"Marthas and Marys" Sermon from July 17, 2016

“Marthas and Marys”
Sermon, Year C, Proper 11, July 17, 2016
© Rev. David J. Huber 2016
Plymouth UCC, Eau Claire, WI
Focus Scripture: Luke 10:38-49





So, we have Jesus and Mary and Martha and a domestic squabble about household chores and womanly duties.

The stuff that soap operas are made of. Or perhaps sitcoms. Jesus and Mary and Martha on their weekly adventures together.

My friend Jeff and I discussed this text this week, because he is preaching on it at his home church. He’s a UCCer over in Oshkosh and lay academy graduate, and gets to preach occasionally. When he does, he likes to get into a conversation about the text with me and talk about the sermon.

He’s also really funny, as well as faithful and very serious about his faith, but not afraid to find the funny in it.

So we got on a riff about what if this were a 1980s sitcom. We didn’t know what each episode would contain, but we knew that every show would end in the same way. It would be the catchphrase, Jesus saying, “Remember, Martha, choose the better way!” (or sometimes, “Remember, Mary, choose the better way!”).

And Mary says, “Oh, Martha!”

And Martha says, “Oh, Mary!”

Then the theme music is cued, close up for Jesus laughing and rolling his eyes as these two have another argument about listening versus doing, and freeze screen on his laughing face as the credits rolls.

It *is* a comical text, in a way. It’s a funny little story here, and sets itself up in the archetypal way that so many sitcoms do.

Martha is the busy-body who wants to get things done and make sure people are taken care of. She cares about hospitality, but she’s always busy with something, not taking time to sit down or even enjoy the food that she’s serving to others.

Mary, the dreamer, the one who would rather have her head in a book (or in this case, be at Jesus’ feet listening to stories and teaching), who isn’t so much concerned whether the dishes get done today or tomorrow. The work will always be there, let’s take our time now to enjoy today.

Narrow visions of both. I’m sure Martha was not only a busy kind of person, and that Mary was not just the dreamer bookhead. But for a sitcom, that works, as they tend to be one-dimensional archetypes.

They have Jesus in their home, and Martha is growing increasingly irritated at Mary. She grows increasingly irritated that Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet while there’s work to be done.

But instead of complaining to Mary, which would be the right way to handle this dispute, she goes to Jesus. That’s where I see the humor in the text. She doesn’t speak to Mary about this, she asks Jesus, the Lord of all Creation and savior of the world and Prince of Peace, “Hey - Lord-boy - talk to my sister, and tell her to help out!”

Kind of a disrespectful way to approach it.

I don’t know if she knew that Jesus was Lord of all Creation or Savior of the World. But I’m pretty sure she thought of him as an important teacher. Maybe as a holy man. She does call him Lord. So this request is quite odd to ask Jesus to intervene. Or maybe not.

Maybe she feel his divine influence would help her in a conversation in which she has failed on her own hundreds of times.

Or maybe she thought since Mary was so willing to listen to Jesus, that she’d listen to him tell her to help. Imagine that teaching. “Blessed are the meek, for they inherit the world. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the poor. And Mary, come on, would it kill ya to help out your sister once in awhile?”

It’s so wonderfully domestic, this little passage tucked between the parable of the Good Samaritan and Jesus teaching the disciples how to pray. The Prince of Peace is in their home, and Martha asks him to mediate a dispute with Mary about chores and hospitality. And then it doesn’t go her way, either. First she gets whammied by a sister who won’t help, and then when she ass Jesus to help out, she gets whammied by him by being told that she’s chosen the lesser way.

Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.

Then the story ends. No resolution to it.

So did she sit down and join Jesus, or did she go back to work? What would you do?

Hmmm…. It is an interesting question.

Interesting because it seems to me that Jesus offers her a somewhat confusing answer here because there is so much emphasis in the biblical texts about hospitality. About the importance of making sure that guests are being take care, and neighbors being cared for. We see that in the Genesis story that we read. Abraham shows hospitality to the strangers, and discovers he is literally showing hospitality to angels. Like it says in the letter to the Hebrews (which is part of the New Testament), “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

We have talked a lot about hospitality in this congregation over the past couple of years as well. How important it is to be open and welcoming, to greet people, to go beyond in serving them, and so on.

And so here is Martha, working herself into a sweat, into anxiety and frustration, to be a good host and make sure her guests are being taken care of…

and Jesus tells her she’s wrong.

So which one is it? Hospitality and service, or sit at Jesus’ feet? There is tension here in this text. Just as there tension in our lives, too.

However… however… I can also imagine that there were times that Jesus lifted up Martha as the worker, as the one who chose the better way. It’s contextual, the times to listen or to act. Sometimes we need to sit and listen, sometimes we need to act. Jesus does tell his disciples to out and do things, but there are also times that Jesus spends time with them teaching and praying, giving them the word. So I can imagine that were times that Jesus said to Mary, “Today is not the day for words and learning, Mary. Today we are out with the people, healing and comforting and washing their feet.”

But in her house, that day, it was a day of learning and being immersed in the word. And Martha, for all the gifts of her hospitality, was not listening. She was also focused on herself. She uses “me” language here. She addresses Jesus as Lord but then only wants his lordly power to make a decision in her favor. A tool that she can use, instead of a locus of spiritual centering. She’s focused on herself and her work, but not on Jesus, the one who should be her (and our) focus.

It’s a trap that churches can fall into. To do things to maintain the institution, but falling away from engagement with the living Christ. To remember WHY we are the church, and WHY we do what we do. It’s easily to fall into the place of focusing on our work, ourselves, our building, our budgets, or whatever might be that churches can get caught up on and leave Jesus out of it, or push him out of the picture. To not take time to remember to sit at Jesus’ feet. To be immersed in Jesus’ word and remember what he said. To hear him speak again.

I have mentioned before that our Conference, the Wisconsin Conference of the UCC, is putting a lot of time and resources into a new initiative on church vitality and church growth. The tagline of this initiative “From maintenance to mission.”

It is a moving away from focusing on ourselves and our activity, the maintaining the church or preserving the institution for the sake of the institution or the buildings or the history… it is to move from a maintenance frame of mind to making the church a missional church, which is what we ought to be about. From an inward focus to an outward focus.

But part of that is also to spend the time with Jesus’ words to remember who we are and who Jesus calls us to be. To remember WHY we are doing what we do, and what we are called to do and be, keeping Jesus as our focus always.

So in this sitcom that Jeff and I came up with, I could see that each week’s episode having a different adventure of some sort. Mary and Martha and Jesus in different situations. Some weeks Jesus has to remind Martha that her activity has lost its rootedness and she needs to spend some time in prayer and contemplation and listening to Jesus’ words; and some weeks, it is Mary who gets told that she’s spending too much time in the word and she needs to go out and make her faith active and alive in the world. The tension between contemplation, learning, praying and praying by being active in the world, by doing the mission that we want to do. That tension of doing both.

That’s the cycle. Come to worship on Sunday mornings and worship to hear scripture, to remember the words, to sing, to spend time with fellow disciples. Hopefully you are spending some other time during the week reading scripture or something faith-based, spending time with friends discussion life, spending some time in prayer. All of that to help give focus, then, to how or why we act at work or in school, being out and about in the world, or how we serve the church and how we encounter our neighbors.

The Church needs both the Marthas and the Marys, and thank God for them both. The Church needs the Marthas and Marys.

“Oh, Mary!”

“Oh, Martha!”

And Jesus smiles, knowing that they understand the need for both.

Amen.