Doing Dishes

Scripture Reading

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition Luke 10

38 Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him.,* 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 40 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.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, 42 but few things are needed—indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Kids to the Knowing Place

Introduction: The Guitar Center Showoff.

Being back here at Beulah, and this close to Monroeville, has allowed one of my favorite stores to re-enter my life.

Guitar center.

I absolutely love going in that store.

More often than not I don’t need anything, and I leave without buying anything.

But as someone who plays guitar and drums and has interests in producing music, it’s a fantastic store to be in.

Except for one thing:

The Guitar Center showoff.

Because Guitar Center wants badly to sell guitars and drums, they are all set up for folks to come in and try them out.

But that’s not what’s really happening.

What really happens is a whole bunch of couch potato Eddie Van Halen and Buddy Riches want to show off, so they come to guitar center not to purchase anything, but just to let loose and see what comes of it!

And of course there’s a reason I know that this is happening.

It’s because as a drummer and a guitarist, when I’m in guitar center, I am usually try to show off!

Which as I’m sure you could all see coming, leads us to our scripture lesson this morning.

Bible Breakdown

Hospitality is serious business.

There is a lot of cultural importance going on in the phrase “Martha welcomed him.”

To open up your home to someone, especially if you are going to invite them in to your home to have a meal, was essentially to invite them to be a part of the family.

We might have lost this perspective in our culture.

For starters, we are dining together and in our homes far less these days than we ever used to.

Parents these days are throwing food at their kids between soccer and softball and hockey practices, usually eaten as fast as possible, or even in the car.

Whereas a family meal together might have been a bedrock, nightly principal even just a few years ago, it is a rareity at best now.

And for sure, just sharing a meal with someone doesn’t make them a member of the family.

To be sure, it indicates intimacy and friendship.

But it doesn’t carry that deep bond anymore.

It sure did for Jesus.

Think about how many stories in the Scriptures involve Jesus getting into trouble.

A good chunk of them are because Jesus ate with sinners and losers, welcoming and being welcomed by the least of these.

Which isn’t a problem, unless you think that you’re above the least of these, and many of Jesus’ opponents sure did.

But for Martha, the pressure is on.

If Jesus is going to be a treasured member of the family, she better put on a show.

She better break out the fine china.

She better cook a fantastic meal.

She better entertain.

She better do the dishes.

She better clean the floors.

She better get everything exactly right.

Martha is engaged in things that someone has to do, right?

This is a cultural convention.

And a serious one!

There’s a lot on the line here.

Someone is going to have to clean if they’re going to have a place to sit.

Someone is going to have to cook if they’re going to have anything to eat.

Someone is going to have to clean up after dinner, right?

If Martha had chosen to take a day off, there wouldn’t be a dinner.

And that feels kind of irresponsible, right?

So what is the issue?

So many folks I’ve studied this text with this week, in fact all my life, have found themselves defending Martha like that.

Which, we should be quick to point out that it sure seems easier to relate to Martha than it does to Mary. That should be a clue for us Church.

But clearly, Jesus has a word of correction for Martha.

Loving correction, even gentle in the way he says it.

Martha, Martha.

But correction all the same.

So what’s the correction? What’s at issue here?

To be sure, a wee bit of sibling rivalry, right?

Get off your duff and come help me!

I think like so many of the more insidious and difficult to catch sins, this one is a matter of the heart.

Trying to impress Jesus

I wonder what Martha’s motivations are.

Is she trying to serve Jesus?

Serving Jesus would mean making the house clean, sure!

Serving Jesus would mean preparing a meal, absolutely!

Serving Jesus would allow for him to relax after the meal while she cleaned up, absolutely!

Serving Jesus is obviously pretty ok!

Or...

Or is she trying to impress Jesus?

Is she trying to make herself look good by having a clean house?

Is she trying to make herself look good by cooking a lights out dinner?

Is she trying to make herself look good with a little bit of extra effort?

This sounds right.

And truthfully, it’s a sin we still struggle with, isn’t it?

Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”

The reformers like Luther and Calvin and Wesley insisted that we keep forgetting that.

We want to make our salvation based on how good we look.

We want to make our salvation based on how many times we show up to church.

We want to make our salvation based on how impressive we can be.

Jesus never asked us to be impressive.

He asked us to be present.

There’s a pretty big tell in this story that someone in our mid-week sermon discussion group pointed out (you’re still invited by the way!):

Martha’s eyes are on Mary. Mary’s eyes are on Jesus.

Martha’s attention rests isn’t resting with Jesus at all.

Author Joel Green wrote this about this passage:

“The nature of hospitality Jesus seeks is realized in attending to one’s guest, yet Martha’s speech is centered on ‘me’ talk.”

“Lord do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.”

Martha is feeling the burden of hospitality, not the joy of it.

She feels like there’s an injustice, and she’s located the source:

Mary.

She’s just sitting around!

She’s just “listening.”

Mary sounds like she is totally locked in on Jesus.

She’s sitting at his feet, listening to teachings about sheep and goats and blessed are those who mourn and that the birds neither toil nor spin, but God looks after them.

I legitimately wonder if she even noticed all of Martha’s hustle and bustle. That probably didn’t register for her at all.

Her eyes are on Jesus.

Maybe that’s the only thing we ever need to worry about?

