A Better Answer (Luke 10:38-42)

Sermon as preached on 7/21/13 at Lambs and Evington UMC

When I was in school, especially when I was still in high school I remember dreading different formats for tests.  Teachers found many different ways to test our knowledge about any particular subject. For me, the easiest questions were the True or False questions. You would be given a statement and had to determine whether or not it was true or whether it was false. They were the easiest to me because it was cut and dry, the statement was either true, or it was false. There were other forms of questions however that was not as simple, including the multiple choice questions. What I hated about multiple choice questions is the older you got the more sophisticated the questions would get, and eventually you would have a statement such as, “which of the following best answers the question?” It was that best that would always get me. It means that you good give a correct answers, you could even argue with the teacher after the fact that you were not wrong, and yet it was not the best answer for the question. For example a question could be, F Scott Fitzgerald is best known for which novel: A) Moby Dick, B) This Side of Paradise C) A Tale of Two Cities, D) The Great Gatsby.  As you go through the question you can eliminate  Moby Dick because that was written by Melville, and you can eliminate a Tale of Two cities because that was written by Dickens. But then you left with This Side of Paradise and the Great Gatsby which both seem to be correct answers, because both were written by Fitzgerald. A judgment call has to be made then to determine which he is best known for and therefore you would choose The Great Gatsby. The questions become much harder when there is a good answer, and yet there is a better one.

            Our scripture for today is a perfect example of the difference between the good choice, and the best choice. Our scripture starts with Jesus and his disciples being invited into the house of two sisters Martha and Mary. When they entered the house Martha did all that she could to provide hospitality to their guests. She slaved away in the kitchen preparing them something to eat, cleaned up to make sure they would be comfortable there; In essence Martha did everything she could to show respect to her honored guest. While Martha was doing all of this however, her sister Mary simply sat at the feet of Jesus and listened. Finally sick of the fact that her sister was not helping her, Martha speaks to Jesus and tells him, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." Many of us may be surprised by Jesus’ answer as he replies, “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 we hear this our first instinct is to question what has Martha done wrong? After all many of us here are Marthas. We always try to keep up with the best of our responsibilities, most of us are eager to be hospitable to guests, and so why does Jesus seem to rebuke Martha? The thing is Martha has done nothing wrong; she has done what is good and what is expected of her. In fact if anybody had done anything wrong it seems to be Mary. Mary neglects her responsibility to help her sister and simply sits at the feet of Jesus. That action in itself is more of a wrong at that time than many of us recognize when we read scripture through the lens of our modern world.  In those times women were not seen as equals to men, and there were certain gender roles and responsibilities that were expected to be done by women. Especially in the presence of guests, women were expected to be the servants to their male guests. Mary had rejected this responsibility. Even worse than this, women were not supposed to sit at the feet of a teacher; this was seen as a privilege for the men. In our scripture we find Mary rejecting these social cues; neglecting her responsibility to  serve as well as sitting in a place of honor that society deemed her not to be worthy of.  In light of all of this we can see that Martha is in fact doing what is good; she is doing what is expected of her, she is performing acts of hospitality to her guests. Jesus never says what she is doing is wrong, instead he says, “Mary has chosen the better part.” Mary has chosen the better part.

            So what then is the better part? Why is what Mary does better than what Martha does? To answer that question we must understand that this story in Luke does not sit in a vacuum by itself. It is a continuation of a theme that Jesus had started earlier in the chapter. Before arriving at the house of Martha and Mary, Jesus was asked by a scribe what was necessary to get into heaven. Jesus asked what is written in the scriptures, and the man replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” Not satisfied with the answer the scribe asked Jesus and who is my neighbor. And so Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan.  It is one of the best known parables in the Bible.  In the story a man is beaten and robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. A priest happens to walk by, but sees the man and crosses on the opposite side of the road. Likewise, a Levite, ( who were helpers of the priests)  came saw the man and crossed on the opposite side of the road. Finally a Samaritan, ( who were outcasts of society) saw the man beaten and took care of him, took him to an inn and made all the provisions necessary that the man may be completely taken care of. After he told this parable Jesus asked, which of these is the neighbor, and the scribe responded, the one who showed mercy, and Jesus says “Go and do likewise.”

