Delivered August 21, 2011
This is a story about two sisters. You have likely heard it before. It is often used as a Biblical example of how people can be very different, especially when it comes to household chores. Some people are very meticulous about their household chores and entertaining guests, and others are much more laid back. Mary and Martha are often contrasted in this way. In fact I came across a list called “Sensible House Cleaning Solutions, “Martha’s Way vs. Mary’s Way.”
#1 Martha's way: Stuff a miniature marshmallow in the bottom of a sugar cone to prevent melting ice cream from dripping out.
Mary's way: Just suck the ice cream out of the bottom of the cone.
#2 Martha's way: Use a meat baster to "squeeze" your pancake batter onto the hot griddle and you'll get perfectly shaped pancakes every time.
Mary's way: Buy the precooked kind you nuke in the microwave for 30 seconds.
#3 Martha's way: To keep potatoes from budding, place an apple in the bag with the potatoes.
Mary's way: Buy a mashed potato mix and keep it in the pantry for up to a year.
#4 Martha's way: To prevent eggshells from cracking, add a pinch of salt to the water before hard-boiling.
Mary's way: Who cares if they crack, aren't you going to take the shells off anyway?
#5 Martha's way: To easily remove burnt-on food from your skillet, simply add a drop or two of dish soap and enough water to cover bottom of pan, and bring to a boil on stovetop.
Mary's way: Eat out every night and avoid cooking.
#8 Martha's way: If you accidentally over salt a dish while it's still cooking, drop in a peeled potato and it will absorb the excess salt for an instant "fix me up".
Mary's way: If you over salt a dish while you are cooking, that's too bad. My motto: If it's cooked, you will eat it no matter how bad it tastes.
#13 Martha's way: Now look what you can do with Alka Seltzer:
* Clean a toilet. Drop in two Alka-Seltzer tablets, wait twenty minutes, brush and flush. The citric acid and effervescent action clean vitreous china. * Clean a vase. To remove a stain from the bottom of a glass vase or cruet, fill with water and drop in two Alka-Seltzer tablets. * Polish jewelry. Drop two Alka-Seltzer tablets into a glass of water and immerse the jewelry for two minutes. * Clean a thermos bottle. Fill the bottle with water, drop in four Alka-Seltzer tablets, and let soak for an hour (or longer, if necessary).
Mary's way: Put your jewelry, vases, and thermos in the toilet. Add some Alka-Seltzer and you have solved a whole bunch of problems at once.
As fun as these comparisons are, when I read the gospel story about the two sisters Martha and Mary, I don’t see it as primarily as a difference in housekeeping styles. I don’t see Martha as a biblical Martha Stewart. Neither do I interpret this story as about the difference between personality types – such as extrovert and introvert, activist and contemplative - as it is often portrayed. There is a best-selling book based on this story by Joanna Weaver entitled, “Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World: Finding Intimacy With God in the Busyness of Life.” The point of her book is that you can be as busy as Martha and as spiritual as Mary; you can bake your cake and eat it too. That may appeal to the 21st century busy working woman, trying to balance career, family and a spiritual life, but I don’t think this is the point the story is making either.
I think the story is much simpler than that. I think interpreters tend to overthink these biblical stories. I think Martha was just having a bad day. We all have bad days. Furthermore she may have thought she was having a bad life. She had some issues with the way the world was treating her, and her anger became apparent to everyone on this particular occasion. On this day she freaked out in front of everyone, blaming everybody in sight, including her sister and Jesus - blaming everyone but herself for her problems. Jesus’ response to Martha is designed to wake her up and see herself and the world as they really are. This is Martha’s wakeup call out of her bad day and bad life.
1. The story begins with verse 38 “Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.” Here is the first hint that something is amiss. It says that Martha welcomed Jesus into her house. We know from other passages that this was not her house. It was the house that she shared with her sister Mary and her brother Lazarus. It was their house. These three unmarried siblings lived together in a home in Bethany, just a couple of miles over the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem. Normally when scripture refers to this house, it is referred to as the home of Lazarus, which Jesus visited often. But in Martha’s mind it was not her brother’s house or her their house; it was her house, and she personally took responsibility for everything that happened in it.
This is one of the problems that we can have. We think it is all about us. We think that things are ours. We think we can own things. I have a revelation for you. We do not own anything. A psalm says, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” We are just placed on this earth as the Lord’s caretakers of the earth. That is the teaching of the creation story in Genesis. God put Adam and Eve here to tend his garden. Humankind is placed here to maintain the earth for the Lord of the earth. Problems start when we forget who the true owner is, and we think things are really ours – that our houses and lands are really ours, that our money is really ours, that our bodies are ours to do with as we wish. The Bible calls our bodies the temples of God.
In churches this becomes a problem when we think that the church is ours: my church, our church. Christians can be very possessive about churches. This is especially true when people get in positions of authority in churches. We start to think the church belongs to us, and that we can run the church the way we want. That is especially a problem for clergy. Pastors can become very possessive about churches, but so can lay people. That can cause all types of problems. This is not our church. It is not my church nor your church. This is the Lord’s church; that is why the church is called the “body of Christ” in scripture. It belongs to Christ. Problems arise as soon as we get into the “I, me, mine” mode. That is what was happening in our story with Martha.
