What is Your Duty?
Luke 10:38-42
July 22, 2007
For the past couple of years, I have been preoccupied with retirement. If you have spent any time around me at all, you know how I talk about our retirement plans all the time.
I am eight years away from retirement – perhaps eleven – depending on some decisions I yet have to make. The one thing that is honestly worrying me – just ask Christie because we sit in her office and talk about it all the time – is that Toni and I don’t have a place to live. For our entire married life, we have always lived in someone else’s house. So we are facing what so many of our brother and sister clergy face upon retirement – signing our first 30 year mortgage!
We have been shopping for a house or a condo. Do we want to retire in Florida? We don’t know, but perhaps. So we have looked at condos down there in the Fort Myers area. There is a big chunk of me that wants to go somewhere I won’t have to take my snow shovel. Do we want to retire in Fort Wayne? Perhaps. This is, after all, the town in which we were born and raised. So we have been looking at condos here. Do we want to retire in Indianapolis? Perhaps. With our kids scattered over the state; that would be sort of centrally located. So we have been looking at condos on the north side of Indy and up into Carmel and Fishers.
It suddenly occurred to me in the midst of this retirement planning: then what? Many of you have gone through this same thing. You spend your whole adult lifetime working: getting up every day and going to your job. Your day is spent behind a desk, in front of a classroom, standing next to a machine, working in the building trades, or as a mechanic, or in a thousand different other occupations. And then you retire. One day you’re working. The next day you’re not. I’m not sure how that is going to affect me. I haven’t yet answered the question, “What am I going to do when I won’t have to do anything?”
There are some great questions of life, and that is one of them. What am I going to do when I don’t have to do anything? There are some other great questions as well; questions which we can spend the rest of our lives discussing. How about these? Who would you rather have dinner with: Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, or Mary Kate and Ashley Olson? In a game of survivor, would you bet on O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, or Phil Spector? Who is Dennis Kucinich and why should we care? What was the greatest achievement in the administration of President Millard Fillmore? Are you a cat person or a dog person?
On a more serious level are these questions. Is the nature of humankind inherently good or inherently evil? Which is better for the society, money or morality? Which contains the most truth, Science or Religion? Is the death penalty an ethical option in a civilized society? Does life have meaning? Or the big question of all time: Does God exist?
There are some big questions contained in the gospels. Remember these. What must I do to inherit eternal life? Who is my neighbor? How are we going to feed all these people? Where are you going? How can we know the way? Why couldn’t we cast out these demons? What is truth? Where have they taken my Master?
The question that confronts us today is not spoken, but nonetheless implied in the Scripture lesson: Is it better to be Mary or Martha?
The story of Mary and Martha occurs in the tenth chapter of Luke immediately following the telling of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem when he stopped off at the home of Mary and Martha. Now, I am not sure exactly who these two sisters were. I doubt that they were the Mary and Martha who were sisters to Lazarus. Their story is told in the Gospel of John which places their home in Bethany, which was just a stone’s throw from Jerusalem. Coming back to the lesson for today, we see that at this point in the journey, Jesus is still in Galilee and remains there until at least chapter 17. So I don’t think these are the sisters of Lazarus.
Some commentators suggest that this Mary was Mary Magdalene, but it seems to me that this is conjecture because I don’t see the evidence for that. Perhaps this was Mary Magdalene, but we can’t be sure. Mary and Martha were common enough names in those days that it would not be inconceivable that there were more than one set of sisters with those names. But in the end, at least to me, the identity of the women in the story is not the important part. What is important is the message that comes from their interaction with Jesus.
Let’s remember what happened. As he entered a village, Jesus was welcomed into the home of a woman named Martha. Martha played the good host, the role expected of a woman in her culture. She knew what the demands of hospitality were and so was fulfilling them to the best of her ability. We can imagine her out in the kitchen, banging pots and pans, making sure that the meat didn’t burn and the gravy didn’t have lumps, shining the silverware, making sure the table setting was just right, and all the other stuff that preoccupies a good hostess.
By way of contrast, her sister Mary was in the living room, sitting at the feet of Jesus, trying to soak up everything he had to say and teach. Martha, to say the least, was miffed because she thought that Mary was, among other things, playing the role of a man, sitting at the feet of a rabbi. It certainly sounds sexist in today’s world, but back then, gender roles were well-defined and Mary didn’t seem to understand them.
Finally Martha’s goat had been gotten. She walked into the living room and interrupted the conversation. “Master, don’t you care that my sister has abandoned the kitchen to me? Tell her to lend me a hand.”
Jesus replied, “Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up over nothing. One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it – it’s the main course, and won’t be taken from her.”
