Luke 10:38-42Rev. Marc van BulckOxford Presbyterian Church      —

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 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.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” 

—      When I was in Sunday School, this story was one of those stories in our children’s illustrated Bibles. I can vividly remember sitting in our classroom looking at pictures of this story. There was Mary sitting with her hands folded neatly in her lap, her doe-eyes fixed on Jesus, hanging on every word that happened to be falling from his heavenly lips. And in the background, there was Martha, looking frazzled, running around in the kitchen, up to her ears in soapsuds, her hair pointing in every direction, and just generally looking like the textbook definition of what we would call a “hot mess.”      Then as we turned the page to the next picture, we saw Jesus gently raising a finger to Martha, gesturing towards the doting image of Mary, and saying, “Oh, Martha. Can’t you stop running around for five minutes? Look at how spiritual your sister is being.” That’s the way this story was told to me growing up in church, and I wonder if that’s the way this story was told to you, too.      Almost every time I preach on this story, no matter where I am, I can almost always look up at the congregation from behind the pulpit and see someone pointing to their friend and saying, “That’s you!” And I get it. I really get it.      The problem is, I think this story is actually a little bit more complicated than that, and that makes it kind of a difficult story to think about. For one thing, I have heard this story preached in some, frankly, pretty sexist ways. This story has a long and unfortunate history of being used to create these really cartoonishly horrible stereotypes about women or even worse try to pit them against each other. I think that’s a very toxic and unhelpful interpretation of what’s going on here.      I also think that over the years a lot of people have walked away from this story with the impression that Jesus criticizes Martha for working too hard whereas Mary is all prayerful and spiritual, and that’s what made her his very special favorite. Fun bit of Presbyterian trivia: John Calvin famously said that this was one of his least favorite stories in the Bible because he felt that it was too negative towards the Protestant work ethic. Whatever, dude.      The problem is, I don’t think either of those interpretations are what Jesus is really getting at (although it’s really easy to see why this story might give you that impression).      So, let’s break this down. Why does Martha get such a bad rap in this story? The popular explanation is that Martha is so caught up in work and running around that she can’t stop for five minutes to listen to Jesus, right? But let’s defend Martha for a minute because I think that’s a little unfair.      The translation, “work” or “many tasks” in verse forty comes from the Greek, “diakonia,” which literally means “service” or “serving,” which to be fair to Martha is exactly what Jesus a good deal of Luke’s Gospel telling his disciples they should do! What story did Jesus just get finished preaching right before he showed up at Martha’s house? Anybody got their Bibles open?       Jesus just finished preaching the story of the Good Samaritan! A story about a guy who goes out of his way to serve and help this other guy who’s been beaten on the side of the road because he’s in need! Jesus just got done pontificating the virtues of this Samaritan’s service and many tasks! Twelve chapters later, he will pull this fancy Greek word out again and tell his disciples “For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves…I am among you as one who serves” (22:27-28).       Bingo, bango, bongo. Isn’t that exactly what Martha is doing here? Isn’t Martha going out of her way to try to practice abundant hospitality in her own home exactly like Jesus has espoused we should do multiple times in this Gospel? So, why is Jesus pumping the brakes?       Clearly something else is going on here, and I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s probably more subtle than we realize. And I’m going to give you guys a little spoiler. I don’t care if you’re a “Mary” or a “Martha.” Every single one of us sitting in this room has been guilty of it. Including me.      Take a look at the exact moment in verse forty when Jesus decides that it’s time to throw a flag on the field and call a foul. Until now, Martha has been the perfect host practicing immaculate hospitality towards her guest until the moment that she decides that’s fed up with her sister’s shenanigans, and she finally says to Jesus, “Do you not care that this is going on? Why don’t you march in there and tell her she screwed up?”      Now, why do you think that might have been just a teensie, weensie faux pas in party planning etiquette? Perhaps without even realizing it, Martha has now put her guest in a tight spot, which is probably not great hospitality if we’re honest. Hindsight is always 20/20 of course, and I suspect that if Martha could have been given a do-over, she probably would have thought to herself, “You know what? That’s probably not something our guest needs to be worried about. I should just go in there and talk to Mary in private, myself.” Right?      The issue is not that Martha’s trying to be a good hostess. That’s good! However, perhaps the real issue is that sometimes we can get just a little too caught up in ourselves that even our best intentions can go haywire.      I think churches can sometimes be guilty of this, too. It can be as small or as simple as seeing a visitor walk into our church for the first time and doesn’t know anybody, and then someone fusses at them because “they can’t sit in that pew. That’s so-and-so’s pew!”       Or it could be the opposite. My sister once told me a story of a church she attended that was so eager to welcome LGTBQIA+ persons into their congregation. They were so excited when they finally got to welcome their “one gender nonbinary person” that they accidentally wound up tokenizing this person.       