2. The second problem is that Martha was distracted by the busyness of her life. Verses 39-40 say, “And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word. But Martha was distracted with much serving….” Here is the first comparison we have between Mary and Martha. Mary is making good use of the wonderful opportunity of having Jesus under her roof. She was not going to waste her time in the kitchen when the Lord was in the living room; there would be time for dinner later. While Jesus was in her home, Mary was going to sit down and listen to him.
There is a great lesson in this for us. Churches can get so caught up in serving the Lord that they don’t pay any attention to the Lord who is present. There is an old vaudeville joke about a man and woman dancing in the Catskills, at a singles resort. “I’m only here for the weekend,” the man explains. The woman responds, “I’m dancing as fast as I can!” Martha is dancing as fast as she can around her house, trying to serve the Lord, and that is the problem. That is the problem in a lot of churches. We are dancing as fast as we can trying to make the church prosper. We think that a church has to do this and this and this activity, have this and this and this program. Churches dance to the tune of cultural, denominational, and congregational expectations. Like Martha, we are distracted with much serving.
3. Third, Martha was into the blame game. Verse 40 “But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” This verse includes the only words that Martha speaks in the passage, but they give us great insight into the personality of Martha. When she got into trouble, she started to blame others. We have all known people like this; nothing is ever their fault. Perhaps we are people like that. All of us are like this to a certain extent. WE can all see ourselves in Martha. It is very natural when things start to go wrong to blame others for others. It is the tune we hear often in politics. Republicans blame the Democrats, and Democrats blame the Republicans for the problems of our nation. The strange thing is that both sides really seem to believe their own rhetoric.
People tend to blame others for their personal problems. Everything that goes wrong in their lives has to be somebody’s fault, but never our own fault. Martha blames her sister for not helping her. She even blames Jesus. She says to him, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” It is your fault, Jesus. We see this attitude in Martha later at the tomb of Lazarus. Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus had died. When Jesus came late to the funeral Martha says to him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” She is blaming Jesus for her brother’s death, even though he was way up in Galilee at the time. She has even convinced Mary that it was Jesus’ fault. A few verses later Mary says that same thing to Jesus: “Then, when Mary came where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”
People do the same thing today. They blame God for everything that goes wrong in their lives. If someone they love dies, they blame it on God. If something goes right, they never think to thank God. But when something goes wrong, it is God’s fault. Even in insurance polices natural catastrophes are called “acts of God.” Why aren’t the good things that happen called acts of God?
4. Fourth Martha wants to be in control. Martha feels out of control of the situation and her life. Things aren’t the way she wants them to be. People aren’t doing what she thinks they ought to do. She wants to control the behavior of her sister. She wants to control Jesus; to get both of them to do what she thinks they ought to do. “Jesus, tell my sister to help me!” That is our problem too. A lot of our prayers are trying to get God to do what we think he ought to do. We really seem to think that if God took pour advice on how to run the universes, things would be much better.
We think that that if only other people were more like us, then our lives would be better. If only other people thought the way we do. If only they shared our view of things, our values, our opinions. If only they did what we wanted them to do, then everything would be fine and we would be happy. Right? If only the church would do what I think it ought to do. If only this country would conform to my values, then I would be so much happier. We really think that if we could change the outside then we would feel better inside.
But it is not true. Martha’s problem was inside herself. Jesus pointed that out to her in verse 41 “And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things.” Martha is just a mess. She is all wrapped up in herself, distracted, worried and upset, thinking that no one is doing what they ought to be doing but her. She is wrapped up in her own worries and troubles, blaming everyone but herself for her problems. Her mind and emotions are a whirlwind of her own making. Into this confusion Jesus speaks his wake up call. Verse 41-42 “And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, [you can hear him saying, ‘Get ahold of yourself!] you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Jesus is telling Martha to stop worrying so much and to just calm down and sit down at his feet for a while. That is the lesson of this passage. That is what we are doing here today. Sunday mornings are designed as a respite from the distractions and worries and troubles of our lives, but a lot of people do not think they have the time for worship. There is so much else to do on Sundays. Sunday morning is a time when we can just sit down for a while at the feet of Jesus and listen to his word, like Mary was doing. Jesus calls this “the one thing needed.” This is the one thing we need to do each week and each day; that is what a daily devotional time is about. I hope you have a time of quiet each day to just sit and listen to the Spirit. But this is not just about stopping our busyness for a few minutes each day to sit quietly. It is also about being in touch with that spiritual quietness throughout the day. Jesus is always with us; we just need to check in with him regularly.
Jesus said, “But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.” Jesus calls it the good part. He calls Martha to chose this good part, as Mary has chosen it. And he adds that it will not be taken away from her. This is a peace that the world cannot take away, and no one can take away from us. What God has given, no one can take away.
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