July 18, 2010

Scripture: Luke 10:38-42

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But 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.”

Sermon: “Sitting at Jesus’ Feet”

Have you ever invited someone to dinner at a certain time, only to have them show up early? Now, I’m not talking about close friends or family members—you can simply throw an apron on them and put them to work if they come early. I’m talking about somebody like your boss, someone you’re trying to impress—with them, it’s a different story. You may manage to smile, but you know all too well that despite your best effort to hide it, you’ve still got that deer-caught-in-the-headlights-oh-my-goodness-what-am-I-going-to-do-I’m-not-ready kind of look. You’re embarrassed, frustrated, annoyed, flustered.

This may well have been exactly how Martha felt in our gospel story when Jesus arrives at her home. And her feelings are, no doubt, all the more intense because Jesus does not simply arrive early; Jesus arrives completely unannounced, since the disciples did not call ahead on their cell phones to let Martha know he was on the way. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a lot of compassion for Martha. If Jesus, the Christ, the Chosen One of God, our Savior, Friend, Teacher, Lord, showed up on my doorstep unannounced, I’d be a little flustered, to put it mildly.

And it was worse for Martha, because in that day and age, the social norms were that much stronger. In that day and age a woman’s worth, literally, was measured by how well she kept the house and how good she was at cooking and serving a meal. If a woman was not a good cook or housekeeper, she would bring shame upon her family. And, I read somewhere once, that the stakes were even higher for a married woman. In that society, if a married woman was not a good cook, that alone could be grounds for divorce. (Thank God that’s not true today, or I would be in serious trouble.) So the pressure was on poor Martha. It was also on her sister, Mary, but Mary didn’t seem to care. Mary ignored society’s expectations, even flaunted them, by sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to him, like a pupil listens to a teacher, which in that society, was something that only men were supposed to do.

So, Martha is doubly annoyed. Martha is mad, not only because Mary has shirked her duty and doubled her sister’s workload, she has also violated a social norm. And further, Martha is indignant and hurt that Jesus is not doing anything to remedy the situation. In fact, Jesus does not even seem to notice that there is anything wrong at all. So Martha decides to give him a piece of her mind. “Lord,” she says, “Do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.” Did you catch that? Martha, ordinary human being, accuses Jesus, the Christ, the Chosen One of God, her Savior, Friend, Teacher, Lord, she accuses him of not caring, and then she has the audacity to tell him what to do. Open mouth, insert foot—Martha, what were you thinking?

Obviously, she wasn’t thinking—at least not about the right things. She was thinking about society’s expectations, about what she was always taught was proper to do for a guest, about how she could serve him. Unlike her sister, Martha did not stop long enough to listen to what Jesus himself was saying.

Don’t we all make this mistake from time to time? Don’t we, like Martha, sometimes get so caught up with what we think we should be doing for God, for Christ, for other people— that we miss what Jesus is saying to us, that we miss the joy of simply being in God’s loving, healing presence. Sometimes we get so caught up in doing, doing, doing, that we forget just to be. Not that there is anything wrong with doing good things for God and other people—it’s just that good deeds alone shouldn’t be our highest priority. Our highest priority, from which everything else in our lives should flow—is doing what Mary did. Sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening to what God has to say to us, cultivating a relationship with the living God, centering ourselves in God’s love.

Let me tell you a story. A young man by the name of Phillip went on a retreat to a monastery, where he spent some time talking with a wise, old monk, asking for advice, for direction. The young man talked about his angst, his desire to know God, to know God’s will for his life, and the monk simply listened. After the young man had talked for some time, he waited for the monk’s reply. The monk was silent for a while and then said, “As you describe your search for God’s will, this image comes to me: [To you] God is like a tape recorder full of instructions which you are trying to follow. But the tape recorder is in the next room with the door ajar and it is hard to make out all the words. You are trying to decipher what God is saying but you are always a beat or two behind and so you can never be sure you’ve got it exactly right.”

The young man, Phillip, was jolted by that image. He had never thought of his quest to know God in quite that way, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that the monk was right. That was the way he thought about God. “You’ve got it right; that is what I’m doing,” Phillip told the monk. The monk replied, “Let me give you an alternative. Imagine that God wants, more than anything, simply to be with you and delight in your presence. When you pray, instead of trying to listen to that tape recorder in the next room, sit in a chair and imagine God in a chair right next to you. Just let yourself be in God’s presence, without any agenda. Let God love you. See what happens.”

Phillip took the monk’s advice. He said it was awkward at first, and he found himself continually distracted, but he persisted. Spent some time every day, as he put it, just “sitting with” God.

Then Phillip says that “after several days of just sitting, very slowly, very subtly, I began to feel a Presence with me; a gentle, steady love that delighted being with me. The Presence stirred delicately around the edge of my awareness but would seem to recede if I tried to catch a direct glimpse of it. If I tried to clutch it, analyze it, make it do my bidding, it quickly vanished from my awareness. But when I relaxed and gave up trying to make something happen, I again experienced the Presence holding me, sustaining me, loving me in wordless silence. It felt like a force both outside me and within me—a great, inexhaustible power, yet intimately near and gentle.”

This loving force that Phillip experienced is available to all of us. I have felt it— and I am sure that you have too. Most dramatically I felt it one morning when I was sitting outside in my back yard trying to do what Phillip did, just sitting with God. I was sitting at my white, plastic table in my 3 dollar plastic chair, and I’d pulled up another 3 dollar chair right next to me and imagined that God had joined me at the table. I was praying a simple prayer, repeating softly the affirmation, “God loves me; I am good.” And then suddenly I felt a breeze softly caress the side of my face, like a mother gently touching a baby’s skin, and I heard in my head the words, “It’s true. God loves you. You are good. It is true.”

God’s unconditional love—it is what I experienced, what Phillip experienced, what Mary experienced at the feet of Jesus. It’s what Jesus wanted Martha to experience as well. It is what gives grounding and depth and meaning to our lives more than anything else in the world. It’s what draws us to God and Christ. It’s what changes our lives, heals our broken places, helps us overcome addictions and difficulties. May each of us take time this summer away from distractions, to sit at Jesus’ feet and experience God’s love over and over again for ourselves. And then, from this place of being centered in God’s love, we can let our good deeds flow! Amen.

Note: quotes here are from a book entitled, “Let Yourself Be Loved” by Phillip Bennett.