Sermon text: Luke 10:38–42
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Over the past few weeks, through the assigned gospel lessons, we’ve been walking with Jesus toward Jerusalem. And on the way, we learned of a Samaritan village that didn’t appreciate the fact that Jesus was going to be passing through their village on His way to the holy city of Jerusalem. So, the sons of thunder, James and John, thought in the moment that the best way to serve the kingdom of God is to call fire down from heaven and consume the people who rejected Jesus. In another village thereafter, three men approached Jesus wanting to become disciples. But all had divided loyalties. So Jesus told them this: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Next up, 70 disciples. You think they get it right, don’t you? The disciples were given the opportunity to serve Christ by going out actually preaching that the kingdom of God is coming near. They do as instructed, but afterwards, during the debriefing, they delighted in the fact that evil spirits were subjected to their commands. Jesus gently chides them over their misdirected enthusiasm, and tells them that they ought not rejoice over the fact that the spirits obey them, but rejoice in the fact that their names are written in heaven.
A week later, a lawyer wanted to know what he needed to do in order to inherit eternal life. His focus was on works of the law. And the parable of the Good Samaritan was Jesus’s response: a parable carefully fashioned so that it would show the man that he in fact had failed to love the Lord his God with all of his heart, with all of his soul, with all of his strength, and with all of his mind. And especially, he had failed to love his neighbor as himself. So he couldn’t inherit eternal life under the demands of the law.
Notice in each and every one of these examples, the people involved placed the emphasis on their work, their desire, their motives for entrance into the kingdom of heaven. What was important for them is not what was important for the kingdom of heaven. And each one was chided in one form or another by Jesus for their failure to put the kingdom of God first. Jesus said it in another place in Matthew this way: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
This morning’s gospel: we find another example of the problem, but I call it the Mary problem. Excuse me, Martha problem. In verse 38, Jesus, we’re told, entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house. And she had a sister named Mary who immediately sat down at Jesus’s feet and listened to His teaching. But Martha was distracted, the text says, with much serving. Martha had a distraction problem. It’s a problem that often occurs in the life of a Christian and in the life of a Christian congregation.
Now, to be distracted means, in the dictionary: having one’s thoughts or attention drawn away. Unable to concentrate or give attention to something else. If someone is distracted, that means they’re taken away from something that they should have been paying attention to, in order to do something else.
So what was Mary distracted from? A theology class being held in her house. And what was Martha distracted with? The customs of the day, serving a meal to a guest? Martha chose to busy herself with work rather than to study theology at the feet of Jesus. Mary made that other choice. She sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to His teaching, listened to His doctrine. Instead of helping Martha, Mary decided that the most important thing to do in the presence of the Lord was to learn from Jesus while He was there.
By the way, it’s an odd and bold choice, considering the other customs of the day. In Jesus’s day and beyond, for a very long time, females did not receive a formal education. They underwent domestic training. They did not receive training in the Torah, or in the traditions, or in the kinds of education that was necessary to be of service to either the religious community or government institutions of the day. The custom allowed women to pick up education incidentally — that is, overhearing the head of the household, the father, teaching the boys the Torah. If she caught things along the way, that was fine by the customs of the day. But for a girl, an actual theological, or any kind of civil education, was simply not acceptable.
The idea that a rabbi would enter a woman’s house for the purpose of teaching theology would have never occurred to anybody except Jesus. Equally unheard of was a woman forsaking her domestic duties in order to go to class. Imagine a teenager neglecting to go out and have some fun so that he could come to a class. It simply doesn’t happen. And in Jesus’s day, women were taught that their place was in the kitchen and at the dining table and rearing the children.
Now, Martha was simply following the traditions that went back to the days of Abraham. We saw that in the Old Testament text. In the Old Testament text, three heavenly visitors came to Abraham’s tent. Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men — visitors — were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth. Abraham’s first reaction to the Lord coming to his tent is to prostrate himself on the ground: an act of worship.
By the way, notice there are three visitors, but Abraham uses only the singular. He addresses all three of them as Lord, Lord, and God. Mary and Martha are also being visited by the Lord. And at such a special occasion, Martha went about her duties and her vocation, extending hospitality toward her guests. So she got to work. Mary, on the other hand, sat down at the feet of Jesus — another act of reverence and submission to a teacher of the Torah, a teacher of the prophets of the Old Testament.
Martha was angry that Mary wasn’t helping. So she chided the Lord to chide Mary, to get up and be of some help: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” She commands the Lord to command Mary. Not a particularly good way to address the Lord.
Abraham and Sarah did sort of the basic thing: they prepared a meal for three angelic men who came to the door of Abraham’s tent, and listened to all the work that went on in order to prepare this meal. They brought water, that the guests may wash their feet. They gave them a little bread to take nourishment, so that they could continue on their journey. And when the guests indicated their desire to stay longer, Sarah and Abraham got busy fixing a proper meal for such distinguished guests: the Lord. Abraham went quickly to Sarah’s tent, and he commanded her: “Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it, and make cakes.” And then Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, and had it prepared by a servant. And then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before the three guests. And then he stood under a tree and watched them eat. That was a lot of work for three visitors with one title: Lord.
