Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

Text:

Have you heard of television show, “The Walking Dead”? It’s a really well done show, but the reason it’s well done has nothing to do with zombies. The reason it’s well done is because it begs the question, “What is a human being?” And, “What is the point of merely surviving? Is merely surviving what we’re after?”

Merle, of The Walking Dead, does some bad things and says some bad things. Merle gets questioned about, “Why do you do the things that you do?” And he says, “I’m a God-forsaken mystery to myself.” He just does stuff.

We’re here today because we don’t want to just fill our lives with doing stuff.

Why are we here? Because we need to be. And we know we need to be. If we’re honest, we keep coming back because we know we don’t get the balance right. Today, we’re going to talk about balance.

Luke 10:38-42

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38-42)

The very first seems simple enough, but really there’s a lot more to say to us that what we might imagine.

We don’t know what it’s like to live in the culture that Jesus lived in. People 2,000 years ago lived an extremely hospitable life. It was common that your neighbors, your community, we in your home often. And it was expected, you always had supplies on hand, that if you had members of the community just drop by, that you prepared for them what was expected to be prepared. It was just a normal part of your life, and especially if it was a rabbi. That was almost an honor.

We really are the opposite of that in many ways. What if someone shows up at your house unexpected? We stand at the doorway to let them know not to come in! We pretend we’re not home!

We’re not called to be obey the norms of our culture. Their hospitable culture made it possible for God to dine with them. And our inhospitable culture makes us anti-social. Their culture was built for community. Our culture is built for individuality. And maybe that’s a bigger deal than what we think.

Jesus has tied himself to all of humanity, saying, “If you’ve done it to the least of these, you’ve done it to me.” So we can’t let ourselves off the hook that easily.

In verses 39-40 we get to the conflict of this passage.

We have to patterns or rhythms over all of our lives. We have the Mary pattern, and we have the Martha pattern. The Mary patterns represents stillness. Calmness. Waiting on a word from the Lord. And Martha represents activity. Business. Even working for the Lord.

Those are the two patterns. Stillness and activity. Neither one is wrong.  But I don’t think we get the balance right, and we have to be reminded over and over again of how this works.

But if we’re being honest, we favor Martha. In this story, I think a lot of us, we want to say that Martha is kind of right. Why isn’t Mary behaving herself? Why isn’t she doing what most women would be doing at this time?

So we do need to figure out why Jesus somewhat disagrees with Martha. And there’s a few clues.

1. Martha’s agitated when God’s with her.
2. The whole point of having a guest over is to make them feel welcome. But Martha she goes to Jesus and says, “I’m mad. Fix this problem.” She’s done the exact opposite of what you would want to do as a host.

We’re the same way. We’re so twisted sometimes. We spend thousands of dollars to go on vacations so that we can fight with our kids the whole way there.

Martha was distracted.

We live in the noisiest generation in the history of the world. We live in the most distracted generation. It’s not one age group. We are bombarded with distracted constantly. And we’re busy, stressed-out and caring about a lot of stuff that really doesn’t matter. We spend a lot of our lives distracted about nothing. We’re busy like Martha, worried about things that don’t even matter.

And then years go by, and the brunt of your life has been built on living like Merle and Martha. “I don’t know why I do what I do. I don’t know why I spend the amount of energy I spend on what I spend it on. I don’t know why I’m so stressed. I’m a mystery to myself. I’m just coasting letting life dictate the pace. Letting life dictate how I’m going to be. Letting my culture decide what I’m going to value.”

Martha was distracted.

Also, you do not go to Jesus to get Him to condemn someone with you. Never once in the gospels did Jesus bend the knee to someone wanting someone else to be condemned. Martha comes and says, “Mary’s wrong, Jesus! Be on my side! Tell her she’s wrong!” We do the same thing. And never once will it work out. And never once will He do it.

One of my least favorite phrases is “my side.” I will not play that game.

In verse 41, the Lord says to Martha, “You are worried and bothered about so many things.”

For the longest time in my life, anytime that I felt correction from God, I felt that like God swinging the cosmic gavel in the universe down on me. That I was just the lowly bad Christian that failed again. I’m a bad person. That’s how I experienced any correction from God.

But that is not what’s happening here. Jesus loves Martha. He loves them, and He loves you.

This is a gentle correction. Jesus loves her, and it’s completely gentle.

We have to be aware of what our imagination of God is like, and whether we’re telling ourselves the true story or not.

We can go to God wrongly. We don’t have to go to God rightly. In fact, we very rarely do. Martha went, and she was wrong, and she had the wrong opinion, and the wrong heart, and she had the freedom to go to God that way. And you do, too. Because that is who God is. He loves you.

We lean towards works because works are manageable. We all prefer the way of Martha. But the right recipe is that both you have the rhythm of Mary and Martha. Our work flows from hearing a word of the Lord.