. Jesus would teach us a different way to live and to serve; a way that we cannot follow on our own without Jesus and his Spirit. Sitting at the feet of our master and learning is the better part because only there can we see how God’s love frees us from the need to justify ourselves to each other and God and truly start to give. Except that, when the day is done, it will not be we who have given anything, but Christ at work in us and through us, and this only when we have given ourselves freely to Jesus and his way of serving in the world. Fortunately, Jesus comes daily to reach us and beckon us anew to sit at his feet. As God’s people, we connect with God’s mission here first, at the feet of our Savior. Then, bound together as Christ’s Body, we go into the world, a world that will likely crucify us as it did him, to serve the ones who are broken, disconnected and as lost as we seem to be. This is the blueprint for everything we will do together as God’s people. We come together at the feet of Jesus to sit and learn for a time. Then we go out united with Jesus in Baptism and Communion, fed by his very word, to live, not as ourselves, but as Christ. Thus united, being one with Jesus and serving in the world are not opposed to each other, but build on the foundation that is laid by Jesus in his cross and empty tomb. There we can truly be the people of God. After all, the branches do not live apart from the Tree of Life. In him we grow and flourish, and indeed our very identity is bound up in this tree. But as in Shel Silverstein’s modern parable The Giving Tree, we do not exist for ourselves, but for the ones that we love. Shel’s tree gives a place to climb and play, a place to court and love, wood for a sturdy home and finally a stump to rest on. God’s tree gives all that and more. It gives us life in such abundance that we can become a life giving community ourselves. So join me, if you dare. Sit a while at Jesus’ feet. Know the oneness that heals our broken lives and broken world. Then go with Jesus into that world, to give yourself, expecting nothing in return, that God’s healing might spread to an entire world gathered at Jesus feet. Rev. Dr. Luke Bouman
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