The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
In Luke chapter 9, we’re told that Jesus was going through the territory of Samaria, and that He had set His face for Jerusalem. That is: His trip had a very important and intense purpose. He was going to do something there in Jerusalem that would become the focal point of all of human history. And as Jesus made His way toward Jerusalem, He met a variety of different kinds of people in a variety of different stations in life, and also of a couple of different religions.
The Samaritans, as you know, outright rejected Him. They didn’t want Him in their village. That prompted John and James, the sons of thunder, to ask Jesus if they could call down fire from heaven and consume the opposition. And Jesus, in reply, turned and He sternly corrected them, and then He went on His journey.
And then He encountered a series of men — would-be disciples, a lawyer, a rich young ruler, and the like. And some of them wanted to become disciples. They wanted to follow Jesus like the other twelve. They too wanted to serve Him. But they had divided loyalties. And by the end of the exchange with Jesus, they went away sad that they couldn’t live in both worlds: as a disciple of Jesus, but also as one who would place first and foremost family or wealth.
Next, Jesus sent out 70 to go ahead of Him into towns to preach that the kingdom of God was near to them, and then to heal people and cast out demons. They did as instructed. But during the debriefing part of the story, they delighted in the fact that they now possessed a divine kind of power, that they could even command evil spirits. What does Jesus do? He chides them over their misdirected enthusiasm and their ideas of Christian service, and He said: “Do not rejoice over the fact that spirits obey you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Last week, the lawyer wanted to know what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. The thinking was that he had fulfilled the Law, so he was boasting in his good works — the things he believed he had done in order to obey the Law, which was to love the Lord God with all of his heart, all of his soul, and all of his mind, and all his strength, and to love his neighbor as himself. That, of course, led to the parable of the Good Samaritan, and Jesus closing the loophole for him, by the measure of the day.
You see, all of these people that Jesus encountered were what we would call well-intentioned, right? They thought they knew how the kingdom of God worked — or at least how they thought it should. They thought that they had the truth, and they understood the Law, and they understood what it is they had to do to help God and Jesus along in the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth. And each one of them thought they could make a difference and help God improve the effectiveness of the ministry, help Him expand the kingdom and take possession of territory.
Now on the other side of this group dynamic, we have Jesus’s repeated attempts to correct these seemingly well-intentioned but erring individuals. “Anyone who keeps looking back,” Jesus said, “is not fit for the kingdom of heaven.” And: “The one who rejects you, the words that you speak, rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects the one who sent Me.” And: if you think you can earn salvation by good works, then love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, all your strength, and forsake your family, those nearest and dearest to you, and forsake your world, your possessions.
For His part, Jesus was constantly teaching and rebuking those well-intentioned folks that He ran across throughout every single village, in every station of life.
Now we come to this morning’s Gospel, and Jesus is still on His way to Jerusalem. His face is still set for the cross. And now this morning, Jesus enters a certain village, and two sisters were there — Mary and Martha were their names — and they invited Jesus in. Martha sprung into action, doing what was customary of the day: honoring her guest by preparing them a feast. Again, the text says Martha was distracted with all of her preparations. Now that wording indicates there was a bit of confusion among the household about the purpose of the visit, of what was actually supposed to be going on in Mary and Martha’s house. In Martha’s mind, they came for dinner, and Jesus came to be served.
Mary, though, had a different agenda. They were there for class. They were there to learn and to be taught theology. Jesus the teacher, Mary the student. And Jesus and Mary definitely had a different purpose in mind than Martha. The three of them were at cross purposes.
Mary, moreover, was listening to the Lord’s word, seated at His feet. Mary was in church. Martha was basically preparing dinner. Mary was busy learning from Jesus, and Jesus was busy teaching Mary and the others who sat there. Martha looked at her sister and saw this as either laziness or misplaced priority. She didn’t know her place in life. She tells Jesus to tell Mary: “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving by myself? Tell her to help me.”