Maybe that’s the part that won’t be taken away from Mary.

Or us.

In the Church

What is necessary versus what is impressive

I have really come to hate going to church conferences.

Sure, there’s a lot of good information going on there.

But more than that, both from the instructors and the attenders, I get a whole lot of people that want to impress me about their church.

Our ministry has 400 kids every Wednesday!

We sent millions of dollars to our mission partners!

We have a coffee shop ministry where we have an actual coffee shop in the lobby of our church!

Now, all of those are great things!

Again, this is a kind of insidious sin because it can look so creepy!

I’d love to have 400 kids every Wednesday!

I’d love to send millions to our mission partners!

And don’t you think by now I’ve tried to carve out space to open a coffee shop in the narthex!

But these instructors and attenders at these conferences talk about these things the way kids in first grade talk about building snowmen.

Yeah, well my snowman had four layers on it!

Yeah, well my snow man could shoot lasers from its eyes!

Yeah, well our steeple is 20 stories tall!

Sometimes, it feels like people are building their own kingdom, rather than engaging in building the Kingdom of God.

Look, church, we were never called to do what was impressive.

We’re not supposed to be metaphorically shredding in the Guitar Center of our communities.

It doesn’t impress Jesus all that much, and to be honest, I don’t think it’s impressing our brothers and sisters in the community all that much either.

Instead, we’re called to focus on what is necessary.

And good news for list makers, Jesus tells us there’s only one thing that’s necessary.

Sit at Jesus’ feet.

What do we need to sit at Jesus’ feet?

True story of what transpired in the exact five minutes before I wrote this section of the sermon.

Oh shoot, my headphones are almost out of battery. Better plug them in.

Do I have enough cables to plug things in? I should look on Amazon.

Wow, Amazon is advertising newspapers on the Kindle.

Oh! I didn’t play WORDLE today on the New York Times. Better hammer that out.

Would you look at that, my coffee is cold. Better brew a new pot.

Truth is, our culture is notoriously bad at staying focused, aren’t we?

The average human attention span decreased by 25% from 2005 to 2015. Just ten years.

We’re down to an average attention span of 8.25 seconds.

Ask anyone in marketing, if you can’t hook someone that quickly into your commercial, they’re not buying!

Which is why it feels like sitting quietly at Jesus’ feet seems like such an impossible task!

What we need to do is remove distraction and friction points.

I’ve been trying to get to spin class in the mornings, one that starts at 6:00 AM.

The only way that happens is if the night before, I lay out my bike shorts, gym bag, fill my water bottle, and of course set up the coffee machine so that when I wake up, I just have to get in the car.

Remove the distractions.

So what is are the distractions or friction points between you and sitting at Jesus’ feet?

Perhaps for you it’s a pervasive busy-ness, where every single moment of every single day is jam packed with as much activity and motion as possible that the idea of showing up for Jesus feels like an impossibility.

Side note: Please note that showing up in Church isn’t the only way to sit at Jesus’ feet.

It’s a good way, but it’s not the only way.

Perhaps for you the friction is the desire to be impressive, to be the one who others love and respect, and sitting at Jesus’ feet might point out where you struggle and have difficulty, and that feels like a bad use of time.

Perhaps for you the friction is all those other people who are sitting at Jesus feet, who you’d rather not associate with.

I promise that it is way easier to get rid of distractions than it is to pick up something new.

The answer is to limit distractions, not to resolve to read the Bible more.

The answer is to limit friction, not to do your best to pray more.

The answer is to set time aside, not to try to add more things to do in your already busy schedule.

This answer is different for all of us, what it is that distracts us from sitting at Jesus’ feet.

But still, there’s another question that we as a church ought to ponder:

What does the community need to sit at Jesus’ feet?

Sit at Jesus feet ourselves.

If we are facing all these distractions and points of friction, what do we think is keeping the community around us from sitting at Jesus’ feet?

Perhaps like so many of the younger generation in particular, those around us have been hurt and wounded by the church in their past.

Perhaps they have seen the characature of the church on TV or in the news, one that seems to spew out judgemental hate more than grace and peace, and they don’t want anything to do with that.

Perhaps they have just as crowded and busy a schedule as any of the rest of us do, only they have come to the conclusion that the Church, and maybe even Jesus himself is irrelevant.

Is there anything we can do to remove the barriers for our community?

Perhaps we can work to be agents of healing for the wounds the church has left on our brothers and sisters, even if we’re not the ones that caused them.

Perhaps we could work to spread a different impression of the Church than the one that is so prevalent in our media?

Perhaps we could share with our neighbors, brothers and sisters, and friends that they would come to know Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life, something that has relevance in this day and for all time.

Whether it’s us, or it’s for our brothers and sisters, we need to clear the way for folks to sit at the feet of Jesus.

What do you think we’d hear?

One of the interesting games I’ve been playing with Bible studies and friends this week around this passage is to wonder: What do you think Jesus was teaching Mary in this story?

We’ll never no, so there are no wrong answers.

Just a lot of good choices.

That grace is rampantly available to all, including ourselves.

That we’re not called to impress Jesus, we’re called to sit at his feet.

That the Kingdom of God is at hand, so maybe we should worry a little less about our own kingdoms.

May we join Mary at the feet of Jesus, and hear the truth of the King.