One of the things that bugs me about reading the Bible is that I don’t always understand. The problem is not with the text, but with me. I’m just not always smart enough to figure out what is going on. The Gospel of Luke confuses me time and time again.
Last week, if you remember, we talked about the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which immediately precedes the lesson for today. After Jesus proved his point that the Samaritan was the one who was acting as a neighbor, he said, “Go and do likewise.” Go and do.
In the lesson for today, Martha is all about going and doing, but Jesus says that it is better to “sit and stay.” Mary, he said, had chosen more wisely. She had figured out what was essential; to sit and stay. So, is it better to be a Mary or a Martha? Using the Gospel, I can make a case for either one.
I believe that one of the best shows on the radio is “Speaking of Faith” on National Public Radio which comes on at 4 o’clock on Sunday afternoons. The show covers a wide variety of topics related to faith, values, and ultimate meanings in life. I have found that I have trouble listening on Sunday afternoon, so I go to the website, download the programs, and burn them on a CD which I can then listen to in my car while I’m driving.
Last week, I listened to a show that was recorded with Martin Marty, retired professor at the University of Chicago, who is one of the foremost commentators on the American religious scene. In this particular interview, he was discussing the relationship between Evangelicals and Mainline Protestants. At one point he said that he always tries to learn something when he interacts with others. He said if he gets into a debate or an argument, he never learns anything because he is only interested in winning. But if he enters into a discussion, he always learns something about the other’s position.
I have been thinking about that statement this week, and it occurred to me that it is better if I get into a discussion of the Mary vs. Martha issue rather than an argument with myself or with the biblical commentators. What, I wonder; can I learn by reading both their story and the story of the Good Samaritan? What, I wonder, happens when I juxtapose the two stories?
I guess that it all comes back to my original question. What do you do when you don’t have anything to do? The focus of the Protestant Reformation was on the all sufficiency of faith. “Faith alone” said the Apostle Paul. “Faith alone” said Martin Luther. We are justified by faith. Trying to work our way into heaven is as useless as trying to catch a bushel of wind or weigh a pound of fire. It can’t be done.
So once we come to have faith in Christ alone for our salvation, what then? We know we don’t have to do anything. What do we do when there is nothing to do?
Martha, following the story of the Good Samaritan, chose to go and do. She busied herself in the kitchen making sure that she was a good hostess for her Lord. Hospitality for the sojourner was, after all, a hallmark of the Law of Moses.
For Mary, it was important to sit at the feet of Jesus in order to soak up all she could. She sat in order to learn, to be nourished in his presence, and to be transported to the realm of the divine.
I believe that it is too simplistic to try to decide which the more important role is. Obviously, Jesus tailored his message to the particular situation at the time. For some people and in some circumstances, it is right to “go and do.” For other people and in other circumstances, it is right to “sit and learn.” It all comes down to balance in our relationship with our Lord.
As the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes said, there is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to reap, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to keep silence and a time to speak.
With Jesus, there is a time to go and do, and there is a time to sit still and simply be in his presence. Neither one is more important, but they are both incomplete without the other.
The challenge for us is to discern the right time. My guess is that we all find it much easier to be busy. We have all been raised within the Protestant work ethic which says that if we are not engaged in meaningful work, then we are wasting time. But that is not always the case.
There were two lumberjacks who kept a running debate going about which one was the better at cutting wood. So they decided to have a contest. For an entire day, they would each go into the forest and cut down trees and at the end of the day they would know who the better lumberjack was.
So they started off, both of them furiously attacking the trees with the ax. Every once in while, one of them would stop cutting. The other man continued to chop down trees non-stop for the entire day. At the end of the day when they piled up all of the cut trees, they discovered that the fellow who had stopped periodically had cut more wood.
The other lumberjack just didn’t understand. “I can’t figure it out,” he said. I cut all the day through and you were always stopping. How did you manage to cut down more trees than I did?” The other lumberjack looked at him and said, “When I stopped, I was sharpening my ax.”
There is a time to go and do. There is also a time to sit at the feet of the Master to sharpen our axes. One is incomplete without the other. It is not a question of being either a Mary or a Martha. It is a question of discerning when the right time to be one or the other is.
William Barkley, the great British biblical scholar said that there are two great days in the life of every person. Those days are the day we are born and the day we discover why we are born. We are born to sit at the feet of Jesus and discover the glory of his presence, and we are born to actively work for the kingdom here on earth. I pray that both of those attributes may be found in each of our lives. Our duty is not “either/or.” It is “both/and.” That is the balance that makes us whole.
