Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Distractions – Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8/NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Luke 10:38-42/NRSVUE)
When I was in seminary I did my ministry internship at a UCC church in the town next to the one in which I lived; it was a great place filled with wonderful people. And if you happened to walk into that church some Sunday morning after worshipping here, much of the service would feel familiar to you; but they did a few things differently. Their music was generally more traditional; their communion was closer to the beginning of worship; and Pastor Mary almost always wore a robe. As you may have noticed, I don’t often wear a robe and part of the reason for that, I think, is something that happened to me there.
During their time of of Joys and Concerns, people were invited to come up to the chancel and light votive candles to honor what was on their hearts and minds, while the accompanist played music softly on the piano. I thought that this part of the service always had a really nice contemplative vibe, and it was a great idea because it gave those who didn’t, for whatever reason, want to share their prayers aloud a chance to participate in this important aspect of worship in community. But it also presented some challenges for folks with mobility issues, and so we came up with a solution: I’d just bring the candles to them.
We found a small holder for about ten votives that I could carry throughout the sanctuary, going wherever I was summoned. And here’s where things got a little dicey. You see, I was so focused on getting to everyone, and on making sure their candles got lit and stayed lit, and on not tripping over the hem of my robe as I walked around with them (yeah, I as the student minister had to wear a robe too), that I failed to noticed something else going up in flames that day — namely, me.
I remember standing in front of someone as she lit her candle and noticing that her eyes suddenly got as big as saucers — right about the same time that I smelled something burning. That something was, as it turned out, the sleeve of my robe which, unfortunately, had found it’s way onto the business end of a lit candle. Thankfully, I managed to extinguish the small flame before it got out of hand and, since my robe was made of polyester, it simply melted a little rather than turning into an ecclesiastical fireball.
I learned a couple of valuable lessons that day: first, cowl sleeves and open flames don’t really mix; and second, it’s a good idea to stay focused on what you’re doing. You see, when you get right down to it, my problem that day was that I was paying attention to a whole host of things other than the one thing I should have been paying attention to. Distraction can indeed be a powerful force in our lives, and generally not for the better.
In today’s passage from Luke’s Gospel, Martha is a bit distracted too. As the story begins, Jesus has just taken leave of the lawyer with whom he shared the parable of the Good Samaritan and soon arrives in an unnamed village where he’s welcomed into the home of his friends, two sisters named Martha and Mary. While Mary, sits at Jesus’s feet with the other disciples listening to what Jesus has to say (I mean who, given the chance, wouldn’t do that?), Martha scurries about the house tending to all of the hospitality-related work on her own. We soon learn that Martha is none too happy about this inequitable distribution of labor. “Distracted by her many tasks,” she is unable to listen to Jesus and feels a bit overwhelmed; so she comes to him to complain about Mary.
“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me,” is what Martha says. Look, I know that Martha wasn’t a member of our church, and thus hadn’t agreed to abide by the covenant we’ve made with one another, but the part that reads, “I will take my questions and concerns directly to the person or persons involved rather than allowing anger and frustration to build” would have been good for her to remember that day. I mean it’s never a great idea to drag anyone — let alone Jesus — into the middle of a spat with your sibling.
But Jesus doesn’t seem to get upset about this; in fact, he responds to Martha’s complaint rather gently and pastorally. As Luke tells us, “the Lord answered her, ‘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.”
And that’s it — the whole story — in just four verses.
A text like this is a reader’s dream because it’s so short (and doesn’t have any complicated words), but it’s an interpreter’s nightmare because it’s so thin on details. As a result, our imagination can absolutely run wild with it; indeed, it invites us to ask all sorts of questions and to infer all sorts of answers.
After Jesus says what he says to Martha, does she get mad as a hornet? Or is she a little embarrassed? Or does she simply nod her head in agreement with Jesus and admit that he is right? It’s tough to say.
Is this story a statement by Luke about the importance of women in the early church? Possibly. John’s is the only other gospel that actually mentions Mary and Martha by name, and there the focus is really on their brother Lazarus — you know, that guy who gets raised from the dead — but he’s nowhere to be found here. In Luke’s Gospel, however, these two sisters take center stage, which is great, even though one could argue that Martha ends up looking kind of petty and Mary kind of meek (it’s worth noting that she doesn’t say a word here).
