St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
Luke 10:38-42
Among the first followers of Jesus, there was already
disagreement about the “the role of women,” a phrase that marginalizes women
and keeps them from sharing their God-given gifts of leadership in the church,
and in society. Even today, two thousand years later, there are denominations
of Christians where women’s voices are still excluded from the pulpit. You may
not know that it wasn’t until 1853 that the first woman was ordained to the
Christian ministry. Her name was Antoinette Brown Blackwell, and it was the
Congregational Church, a forebear of the UCC, that honored her call to
ministry.
The story of Mary and Martha invites us into the
conversation about roles, not just the role of women but of any disciple, about
listening and doing the work. It’s important to take the time to talk, and to
listen. It’s important to focus on the person right in front of you. And it’s
important to get the work done, to take care of your responsibilities.
Martha was probably used to maintaining a good impression in
her village. Her family was well-to-do; people who would help finance the
itinerant ministry of Jesus and his disciples. This gathering was the kind of
thing she was good at, hosting a large group for a dinner party. As any good
host knows, there is much to be done when visitors come over.
Mary – who is probably better designated as Mary of Bethany
so as to differentiate her from the other Marys in the gospels – she “sat at
the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.” Rather than help her
sister prepare and serve the guests, she is focused on being present with the
guests, particularly Jesus.
Now, I’ve been Martha. I have hosted gatherings where I
floated between the kitchen, the barbecue, the dining room, and the living
room, making sure everyone has what they need, keeping an eye on the food in
the oven and on the stovetop, setting the table, checking the lighting and
music. I’m often able to chat with people while I do all this, especially if
they follow me around or offer to help out. But those are mostly five-minute
chats.
Sometimes I have been Mary at the party, sitting with one
person and focusing on them at length. The small group of two or three sitting
apart, or standing out on the porch, engaged in an intense conversation that
goes on for hours, that is something I love. But it’s really hard to do the
work of the host and be the listener.
The listening is something that you almost have to plan, to
seek out that one person you really want to talk with, and carve out a space
and time for a longer, deeper conversation. Last summer I went to a reunion in
Colorado of people I had done camps with. There were many faces I had not seen
in a long time, and a thousand five-minute conversations. It was both
fulfilling and exhausting. But over the course of the weekend I was able to
seek out and sit one-on-one with a few dear old friends. Those long, deep
conversations are what I remember most clearly, and value profoundly.
The thing is, I was also in charge of certain aspects of the
event, since I was once a director of that camp. I had to take care to not lose
myself in the conversation with one person that I forgot my responsibility to
everyone else. I had to coordinate with other leaders, prepare a space, help
lead a workshop, engage with each of the participants, and, when all was done,
to clean up. I remember all of that, but perhaps not so vividly.
It’s interesting to juxtapose this story with the one we
heard last week about the Good Samaritan. In that story the lawyer asks, “what
must I do to inherit eternal life?” Martha would resonate with that
question. It's not enough to just listen to Jesus; faithful listeners respond,
we do. Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Show mercy and
compassion. Pick up the beaten man by the side of the road and help him. There’s
a lot that needs doing, in the kitchens and fellowship halls of churches, the
gathering of food items for food pantries, the work to combat hunger and feed
the world.
The writer Katherine Matthews[1]
asks us to think about what might happen without these folks, the doers,
if they suddenly decided to take this story at face value and sit down, right
when they're supposed to be pouring the coffee and putting out the baked goods.
Isn’t our hospitality ministry important, when we stand by the door, and made
sure that everyone has received a warm greeting and a welcome to our worship?
Is that what this story of Mary and Martha means, that sitting and listening is
more important than doing the work of hospitality?
Yet the very next story is about these two women, both of
whom loved Jesus, and Jesus saying that the better part is not the doing, but
the being, just sitting and being with God. Perhaps, because we are so easily
lured into busyness, we need to be reminded that “all our efforts and deeds are
to be balanced and even nourished by times of doing absolutely nothing but
sitting and being with God.”[2]
And in this moment, when Mary joins the disciples who sit at the feet of Jesus,
he upends the idea that a woman could not sit at the feet of the master and
learn from him just as any male disciple could.
We live in a culture today that equates busyness with
importance. For many of us the days are packed with tasks to perform, our minds
worried and distracted, like Martha, by many things. Can you imagine just
sitting and being with God, listening to the quiet voice of God speaking to us,
deep within our hearts? Can you imagine what a gift it would be to just sit and
listen with someone who is lonely, perhaps, or longing for companionship and
meaning, an opportunity to share their gifts or simply a conversation?
Henri Nouwen once wrote that our lives, while full, are
often unfulfilled. “Our occupations and preoccupations,” he said, “fill our
external and internal lives to the brim. They prevent the Spirit of God from
breathing freely in us and thus renewing our lives.”[3]
If we don’t take time to just sit and listen, to pray, to breathe deeply in the
presence of the Holy Spirit, we are unable to be as we are meant to be, to do
as we are meant to do.
Stop and just sit and listen, faithfully, like Mary at the
feet of Jesus. Not sporadically, or randomly, or when there's nothing else to do:
faithfully. Jesus taught us the importance of doing good things. Don’t just
pass by on the other side, but do something to offer peace, kindness, hope,
help. But Jesus also taught that the fulfillment of the promises of God has
already begun, and that we can taste and feel those promises in our own lives,
even here, even now. The better part is a life full of word and work,
hearing and doing, and faithfully resting in the presence of God. Amen.
[1] Kathryn
M. Matthews, “Faithful Listeners,” in Sermon Seeds: https://www.ucc.org/worship_samuel_sermon_seeds_july_21_2019.
[2]
Ibid.
[3] Henri
J.M. Nouwen, The Spiritual Life.
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