            In the encounter with scribe, Jesus makes clear what the Lord requires of us, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Through the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus teaches the scribes, teaches the disciples, and Luke through his gospel teaches us the reader what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. To leave the story there would be to only explain half of the commandment that Jesus had given. We would only know what it means to love our neighbor; we wouldn’t know what it means to love the Lord with all our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our strength and with all of our mind. For this reason, it is so important that we have the story of Martha and Mary follow right after this parable.

            It is as if through the actions of Martha, God is showing us the danger of only following half of that commandment. After all Martha is loving her neighbor as herself, maybe even more than herself. She has invited them in, she has prepared a space for them and is making the feel as welcome as possible. What is lacking for Martha however, is an understanding the need to love God with all our hearts.  Service is good, even great; but if it does not start with a love for God than it is nothing more than a distraction.

            It is easy for us to do the same in our lives, to get distracted by the responsibilities in our lives, even the noble ones, even our service.  How often do we get distracted by our work, even by our families so much so that we push God to the wayside? Even in church we can get so devoted to different groups and activities, responsibilities and meetings that we forget that the reason we are doing all that we do is because God loves us, and because we love God. All of these things are good, all of the things are important, and yet when we lose sight of our love for God because of them we like Martha become distracted. We must seek the better answer.

            And so through the actions of Mary, Jesus teaches Martha, his disciples, and all of us what it means to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, strength and mind. Mary recognizes the presence of the Lord in her midst and puts everything aside to be in his presence. Mary risks the consequences of breaking the social norms, all so that she may hear what the Lord has to say. It is in fact quite amazing paradox that by simply doing nothing but stopping and listening, that Mary is doing so much and risking so much.

            As we heard from Barbara last week, the focus of this year’s annual conference was Lord teach us to pray. I won’t harp on this too much because it is our scripture for next week, but one thing that must be pointed out is that as I have talked to many people after this annual conference, both clergy and lay, the consensus is that this was one of the best and most powerful annual conferences that we have had in a while, and everyone can identify why. It is because this annual conference first and foremost focused on prayer; focused on being in the presence of God and hearing the word of God. Not only did we open and close every session with prayer, but with each decision that we made we went to the Lord in prayer about it. We asked for God’s discernment for each topic. The Annual Conference truly was focused on loving God and experiencing the love of God.

            I must make a confession though, going into the conference I was definitely a Martha. I knew the reputation of Bishop Cho, I had even experienced his prayer centered leadership style at Pastor’s Convocation in January, and I must admit that heading into annual conference it made me a little nervous. I thought to myself, that’s great and all, but what if we spend too much time in prayer? What if we don’t get to everything on the agenda?  The days are condensed down from what they used to be several years ago, what if we run out of time. And of course the worst of all, what if we don’t break on time for lunches and dinners?  Other than the last question, these were legitimate questions, because the business aspect of the conference is an extremely important issue since we only meet once a year. And yet as we dove into prayer each day  found that we did in fact have time for business. And those who had been to other annual conferences may have realized that the debates and arguments were not as heated,  not as long as other conferences. That discussions were truly discussions, and that people disagreed with each other, and felt comfortable enough to voice their disagreement, and yet the animosity experienced in previous conferences did not seem to be there.  We loved the Lord with all of our heart and soul, and the business still got done.

            This is the lesson that Martha and Mary teach us; that we must first seek after God. We must first love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, souls, strength and minds.  When we do this we find that there is still time for our other responsibilities and our service, but not only is there time, we find that this service and these responsibilities, and transformed by our love for God. By taking the time to be with Christ, we are able to more than if we had used that time for other responsibilities.  We must not ignore these responsibilities, we must continue to love our neighbor as ourselves, but we must first and foremost do this through seeking the better answer; we must love our neighbors through our love for God.