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Choosing the Better Part Spencer C. Lawrence, Church of the Cross, Hoffman Estates, IL, September 17, 2006 Life is about choices. We make choices every day – almost every hour. We choose to get up in the morning and at what time. We choose what we will wear, what we will eat for breakfast, when to leave for work or school. Some days our choices are better than others; some days they are worse. But we nevertheless make choices. They are inevitable. Our lives, someone has said, are the sum of our choices. Mary and Martha lived together. They were sisters. They were glad to hear that Jesus and his disciples were coming to visit them. When they arrived Mary greeted them at the door. Martha was in the kitchen working hard preparing the food she was planning to serve. She shouted her greetings from a distance. Jesus and his disciples came in, found a place to sit and made themselves at home – just what Mary and Martha had wanted. Jesus began teaching. Mary lingered nearby before going back to help Martha. She became so enthralled with what Jesus had to say she found a place on the floor with the men while Jesus continued to teach. Martha noticed that Mary had not returned and she began looking around for her. She was not outside tending the goats. She was not gathering olives from the olive grove nearby. Then she looked into the front room and to her surprise she saw Mary sitting on the floor listening to Jesus. Martha was furious. There she was slaving away in the kitchen area trying to prepare a meal for Rabbi Jesus while Mary was doing nothing. The nerve of it all. She said nothing for a while. She just stewed in her own juices, and then, when she could stand it no longer, she went to Jesus and said, “Teacher, make Mary come and help me.” She didn’t speak directly to Mary. Instead she wanted Jesus to tell Mary to get back to her duties. Jesus disappointed her. He replied, “Martha, Martha, you are worried about many things. Only one thing is required. Mary has chosen the better part and I won’t make her give it up.” We don’t know exactly how this story ended. Did Mary get up and help Martha? Did Martha decide to come in and listen to Jesus herself? Did they all go out to eat? Luke doesn’t tell us. The point is that choices were made. Martha chose to be in the kitchen. Mary chose to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen. And Jesus chose to let Mary stay. What Martha chose wasn’t bad, was it? She wasn’t robbing banks or selling drugs. She simply chose to fulfill a traditional role of preparing and serving food. It was the main way women served Jesus in that day. Some women served by giving him money, but they were few and far between. What got Martha in trouble was that she became anxious about it. She was anxious that Mary was not doing what she was supposed to do, and that she Martha had to do it all by herself. How was she to finish? How was she going to be able to serve Jesus and his disciples all alone? We get anxious, too. Often our anxieties have nothing to do with serving Jesus or anyone else. They have to do with “success” or “survival.” We worry about our jobs – whether we will still have them two or three years from now. Whether we will be able to work until retirement. Whether once we retire what we have set aside will be enough for us to live on. We worry about our health. How long it will last? What we can do to make it last longer? Like Martha, we sometimes worry about whether or not we are doing what we’re supposed to do. Are we doing what other people expect of us? Are we living up to society’s standards? And sometimes, like Martha, we worry about whether we are serving Jesus in the way he wants. We worry about how well we are doing, too. Are we doing enough? Are we trying hard enough? Is there something more we could be doing? If so, what is it and where can we find the time to do it? Now there’s nothing wrong with this. Jesus commanded that we serve him and one another. We have work to do. But what was “wrong” with Martha’s request was that she was “anxious” about many things. Her desire to serve had become driven by worry. Many ministers and, I am sure, some lay people can fall into this trap – i.e. being anxious about serving Jesus, worried about doing enough. I still fall into it, though not as often and not as deeply as I did earlier in my ministry. Some of it comes from a desire to justify getting paid for what we do – to make sure you are getting your money’s worth, so to speak. Some of it – perhaps even most of it – comes from a belief that our success, and, with it the growth of God’s kingdom on earth, depends on what and how much we do. When I began my ministry in Columbus, Ohio, I served a downtown church desperately in need of redevelopment. When I was in seminary my wife and I attended a city church – located on North LaSalle Street, in which the pastor – Bill Leslie was his name – had taken a nothing church and with God’s help had turned it into a