I used to have an employee who was really good at being busy. She was always running around, jumping from one project to another, starting one thing and then stopping to work on something else for a while, always complaining that she had too many things on her plate and not enough hours in the day to get them done. And that was the problem – she never got anything done. She was so busy being busy that she couldn’t prioritize, she couldn’t understand what was most important, she couldn’t meet a deadline – as the old saying goes, she really couldn’t see the forest for the trees. As her supervisor, I’d meet regularly to try to prioritize her projects, to discuss what needed to be done first, to focus on what really was most important. But whenever I’d try to take a few minutes to try to discuss her projects, the first thing she’d do was complain that she didn’t have time to talk to me.
She was a lot like Martha – the Martha of our Gospel lesson. As was true of last week’s Gospel lesson about the Good Samaritan, the story of Mary and Martha is one that many of us learned a long, long time ago, and we think we know it a lot better than we really do. We do know that Jesus was a good friend of the family – sisters Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus – and when Jesus decides to pay them a visit, Martha goes into overdrive cooking and cleaning and doing all the things that we often do when an important guest is coming to visit us. When Luke writes that Martha was “distracted with much serving,” he’s talking about a lot more than just dishing up a nice meal. The word that we translate as “distracted” really means something like “torn this way and that.” She was spending so much time preparing for Jesus that she really didn’t have any time to spend with Jesus.
And then there’s Mary. Mary doesn’t seem to worry at all about the cleaning and cooking – she just sits down at Jesus’ feet and listens to him. She doesn’t bother to help her sister at all. You have to understand that in ancient times, it was customary for men to sit at the feet of the teacher and listen to him – but that didn’t hold true for women. Things are a lot different today than they were back then, because 2,000 years ago women were expected to serve. Martha was doing just what she was supposed to do, but Mary was actually breaking conventions by sitting and listening to the teacher. And, of course, that left Martha with all the work. So Martha is not pleased. Martha is upset. And finally she says something: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?” Both her words and her attitude make it clear that she expects Jesus to agree with her, that she expects Jesus to tell Mary to get up and help do the things she really ought to be doing. In fact, Martha is really complaining about both Mary and Jesus. Listen again to her words: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?” Don’t you see what’s going on here, Jesus? Don’t you get it? And if you get it, why do you let her just sit there? Why don’t you do something about it?
Once again, Jesus responds in a way that no one expected, that no one could see coming. Luke writes: “But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.’”
I want to stop here and talk about how a sermon should be constructed – what a sermon should be. You’ve heard me say before that a good Lutheran sermon should include both Law and Gospel. The Law shows us what God demands of us and makes us realize that we can never meet those demands. The Gospel, on the other hand, tells us what Jesus has done for us – salvation, forgiveness of sins, eternal life. The Law shows our sins, while the Gospel shows our salvation. The Law is all about what we do – or perhaps I should say, what we ought to do and what we try to do, even though we always fail. But the Gospel is all about what Jesus has done for us – plain and simple, nothing else.
It’s very easy to confuse Law and Gospel, and it’s even easier to take the Gospel and turn it into Law. Last Sunday we heard about the Lawyer and the Good Samaritan. We heard the Law loud and clear: “You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.” I can guarantee you that when this parable is preached in many Christian churches, the preacher takes the story of the Good Samaritan and turns it into Law – listen up people, if you want to please God, then you have to behave just like the Good Samaritan. You have to love your neighbor, you have to do this, you have to do that. Whenever we hear the words “you have to do,” you’re being preached Law and nothing else.
But I hope you remember that the real point of the Good Samaritan story is not what we have to do – but what Jesus has done for us. Jesus is our Good Samaritan. Jesus does all the doing. That’s Gospel. Jesus did. Jesus does. So loving your neighbor isn’t something that we are required to do – but because Jesus died for us, we can and we want to love our neighbor as ourselves. St. John says it so beautifully in chapter four of his first Epistle: “We love because he first loved us.” That’s the freedom and the blessing that we have been given through faith in Jesus.
With this week’s Gospel lesson, the temptation is to turn this freedom back into Law again. The wrong way to preach about our Gospel lesson is to make it all about Mary and Martha. Mary is the one who “has chosen the good portion” – so if you want to please God, you better make sure that you behave just like Mary and stop and listen to Jesus. Martha, on the other hand, is too busy to choose “the good portion,” so if you want to please God you’d better stop and prioritize things in your life and make sure that you do listen to Jesus. You do this … you do that. It’s all Law. It sounds good, but we all learn in Catechism class that the Law doesn’t save – only the Gospel saves.
So where’s the real Gospel in the story of Mary and Martha – what’s the right way to preach about these few verses? It’s simply this: Jesus is the “good portion.” And we don’t have to go looking for Him, because he graciously and lovingly comes to us. Martha thought that she was the host and Jesus was the guest, but with God it’s always the other way around. In order to serve Jesus, we must first be served by Him. We hear that in Jesus’ own words from Matthew 20:28: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” And after we receive His gifts, we’ll have plenty of opportunities to show our love to Him.
How truly good and gracious our God is that he has reached into our busy lives with the Gospel of Jesus. Again and again He has sent His Holy Spirit to bring Jesus’ teachings – His holy Word – to us. No matter how busy we are, God continues to come to us through His Word and Sacraments. And we are thankful that salvation depends on faith in Christ alone – and nothing else. Not what we do, but what Jesus has done for us. If our salvation depended on our service to God, then who among us could be saved?
I don’t like to throw high-sounding theological terms at you, but today I’m going to break that rule, because there is a very important theological term that applies to both today’s Gospel lesson and last week’s Gospel lesson. That term is “Gospel imperative.” Simply put, a Gospel imperative is something that sounds like a command, but it’s really something that believers in Christ already want to do. It sounds like Law – but it’s really Gospel.
Let me give you a practical example. Let’s say we’re having a potluck dinner in the basement of the church. Volunteers are getting the food ready and setting out drinks and someone finally says: “OK, let’s eat.” Strictly speaking, that’s a command: “Eat!” But no one’s going to complain, “Oh, shucks, now I’ve got to go eat.” Because we’re hungry. We’re ready to eat. We want to eat. We’ve been blessed with all kinds of delicious food that’s been lovingly cooked and prepared by members of the Church. We have this overwhelming desire to partake of those blessings and to share them with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
When Jesus helps Martha realize just how wrong-minded she is because she’s made herself too busy to hear the “good portion” – she’s too busy for Jesus – that’s a Gospel imperative. When we hear Jesus speak to us, the Holy Spirit strengthens our faith. We receive forgiveness, salvation, eternal life. Jesus does all the doing – he does all the giving – and we receive His gifts. That’s Gospel, pure and simple. And that is the right way to preach the story of Mary and Martha.
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