Instead of siding with Martha and doing as Martha demanded, Jesus commends Mary: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things, but only a few things are necessary — really only one. For Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
Jesus was once again turning everything in the religious world upside down. In the first place, rabbis in the first century did not have female disciples. It simply wasn’t done. Theology was the study of men. But here Mary was, sitting at the feet of Jesus, just like any other disciple, learning from the master Rabbi. This Rabbi didn’t reject it. He didn’t send her away, just as He had not sent away other women who would come to learn from Him previously. Jesus didn’t tell Mary that her place was in the kitchen, to leave the room and to go help her sister. Mary had chosen the most important thing she could have done in that moment: she was listening to and learning from the Word of God Himself, through the spoken words of Jesus, the Son of God Himself.
But Jesus was upsetting the apple cart on two fronts: not simply the fact that women should learn the Word of God, but He was turning the theology of the day on its head. Jesus was once again turning things upside down. The expectation was that an individual human being was to be a doer in the God-man relationship, and God the responder to the doer’s doings. Human beings are the doers; God responds. They do, God responds. If you use your alleged free will — in the language of today — to decide for Jesus, then the Lord God will forgive you and adopt you. But you have to make the first move. You have to decide. Or: if you mean well, God should take that into account. In fact, God, they think, does take that into account, and reckons that against your sins.
I’m a doer, God’s the responder. You enter church, and it’s all about: we pray, we thank, we sing, we do — and God responds. That’s how the system worked then, and that’s how most of the churches today operate. The people are the actors, the doers, the initiators, and God is the respondent. That was the problem then; it’s the problem now.
It’s obvious that the visible churches that we see this day are not about listening to the words of God. They’re not about speaking the words of God. They’re not about thinking based upon the words of God. The visible church today is about good works, as they reckon — in simple humanity’s estimation — to be good works. The design of the church service, the use of the Bible, how we think about religion and morality, what keeps us busy in the church, how we relate to our neighbors and our fellow citizens, the songs that are being sung in so-called services, the message preached in the pulpit, the priorities we set for our own lives and for the life of our own congregations — aren’t all centered around listening to the words of Jesus, but rather doing what we intuitively think ought to be done as people of God. Feelings, emotions, worldly standards of success, keeping busy, modern philosophies, have a greater influence over our daily life and over our congregational life than do the words of Jesus, Jesus Christ Himself.
In practice, we are the givers and the doers, and God the recipient and the respondent. And He ought to be happy with us that we do so. In the language of the Mary and Martha episode: we are Marthas, worried and bothered about so many different things. We’re simply too busy doing what comes naturally to our sinful human self.
The obvious point of Jesus’s words is that listening to Jesus — via the Bible and right preaching and right teaching — is more important than the work we do in service to the King. But in reality, listening to Jesus’s Word is the most important thing anyone can do, inside or outside the walls of a church. “It is written,” Jesus said, “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” It’s words that save us. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ.
When Jesus is approached in the Gospel of St. Luke, and He’s preaching and teaching, and the Pharisees are embarrassing what He’s saying — His mother and His brothers and His sisters are outside, and they want to rescue Him from Himself. And Jesus is told: “Your mother and Your brothers and Your sisters are outside. They want to see You.” And Jesus responds: “My mother and My brothers are those who hear the Word of God and do it.” Notice the order. “Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” That’s what Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees and religious unbelievers.
1 Timothy 4:13: “Devote yourselves to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.” Now listen: do you go out in your front yard and do the public reading of Scripture? Nope. Do you go to the mall and stand in the middle and do a public reading of Scripture? No. Where’s public reading of Scripture done? In the public worship service, by the public office, by the divine office. See: devote yourself to church — the reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to preaching, and to teaching that very Word.
Listening to Jesus is the most important thing we can do, because in the person and work of Christ, it’s through the words that we are given salvation. The words of Christ create and sustain true Christian faith. If you’re not tied to that preaching and teaching and to the worship service, you’re in danger. Now if you want to believe correctly, you must hear correctly. In order to hear correctly, you must be in church — and not just anything that calls itself a church. You’re to be in a church and under pastors who handle the truth accurately (2 Timothy 2:15).
In the real world, there are times when urgent needs take precedence over the importance of being in church. That means illness and sickness do not take Sundays off. If you’re ill and you’re really sick, I don’t want you here on a Sunday morning. Come next time when you’re better, or later on when you’re better. Nonetheless, it’s important — central, fundamental — to be in church. But there’s all kinds of things getting in the way of attending on Sunday morning.