Are you familiar with that word, “tokenizing?” It means that, in our enthusiasm to try to project this perception of welcoming inclusivity, we can accidentally wind up putting folks on the spot maybe one too many times. We might ask them to explain being an LGTBQ person is like, or what being a person of color is like, or what being from another country is like, or what being homeless is like, or what having a disability is like over and over again until eventually it almost seems to be the only thing we can think of to describe that person.       We forget that there are other aspects of their lives. Other interests, passions, hopes, fears, and dreams. Instead we almost start to treat them more like a mascot than a fully-formed person. It doesn’t happen on purpose. In fact, a lot of times, we don’t even realize that we’re doing it. It just sort of…happens.      It can happen in mission work, too. A little earlier in the service, you heard me talk about David LaMotte who will be visiting our congregation in late September. Among other things, David is the founder of a non-profit organization that partners with low-income elementary schools in Guatemala.       Several years ago, he told me a story about this work. “We gave a little funding to help with a construction project,” he told me, “Several years ago, there was a real change in public education in Guatemala where they decided that no child could be turned away.  They cut away all fees for students to be in public schools. That led to a real expansion of the numbers of kids who were in the schools.  This particular school just exploded. The numbers just went through the roof.        “So, what they wanted to do was expand the school up onto the second level, and rather than expanding outward, they expanded upward. They went to several different donors to help with this project.  We were originally planning to help fund the construction of one classroom, but as the project continued, what was really needed was a good solid, cement and steel railing all around the whole second floor to keep the kids safe as they’re running around up there.        “Now, a railing doesn’t sound nearly as cool as a classroom, right?  It would be great fun to say, ‘We built this classroom at this school,’ which was originally what we intended.  But the fact was that they didn’t need a classroom. What they really needed was a railing. And one of the problems is that this kind of work is often donor-driven. The donors want to see certain things because it makes them feel good rather than what’s really needed by the schools, and the libraries, and whoever it is that you’re trying to have a relationship with.” Sometimes, he told me, it’s easy to get so caught up with ourselves, that we can actually lose track of why Jesus might have put us here in the first place.      Sound familiar?      Falling into this trap is very easy to do, and part of what makes it so challenging is that oftentimes we don’t even realize that we’re doing it. I doubt that Martha realized that she was doing it in this story. And let’s be clear: it’s not just Martha. Jesus’ disciples make this same mistake over, and over, and over again and most of the time, it’s way more egregious than this little faux pas at Martha’s house.      I also think that Jesus is trying really, really hard not to be a jerk to Martha. Some of you may have noticed that in verse forty-one, Jesus repeats her name twice. “Martha, Martha…” It’s important to remember that this is not Jesus being annoyed. In ancient literature, repeating somebody’s name usually indicated compassion and understanding, not judgment or criticism. Jesus is trying to say, “Listen, I get it. I know this is hard.”      Because it is hard. I think Jesus understands that, in the grander scheme of things, this way of life that he’s trying to teach is hard. We’re human, and we’re messy, and we’re going to make mistakes. I think Jesus knows that his friends are going to screw it up. That his disciples are going to screw it up. That we’re going to screw it up. I don’t think this is Jesus’ way of trying to call Martha out in front of her sister or embarrass her. I also don’t think that Jesus is trying to say, “Uh, hello! Pay attention to me!”       I think this is Jesus’ way of trying to recognize messy, human patterns are inside all of us, and they can sometimes cause us to lose track of the mission. We can get so caught up in ourselves that we can actually lose track of why Jesus has put us where we are, and I think Jesus is trying to say this in love.       I don’t think Jesus is trying to cancel Martha. I think Jesus is trying to say, “This is a thing, and we need to acknowledge it not out of punishment or embarrassment but because that’s how we grow. That’s how we learn. That’s how we hopefully get better, and know that there is a lot of grace involved.”      Maybe there’s an important lesson there for all of us. Maybe, if we’re honest, we can see a little bit of ourselves in this story. I know I can. Maybe a bit more than I would like to admit, and maybe you can, too. Maybe we can see a little bit of our church in this story sometimes. Perhaps the lesson of this story is that sometimes it’s important to just be real about that. Not out of punishment. Not out of feeling embarrassed but because that’s just how we keep it real. That’s how we continue to learn, and grow, and become closer to the people that Jesus calls us to be.       Obviously Luke wrote this story down for a reason. Maybe it’s to invite us to see a little bit of Martha in ourselves, to pump the brakes and say, “Yeah…maybe me, too,” and to know that, just like Martha in the end, there really is only need of one thing, and that’s the grace of the person of Jesus who walks with us on this journey together. And that’s really, really Good News.

May it be so. To God be the glory now and forever. Amen.