Youth Sunday this morning was awesome! The youth led worship, we opened with "Prince of Peace" and "Marvelous Light," baby Grayson was baptized, several youth shared about their experiences at CCC, I preached a sermon that got finished at about 9:45 a.m., the girls and I sang "You're Beautiful" during the offertory, Jenni and Maddie led the children's message, we showed a video I put together of pictures from the trip (see below!), and we ended by singing "Shine, Jesus, Shine." It was one of the more uplifting, energetic church services I've been to in a while. Our youth are great.
And here's my sermon:
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"
"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."
-- Luke 10:38-42
Martha is annoyed. Her sister is just sitting there. This isn’t the first time she’s been stuck doing the work while Mary goofs off. It seems that Mary has a habit of doing things that seem pointless and wasteful. In John 12, we see Martha serving a meal while Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with costly perfume. She is essentially dumping out a year’s worth of wages. The disciples protest, not simply at the wastefulness but because, as they say, that perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Jesus’ response seems almost harsh: “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” Is Jesus telling us not to bother helping the poor?
I’ve never really liked the story of Mary and Martha. The moral of the story seems simple enough at first: if you are focused on Jesus and on his words, like Mary was, then you don’t have to worry about doing anything, like Martha did. But the pragmatist in me screams, “What about lunch?? Somebody has to make lunch! Jesus is fully human, he gets hungry!”
My main issue with this passage is that I have always had a hard time figuring out what the story says about faith and action. Sometimes, we make Mary and Martha into one-dimensional metaphors for the Christian life. Some people are Marys: they have the gifts of prayer and contemplation. Other people are Marthas: they make the casserole for the potluck and volunteer at Christian Ministries. We need both to be the church.
But that’s not quite right, is it? Certainly we all have different spiritual gifts, but this passage isn’t about God-given talents; it’s about how we use them. Did you notice what Jesus said? He said, “Mary has chosen what is better.” Mary made a choice. Her choice was to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to his words. Her choice was to be at peace in the presence of her Lord.
Martha made a choice, too. But that choice was less about what she was doing and more about how she was doing it. This passage is not telling us only to listen and never to act; that goes against the spirit of the gospel. Besides, right before the story of Mary and Martha is the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan doesn’t even believe in God, but he is the model of love and mercy that Jesus describes.
Martha’s problem is not that she’s busy; it’s that she’s worried and distracted. Martha is stressed out. More than that, she’s bitter that Mary isn’t helping her. Martha chooses to let her actions get in the way of her intended love and hospitality instead of flowing from it. She even becomes a tattletale—instead of asking Mary for help, she goes to Jesus: “don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
This scene reminds me of countless childhood squabbles with my little sister. Grace would take something of mine or vice versa, and before you knew it, a familiar sound was ringing through the halls. “Moooo-oooom!” Sometimes my parents would get tired of it and basically say, “I don’t care” if it wasn’t a big deal. This would annoy the daylights out of me because it made it seem like whatever possession Grace had swiped was not important. Most likely, it really wasn’t all that important. But I was not willing to admit that, and neither was Martha.
The story of Mary and Martha tells us that how and why we do things is just as important as what we do. In fact, it may well be more important in many cases. Not only that, but Jesus is telling them and us precisely what is the most important thing: he is. Martha has made the story about herself; Jesus insists that she make it about him.
Remember the story I mentioned earlier about Mary wasting all that perfume? When Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you,” the disciples would have known that Jesus was actually quoting Deuteronomy 15:11. This verse begins, “There will always be poor people in the land.” But it doesn’t stop there. “Therefore,” it reads, “I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.” Therefore. Jesus wants us to help others, but he knows that the work of serving the poor is endless. We cannot approach such a task unless our purpose and hope comes from him. Jesus must come first; without him, we are helpless to do anything in the face of human need.
I was privileged to spend the past week with our youth group at Carolina Cross Connection, or CCC. As a first-timer at CCC, I was moved by how intentionally the program connected work, prayer and fellowship. We started each morning with prayer or worship, before we even got our work assignment for the day. The staff members told us repeatedly that although our work projects were important in and of themselves, more important were the relationships we might form with the people we were serving. We went to work, but we also went to sit, to listen, to talk. And everything we did was made possible by and was ultimately for God. Maybe we didn’t hammer nails any differently than any other volunteer might have, but the inherent connection with God and with others made a huge difference in what we were doing.
If you think about it, none of what we did would have made any sense if not for that—why in the world would someone expect, let alone allow, a group of teenagers and adults of varying levels of experience build a 20-foot wheelchair ramp? Why else would 13-year-olds be using power tools?
I realized that CCC was the embodiment of what Luke is trying to tell us in the Mary and Martha story. Psalm 127:1 says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.” It’s not about what we do. It’s about how and why we do it, and for whom we do it. CCC forced us to take the focus off ourselves for a week. None of what the youth and adults did this past week benefited them in any tangible way; in fact, particularly for working adults, it sounds crazy—take a week off work to sweat all day on a construction project in the middle of the North Carolina summer? And not get paid? Wait, we pay them to let us do that? It’s not about what we do. It’s about how, why, and for whom. The funny thing is that the answer to all of those questions should be the same. How? Like Jesus. With Jesus. Why? Because of Jesus. For whom? For Jesus and for his glory. Let’s not get worried and distracted. Let’s stay focused on God.
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