Both Mary and Martha certainly do the work of disciples here — listening to and serving Jesus. Martha lives into the call to show hospitality — which was a big deal in ancient times and a really big deal for Jesus. And Mary sits at Jesus’s feet, listening to him intently — a posture in which we see Jesus’s male disciples many times throughout the Gospels. Women simply didn’t sit at the feet of the rabbi in those days, so this is pretty significant.
But when Jesus says that “Mary has chosen the better part,” is he declaring the relative unimportance of work in comparison to word? I kinda doubt it. After all, in the text directly before this one — the parable of the Good Samaritan — Jesus seems to say the exact opposite. There the lawyer asks for a definition of “neighbor” so he knows exactly whom he needs to love and Jesus tells him to figure that one out for himself. Then Jesus lifts up the Good Samaritan’s exemplary behavior toward his neighbor and tells the lawyer to “Go and do likewise.”
So which is it: work or word? Maybe it could be either, depending on the situation. As one of my all-time favorite preachers, the late Fred Craddock, once put it, “There is a time to go and do; there is a time to listen and reflect. Knowing which and when is a matter of spiritual discernment. If we were to ask Jesus which example applies to us, the Samaritan or Mary, his answer would probably be Yes.”
It’s like I said earlier — a short but rich story like this one invites our imagination to run wild; and there’s definitely a lot going on here. And so as I was reading this text over and over again this week — and allowing my own imagination to meander — something struck me. In this passage of very few words, the words that appear multiple times really stand out — words like “Lord,” “my” and “distracted.” And the relationship among these three words might provide a way of interpreting the meaning of this strange little story.
Luke uses the title of “Lord” three times to refer to Jesus here. We are told that Mary sat at the “Lord’s feet;” Martha addresses Jesus as “Lord” when she wants him to intervene on her behalf; and Jesus’s response to Martha is prefaced by the words, “But the Lord answered her…” This is not all that surprising since Luke’s number one mission throughout his entire gospel is to make us understand Jesus’s identity as the Messiah who is sent by God (and Lord is an honorific used to refer to the Messiah). The question for Jesus’s disciples (then and now) to consider is how they will choose to live their lives in light of understanding Jesus as the Messiah.
But consider what Martha does here. She goes about doing her work, cooking and cleaning, stewing and steaming until she finally blows her cork. And when she comes to Jesus in order to gripe, what is the focus of her complaint? She’s not worried about the quality of hospitality she’s able to show to Jesus and his friends; she’s thinking about herself and how the current situation affects her. Listen again to what she says: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to to all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” Me, myself and my is what’s on Martha’s mind here.
And it’s word noting that the word “distracted” frames Martha’s interaction with Jesus; Luke uses it at the start as Martha approaches Jesus, and Jesus uses it near the end as he laments Martha’s mindset. She’s distracted from what is of ultimate importance — Jesus and his teachings — by her own priorities.
So when Jesus says that Mary has chosen the better part by sitting and listening to him, it’s less about what she does and more about her motivation for doing it. It’s not a contest between words and works, but rather a statement about the importance of what compels us to say what we say and to do what we do. Jesus doesn’t ever tell Martha that what she’s doing around the house is wrong; his issue is that, in her fit of self-centeredness, Martha has lost sight of what really matters.
One could imagine a version of this story that goes very differently. Martha is cooking and cleaning to provide hospitality to Jesus; this is her form of ministry. As she works, Martha is thinking primarily about God and what she can do to help further Jesus’s work in the world. Mary is sitting at Jesus’s feet listening to him; she, like many of Jesus’s other followers, wants to be first among the disciples, so she needs Jesus to know that she’s really focused what he has to say. In this case, Mary, unlike Martha, is thinking mostly of herself.
Martha is toiling away in the kitchen and knocks a pot to the floor. The noise grabs everyone’s attention and Jesus stops talking; Mary turns to Jesus and says, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has caused me to be unable to listen to you? Tell her to be quiet in there so I can hear.” In this (hypothetical) case, I can’t help but think that Jesus would say that Martha had chosen the better part.
So perhaps the big point of this small story is this: Sometimes God calls us to sit and listen, sometimes God calls us to get out there and do, but God always calls us to be mindful of why we’re doing the things we’re doing, and to consider how they honor the call upon our lives to love God and our neighbor.
May we never lose sight of the fact that love is always the better part.