Intro
The puzzling response of Jesus to Mary and Martha leave us scratching our heads. Our Lord Jesus praises the contemplative, dreamy-eyed Mary, sitting at His feet. He scolds the busily working Martha.
What gives? Martha was the one who was busily looking after Jesus’ needs and His well-being, not Mary! To us, the way Jesus responds is backwards. To our way of thinking, Jesus has it all wrong.
If it wasn’t Jesus responding in such a way, we’d give Him a piece of our mind. We’d accuse Jesus of promoting cheap grace. We’d say that He wasn’t encouraging the faithful to get off their flabby bottoms to work in His Kingdom.
Why would Jesus scold Martha and encourage Mary? Throughout His travels, He would say over and again that true discipleship consists in both hearing and doing (Luke 6:47; 8:15, 21; 11:28)? Why doesn’t Jesus, who is so compassionate toward the downtrodden, sympathize with Martha?
Had I been there, I would’ve turned it around. I would’ve had Jesus praise busy Martha and scold idle Mary. Chances are that’s the way you’d have done it too.
Main Body
After all, Martha’s doing much work--good, hard work! She focused her enormous energies on Jesus’ comfort. She straightened the guestroom. She went off to market to select the best products and the needed foods for the entrée. Everything must flow together just right. The side dish must be warm. Only such and such a vintage of wine would do. She was a whirlwind. She’s the church member Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church wishes they had scores of!
But with Jesus, you don’t get to call the shots, and neither do I. He calls the shots, and He must have had a good reason for saying what He said.
So let’s be sure to get the full force of what Jesus wants us to have. The Martha that Jesus scolded was not a bad woman. She wasn’t a slacker or some loser. She was a close friend of Jesus. She loved Him. Martha was a tireless worker for God’s Kingdom. And that’s what was wrong with her. She was working too much! Yet, Martha’s action was not bad--at least not in itself.
To put the events in today’s context, Martha wasn’t sleeping in on Sunday morning instead of going to church. She wasn’t out on the golf course. She was if anywhere, in the church kitchen preparing the church dinner.
Martha was working for a good cause. She simply meant to serve the Lord. After all, isn’t that what He wanted? Yes. Jesus said time and again that His followers should serve Him. The Lord wanted activity--and she was doing it!
To all appearances, Martha was doing what was right. So sure that she was right, Martha even asked Jesus to send Mary into the kitchen. Yet, what did Jesus do? He scolded Martha for doing and praised Mary for receiving. What a surprising turn of events!
Sometimes a person has to choose between two evils. But Martha, we might say, had a choice between two goods. There was the good of serving the Lord. And then there was the good of sitting at His feet and receiving Jesus in all His fullness. Mind you, both are good. But which is better?
So get this--and let it be forever etched in your memory--the good of receiving Jesus is better than the good of serving Him. Yes, the good of receiving Jesus is better than the good of serving Him.
Hurriedly working for Jesus and hearing Him in the preached Word are both good. But hearing Jesus in the preached Word is better. Serving others and receiving Jesus in His Supper are both are good. But receiving Jesus in His Supper is better. Actively working for the Lord and passively receiving His Word are both good. But if forced to choose, it is better for the Christian to be passive and receive from Christ.
This truth is so deep that we even have to let it rewire us when we come to worship in the Lord’s house. We naturally want to be a Martha when we come to worship, to be doing stuff for the Lord, just like her. We naturally want to feed ourselves. Yet, Jesus never says anywhere, “Flock feed yourself.” Our natural understanding of worship is all wrong. We think that worship is about all that we do for God. But that’s wrong: Worship is about all that God does for us.
Jesus says:
Don’t just do something, sit there. During this sacred hour, I, your Lord, am doing the work. If anything, your hankering to do something during the Divine Service displeases Me. I am the one who feeds you through the read Word, through the preached Word, through the Word of absolution, and through the Word in the Lord’s Supper. It is only after I have fed you with My Word, then you are to serve, as you go from this place into the world.
This truth is so serious that Jesus broke all the conventions of His day to drive that point home. The Judaism of Jesus’ day did not forbid a woman to learn the Torah, God’s revelation to His people. But it was unheard of for a rabbi to allow a woman to sit at his feet. Yet, that what’s Jesus did!
Judaic tradition has many sayings about teaching a woman as if she were a man. “The words of the Torah . . . should not be handed over to a woman.” “The man who teaches his daughter the Torah teaches her extravagance.” With Jesus, drinking Him in and learning His truths are for both men and women, young and old, Jew and Gentile. That’s why Jesus praises Mary for sitting at His feet, where she will receive Him and take in what He will give of Himself for her.
Now, to be sure, the Christian both receives Jesus and lives out the love of Jesus in his life. The Christian both works and worships, labors and listens, serves and is served. That’s the ideal. That’s the way it should be.
While doing both, you are to remember Mary and Martha. Yet, you are to be ever aware that worship is more important than the work, that listening to Jesus is more essential than laboring, that being served by Jesus is more blessed than serving. And should a conflict ever arise between these two good things--serving the Lord or hearing His Word--the Christian, like Mary, chooses the good part and sits at Jesus’ feet.
Why was Mary’s the good part? Well, Jesus said so. And that settles the matter! But this wasn’t some arbitrary, random decision of Jesus. If we search the Scriptures, we soon discover that He had a good reason for approving Mary’s action. And that reason is this: You can’t serve the Lord unless He first serves you.
You can’t do anything good in God’s eyes--unless the good Lord first comes to you through Word and Sacrament and makes what you do worthwhile and good. You can’t be a man or woman of God, unless you’ve first got God, and you only get Him through Word and Sacrament. You can’t be a fruit-producing branch unless you’re first connected to the Vine. You can’t be a Martha--at least an acceptable Martha in God’s eyes--serving as you should unless you’re first a Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet.
Conclusion
In the Christian life, there can be no output without input. It is the input that comes first. We know someone can do what the world says is good--even without being a Christian. Our world is filled with people doing what we call “good” without being Christians. Our world is filled with people working busily and engaged in good causes.
But without Christ, their efforts--no matter how good--fall short of His standards. For we need to remember that God doesn’t simply want us to be busy doing what we think is good. We can be Pharisees and do that. No, God is more concerned that He does His good work for us, in us, and then through us. Indeed, it’s Christ for us, in us, and then through us. This Mary knew well. Amen.