showcase for urban ministry. It was an amazing success story. Someone wrote a book about the church entitled The Church that Takes on Trouble. Some young people have wanted to be like Mike. I wanted to be like Bill. So I began my ministry there trying to discover how the church could serve the community. So we started ministries to homeless people: we gave them free lunches five days a week and served them breakfast along with a Bible study on Sunday mornings. We offered a weekday ministry to business people who worked downtown. It included lunch and a short worship service. We called it Sanctuary. The homeless came – in droves. Business people came to join us for lunch. I was actually becoming like Bill. But the people weren’t flocking to the church on Sunday mornings. So I tried to do more. We tried to establish a ministry with local commuter colleges in the area. Didn’t work. We tried to reach out to the unchurched. We sent letters of invitations to everyone in the phone book in our immediate area. No one new came. My anxiety to “succeed” in ministry almost alienated me from my wife and children. It came near to making me sick. I was so distracted I briefly considered leaving the ministry. I was anxious about many things, about the many ways to serve Jesus, and, for a while, lost sight of the one thing needed. Now when Jesus told Martha there was only one thing needed - the thing Mary had chosen, he wasn’t saying that Martha had blown it forever. In his response lay an implicit invitation to Martha to sit with Mary. So Jesus invites us to choose what Mary chose. What did Mary choose? Mary chose to sit at the feet of Jesus. She chose to spend her time in Jesus’ presence learning from him. She chose to be still and know that Jesus was telling the truth about God. She recognized that the one thing Jesus wants from us is not frantic activity to try to please him. What he wants are people who will learn of him – how he is “gentle and humble in heart.” He’s not a hard taskmaster standing over us with a whip trying to get us to do more, but rather that he invites all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens to come to him so he can give them rest. This doesn’t mean that we stop doing everything we’re doing. Rather, it means we do it with the expectation that we meet God in it. So what have you chosen? Maybe you’ve chosen to be involved in all sorts of activities in the church. One foot in this activity and the other in that. Serving on this committee and that ministry team. You have so many meetings and activities that you could be at the church almost every night of the week. In the beginning it was exhilarating. You could use the gifts for service God gave you. You felt needed. You felt important because you were actually making a difference. But now the luster has worn off, and you’ve grown tired. You’ve become short-tempered with your fellow volunteers. The thought of being at the church one more evening make you depressed. Your efforts and good intentions have made you feel weary in ways you never expected. You want to escape – run away. Leave. A better choice is to cut back on what you’re doing and remember the One for whom you’re doing anything at all. Or maybe all you’ve chosen is to show up for worship. You come hoping for an inspiring sermon – good luck. You come looking forward to hearing the band play or listening to the choir. You come thinking that we’ll sing your favorite hymn or song or that a prayer may capture what’s going on in your life or that you might see an old friend or perhaps find the love of your life. When none of those things happen – sometimes they don’t, you wonder why you came. Instead of relieving your stress and putting a spring in your step being here has been just another disappointment. The reality is that sermons, songs and prayers are just the form of worship. Jesus is the substance. Worship is an opportunity to meet the one who can give us rest. Or perhaps you don’t choose church much at all. Just getting out of bed of a morning and shuffling off to work is the best you can muster. You’re not so much distracted by serving the church or doing good as you are by the challenges life presents. You wonder if you can make ends meet. You worry about your job or your business or your retirement. You worry about your children and their future. Your health isn’t what it used to be and feeling good is something you’ve forgotten all about. Your past wasn’t all it could have been: you made major mistakes, did things you weren’t proud of, failed in ways you wish you hadn’t. Life itself is a huge distraction. It’s a burden. It wears you out. Instead of trying harder choose to trust in Jesus the rest-giver and burden-bearer. It’s so easy to forget the one thing needed, isn’t it? Jesus invites us to make a choice today. He invites us to choose to set aside our distractions and come to him so he can give us rest. Remember, God is closer than you think. | |||||
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