We now have — as we’re going to talk about this morning in the class — we have people who are “spiritual but not religious,” quote unquote. That’s their way of saying: “Well, I think about God once in a while, but I’m not a church member. I don’t believe in any particular doctrine. I don’t attend anywhere. I don’t do anything. I’m a god unto myself.” That’s what that means, by the way.
There are things that get in the way of God-ordained services. But how many people miss service and the hearing of Jesus’s words because they like to sleep in on Sunday morning? “It’s the only day I really get to rest.” They have a sports outing or a league that takes place on Sunday morning. They think they grew out of all that church stuff. Or: “Jesus and His words just aren’t exciting and entertaining enough for me to deserve my time. It’s much better if I go swimming or boating or golfing or picnicking or something else.” How many people miss out because they have guests at their house over the weekend, and they’re literally doing the thing that Martha does on Sunday morning?
Regular absence from church is an indication that there’s something wrong — there’s something more important than listening to and learning from Jesus. And yes, guess what? Jesus in the Bible has something to say about this too, in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 23-25: “Let’s hold firmly to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to encourage one another in love and good deeds, not abandoning our meeting together, not abandoning our church service, as is the habit of some people, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” By the way, in verse 38 of chapter 10: “My righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him.” It’s not a coincidence that that statement is in the same chapter, in the same section, about being in the Word and being in church.
See, Christianity is all about Christ: His person, His work. It’s about the Son of God taking on flesh, living a perfect life of obedience and faithfulness to the words of God the Father and to the will of God. “For I do not speak on My own,” Jesus said, “but My Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a command as to what to say and what to speak.” God the Father gave Jesus Christ the Word. Jesus Christ speaks the words. We get them through the biblical text. Christianity is about the atoning death on the cross of Good Friday and Easter resurrection. Christianity is about the church and individuals abiding in the words of God. “If you continue in My word, then you are truly My disciples, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” I’m sick of politicians and other people quoting that last phrase while ignoring the two previous clauses before it.
The church is first to be about the business of listening to God’s Word, second about believing God’s Word, and finally third about doing God’s Word. There is no Christianity without Jesus, and no Jesus without His words. And it’s dangerous to ignore Jesus and His words.
So people who claim to be Christians but who do not attend a good church service are trying to have Christ without His church. They want the one but not the other. They are trying to have the head, as our Epistle lesson points out, without the body, the church. They want a bodyless head. Doesn’t happen. That’s not the way God designed the system.
Martha needed to stop doing and start listening. One thing is needful: to sit at the feet of Jesus and to listen. The Word of God does the work. We don’t. “Not I, but He who lives within me.” “And this is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (John 6:29).
You know, there’s a theological term that applies to the Gospel lesson today. The term is called a “Gospel imperative.” A Gospel imperative has the grammatical form of a command, of a law. However, instead of being a command, it really functions as an invitation. Grammatically, the statement “come and get it” is a command. In reality, those words are a gracious invitation to everybody who’s hungry. When you hear the call “come and get it” and you’re really hungry, you don’t hear that as a command. You hear that as an invitation. That’s what we have today. When Jesus told us to listen to Him, it’s a Gospel imperative. We who are hungry and thirst for righteousness are fed in the words of the person and the work of Jesus Christ.
God’s Word is Jesus, who’s serving up to us in the church service the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Gifts come by the preaching of His words. Baptism becomes a Baptism when those words join the water. Holy Absolution is Absolution when the words of God are spoken to you in light of your confession. And when the words of God are spoken over the elements of bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ comes to us for the remission of sins. It’s all about the work of Christ: for us, toward us, and in us. “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me” (Galatians 2:20).
I’ll finish with a quote from Luther on good works, and this problem — Mary and Martha, and Martha’s problem in particular: “If you want to believe correctly and truly attain Christ, you must drop all works with which you would function in your relation to God, for before God they are nothing but offenses that lead you away from Christ and from God. Before God, no work has any standing except Christ’s own personal works. You must let these work for you with God, and do no other work before Him but believe — believe that Christ is doing His work for you, and Christ is placing these works before God.”
In other words, what’s fundamentally important is the work God does to you, for you, in you — including this one: your sins are forgiven. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.