As for Mary and Martha and Jesus, it makes no difference whether Jesus is replying to a friend or a foe. He often — most often — answers the questions that are put to Him in the exact opposite way that just about anybody else of the day would have answered the question. “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
Jesus turns His attention to teaching Martha of what is of first and most importance. He tells her essentially what He said in Matthew 4:4: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Instead of agreeing with Martha and following the customs of the day, Jesus gives Martha a mild rebuke. But within the rebuke is one of the most profound lessons any Christian can learn. And the lesson is this: Sarah and Abraham served the Lord when He came to visit, but they were not rebuked for all their effort. Martha goes to serve the Lord when He attends her house, and she gets rebuked. So what’s the difference? Why is one service welcome and the other chided?
The difference is Martha’s attitude to what is most important in the kingdom of God. The difference is the value she places on two different activities. Mary is listening to and learning the word of God from the Lord in person. Martha is getting in the way of the theology lesson that Jesus is seeking to teach Mary. But He’s not just seeking to teach Mary alone. He’s trying to teach Martha as well. Martha’s preoccupation with the customs of the day and the preparation of the meal are eclipsing the real work of the church and the real work of the teacher: that is, teaching, preaching, speaking the word of God, and calling sinners to repentance.
Abraham and Sarah are engaged in acts of humility and faith. What was of first importance was the visit and the words of their Lord, who spoke to Abraham: “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” That’s the difference between the Old Testament lesson and the gospel. One bows in humility and waits for the Lord to speak. The other gets to work fussing over little things, always thinking somehow she is serving the church of God.
You see, sinful human nature is egocentric. We’re all self-centered. We’re all a bit narcissistic. We think that our existence is about us, about how we feel, about how we think, about how we emote. We think it’s of first importance. And Christians aren’t exempt from this kind of temptation: the temptation to place the emphasis on our work that we do for the church, for Jesus, and for our neighbors.
The truth is, a great many church-going people would rather be doing something else than listening to some guy blather on about the word of God and calling people to repent for their sins. Church bodies, congregations, and members of them do all kinds of things in the name of the church’s mission. They engage in all kinds of work, like feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, providing social opportunities, hosting events, food banks, advocating for the latest cause that comes down the pipe from the east or the west coast. Some give their time to fix and improve, clean and maintain church property. And other times, people prepare meals for congregational gatherings. There’s a lot of things that people do in this little congregation. It’s one of the busiest little congregations I’ve ever heard of in my life.
But we must never forget what Martha forgot when it comes between the choice between fulfilling and carrying out the actual constitutive duties of the church: the things that make the church the church of Jesus Christ. Our works and our efforts and our emotions and our thoughts are always secondary to the kingdom of God. “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you.”
As a Christian, you are to be about the business of receiving that which Jesus Christ gives you through a faithful, busy, and active congregation. You are to be about receiving the preaching and teaching of God’s word, worship in spirit and truth, and the use of the sacraments: Holy Baptism, confession, absolution, and Holy Communion. We are to be about doing good to others. The scripture clearly teaches that. Galatians 6:10: “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith,” that is, the church. We are to be a hospitable people. Romans 12:13: “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.” 1 Peter 4:9 and 10: “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s manifold grace.”
Dr. Gene Veith — you know that I follow him a lot; you get him a lot in our newsletter — Dr. Gene Veith wrote an article a few years back entitled “Evangelicals Blow Off Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.” The article cites a study showing that in the evangelical, church-growth kind of congregations, the megachurch, they’re simply ignoring Jesus’s commands to baptize and to administer the Lord’s Supper to the members of the congregation. Some — some Christian denominations — turned the sacrament into something we do. We get baptized to show that we made a decision for Jesus, they maintain. We participate in the Lord’s Supper so that it’s a remembrance of Jesus and what He did on the cross for us. They do not see the sacraments of Baptism, Holy Communion — and certainly not confession and absolution — as the very means and the way by which your sins are forgiven and life and salvation is preserved.
But at least they made use, back in the day, of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Today, Christians simply forsake them, and all of the meaning with them. It seems a lot of Christians would rather follow in the footsteps of Martha rather than Mary. They’d rather preoccupy themselves with emotion and good programs, with learning the word of God and doctrine far down the list of their preferred items to do.
But the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. Mary chose the good portion. She chose to listen to the good teacher. Martha was not wrong in working, in extending hospitality to Jesus, and observing the traditions of the day. She wasn’t wrong in her work. She was wrong in how she thought about it. She spoke to Mary, interrupting what the real purpose of the visit was: where Jesus would teach His word and sacrament ministry to those in the house who could hear.
Remember, and always remember: in Baptism, absolution, preaching of the word of God, the readings, the Lord’s Supper — Jesus is giving Himself to you. He is serving, enlightening you, forgiving you all your sins. His person and His work, His doctrine, serves us. The most important thing that a Christian can do in his or her life is chiefly to come to a faithful congregation to receive the sacraments and receive the forgiveness of sins. For where there is the forgiveness of sins, there is by necessity life and salvation. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.