Scripture text: Luke 10:38-42
I find our Gospel text today baffling and frustrating in equal measure. It seems to neither fit in with the Jesus we see elsewhere in the Gospel, nor does it seem to provide encouragement for those Christians who follow in his model of mission and ministry.
Jesus, in the Gospels, is a doer. Yes, there are sections of the Gospels dedicated to his teaching, some of them quite long, but even those have a certain kineticism to them. Jesus is in motion; he’s doing things. He’s teaching while he’s healing the sick. He’s telling parables while he’s traveling on the road to his next destination. He is not an idle sage sitting on a mountaintop, a mystic we must seek out to find his wisdom. He’s right there in the midst of everything, right in the middle of the busyness and craziness of life.
And his words to his followers reflect this as well. His most famous commands: “Go ye therefore and make disciples” and “love one another.” One can hardly sit idle and go nowhere in order to make disciples of the whole world and love, in Jesus’ understanding, is not mere passive emotion. To love means to do loving things. To feed the hungry. To bind up the brokenhearted. To cure the sick. To speak for the voiceless.
That’s who I try to be. That’s the sort of Christian I seek in my own journey to become. And it is, as you’ve undoubtedly figured out by now, the sort of Christian that I, as your pastor, am guiding you to become. The work of the Church is out there, I say. We’ve got this whole big world full of problems. We’ve got poverty and war and terrorism and racism and xenophobia and we as the Church are called to address these things. And we can’t do that stuck in here.
I am a Martha and I encourage others to be so. And yet Jesus, in this story, encourages the opposite.
Grrrr!!! Why does he have to make things so blasted complicated?
I want to share with you an anecdote from this past week. You all know, since I make it pretty clear, that I am a supporter of #BlackLivesMatter. I believe very firmly in the dignity of all people, especially those our society has deemed of lesser value. I’ve had extensive anti-racism training. I’ve seen the numbers, the statistics, that reveal that the movement and the black community does have a legitimate grievance here. I’ve heard the commentary of experts on the subject. I strive to have an informed opinion about these matters.
My mother-in-law, earlier this week, asked me if I’d done that homework, because she didn’t feel that I’ve made that clear in my recent commentaries on my blog. That’s a valid critique. I do know where I’m coming from and I do know what I believe. And I also know that hard data backs that up. But I haven’t been as solid on pointing out that hard data, not as solid on giving my opinions and thoughts that extra muscle that shows why I believe what I do.
So why am I telling you this? Well, it comes back to the question of “why do I believe what I do.” And that’s a question that’s good for just about any topic. Why do I support this idea? Well, because of X, Y, and Z. Why do I like this music group or this game or this TV show? Well, because of…(fill in the blank).
We don’t always ask those sorts of questions. Sometimes, it’s because we don’t know the answer. Sometimes, it’s because we take the answers for granted. And sometimes, it’s because we think the answer is so obvious that surely there’s no reason to even ask the question. But in that assumption, there is a trap and I believe it is the very trap that Jesus is talking about in our Gospel lesson.
Yes, Martha is busy. But her busyness is purposeless. It lacks meaning. It’s being done because (and we all love this phrase in the Church) “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” She’s abiding by her community’s standards of hospitality without realizing anything or everything else that’s going on. She’s tunnel-visioned and stuck in a rut, blindingly following the expectations her society and herself have placed upon her. And that’s the real problem. She’s not thinking about WHY she’s doing what she’s doing. She’s just doing because that’s what you do, failing to realize the grand opportunity that’s being offered if she just made an exception this once. She’s fallen into the trap.
And that’s a problem we’re all guilty of as well.
I know I’ve been. My commentary about #BlackLivesMatter might be a good example. So eager I was to get my thoughts out there that I didn’t bother to reference my sources, my data, or any of the why I believe these things. Impulse can be a dangerous thing in a dark word. We see so many problems and we want to help. And sometimes we rush to help, but we do it without thinking of the why.
Why do I believe what I do? Why do I believe, as I said a minute or so ago, “in the dignity of all people, especially those our society has deemed of lesser value?” Well, I learned that here, in Church, in pages of the Scriptures. I learned that by sitting down and hearing the words of Jesus. Why do I want to feed the hungry? Because Jesus told me through his words and stories. And where did I learn those? I learned them here. Why do I want to help the poor? Because Jesus told me through his words and stories. And where did I learn those? I learned them here.
Why do we Christians do anything? Well, it should be because Jesus said or did something about it and we learned it here. In this Church or one like it. We were Mary at one point. We sat at Jesus’ feet and heard what he had to say. We listened to his teachings. We heard his parables. We were taught the stories of his miracles. And we came away from that with understanding of who Jesus is and what he was about. We saw his love and his compassion and his mercy in those stories. And we took that love with us out into the world to do the work that he’s called us to do.
You can’t be a good Martha without being a good Mary first. We can’t do what Jesus has called us to do without understanding why it matters. And we can’t learn why it matters unless we are here (in the church) and here (in the Scriptures.) We can’t do without knowing why it is that we’re doing what we’re doing.
The word “evangelism” comes to us from the Greek word evangelion. Evangelion means, quite literally, to “tell good news.”
- “It’s a boy” is evangelion.
- “You’ve won the lottery” is evangelion.
- “Jesus loves you” is evangelion.
But if we’re going to go out and tell that good news, we’d darn well better know what that good news is. We need to remember what Jesus said. What he did. And what does that mean for us when he says “go and do likewise,” as he did last week. Therein lies the why. Why do we do what we do? Because Jesus said so. And where did we learn that? We learned it here. Amen.
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