Are You a Mary or a Martha? | Sermon for July 17, 2022

As we continue to alternate building locations, this week’s worship was at Living Hope Lutheran Church in Saukville. The Gospel reading for July 17, 2022, is the familiar story of Jesus visiting the home of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42.

I think I’ve preached on this text more than any other, since it was my very first sermon in my first call, again for an outdoor confirmation service in 2020, and just a couple months ago for my final sermon as I concluded my time at St. Peter (although I was gone the week it came up in the lectionary in 2019). A little bit of this sermon is borrowed from those, but hopefully most of it is fresh! Thanks to the ELCA Clergy Facebook group for some helpful reflections on liberation for both Mary & Martha. 

Here’s the video of the entire service and audio of just the sermon:

Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

Have you ever done a personality quiz? I know there are serious ones like Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram, but I mean the silly ones. I think they used to be in magazines, but now you can find probably literally millions online on sites like Buzzfeed.

Here’s a few I saw this week: What emoji matches your personality; which Golden Girls are you; are you an introvert or extrovert based on your favorite foods, all the way to the generic “This Color Quiz Will Reveal a Deep Truth About You.”

And my personal favorite, “Everyone’s Personality Matches A Type Of Egg And We Know Yours.”

The idea is—well, the idea is to get you to waste time looking at ads—but the claim is that if you learn about your unique personality type, you’ll learn to understand how other people are different from you and how to get along with them better and you’ll end up living a more fulfilling life. At least, that’s the goal of the serious ones—I have no idea why I need to know my personality is like a poached egg!

Today’s Gospel story about Jesus visiting Mary and Martha would work well as a personality quiz, right? Do you like spending time reading theology books or watching YouTube tutorials on how to remove tough stains?

Do you show you care for someone by taking them out for coffee, or by mowing their lawn?

Do you prefer spending your energy studying ideas and beliefs, or would you rather focus on skills and actions? (That last one was actually a question on the call committee’s church profile paperwork!)

One way of looking at the story is to compare Mary and Martha. Mary sits and listens, while Martha does all the work, even complaining to Jesus that Mary’s not doing her part.

And I don’t want to vilify Martha—she has a point! Things need to get done. Sure, sitting at Jesus’ feet is nice, but someone needs to get the food ready.

Sometimes, this story is used to pit people against each other. All you Martha-personality people make sure sign up to make coffee and provide refreshments, while you Mary-type people, plan to stay for fellowship conversation. Oh, and by the way, remember Jesus says the Mary people have chosen the better part!

That sort of dividing and pigeon-holing people is misunderstanding the story.

Remember, right before this reading, earlier in the same chapter, Jesus told a parable about a good Samaritan. We just heard it last Sunday. Jesus describes a man who shows love to his neighbor, who does the work, does something tangible to help someone in need, and then Jesus tells us to go and do likewise.

As a church, we’re here to serve our neighbors, to make a difference in the world in Jesus’ name. Martha is doing well by serving. So what does Jesus mean that Mary has “chosen the better part”? What happened to loving your neighbor as yourself?

I wonder if Martha has forgotten why she’s doing what she’s doing, why she’s serving. I wonder if she thinks that doing tasks like preparing food and cleaning is her primary purpose, if maybe she’s started to think her value comes from what she does, instead of who she is as a child of God.

I’ve met a lot of people here over these last two months, and one of the first things people say about themselves is what they do, what their job is or was. I do it too. It’s how we introduce ourselves. That’s why we need to stop and sit at Jesus’ feet, to hear that our value in God’s eyes doesn’t depend on how much we do or don’t do.

As church congregations, the heart of our mission, the center of everything we do as the body of Christ, is worship. We gather and sit at Jesus’ feet.

We praise and give thanks, listen to the scriptures, experience Jesus through preaching, baptism, and communion. We offer what we’ve been trusted with for service to our neighbors, and then we go back out into the world.

We do things like make hats and gloves, support Family Promise, and collect for veterans and food pantries. We have a day of service coming up. We give away soup, and provide childcare, and send quilts and baby kits. We do many things, and there’s always more we could do. But before we do anything, we are called to sit at Jesus’ feet and worship. We listen and give thanks for what God has done for us, for Jesus claiming us as beloved children of God.

We need to gather week after week in worship to hear the message of God’s love again and again, so we don’t get so caught up in our work—even in good work—that we forget God loves us for who we are, not what we do.

Our first task as followers of Jesus, our first call, is to listen to what God says about us. As Paul writes, the One who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation, the One who holds the cosmos together, has come into this world and claimed you as beloved. Jesus has reconciled us to God, welcomed us into the mystery of God’s love.

The God who has stepped into time and space, the God who has entered our world, has something to say about you. To you.

And listening to God’s claim on your life has consequences. Knowing your true identity in Christ shapes your priorities, your calendar, your credit card statement, the causes you support, the jobs you work.

As redeemed children of God, we are called to act, to do something, to love our neighbors, to get involved. There are many tasks to do.But all of it is a reaction to what God has done for us. And before we can react, we need to know the One who has acted.

We are not divided into Mary’s and Martha’s. Yes, people have different love languages; some people tend more towards expressing love by quality time and others through doing acts of service. But as followers of Jesus, all of us are called to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen. We are all called to live out our faith in service and good works.

You see the problem with reductive personality quizzes? It’s a both/and, not an either/or.

Don’t let anyone tell you you’re a Martha and confined to particular tasks, or a Mary and therefore somehow better than others and excused from anything practical. You are called to discipleship, set free to live in God’s love.

Mary is a great example of faith, because she’s willing to pause from the work that’s going on and to take time to just be with Jesus. She doesn’t let anything get in the way of her listening to Jesus.

And her sitting at Jesus’ feet is a radical, even scandalous action. In that culture, people assumed being a student and sitting at a teacher’s feet was something only a man could do. Women were supposed to be taking care of the work so the men could learn, yet Mary crosses that boundary, and Jesus welcomes her.

It’s easy to read Martha as complaining, annoyed at Mary for leaving her with all the work. But it’s possible she’s trying to save Mary from embarrassment, trying to take care of her sister. And just as Jesus doesn’t condemn Mary and send her away, Jesus also does not condemn Martha. Instead, Jesus invites her into discipleship. Jesus liberates both Mary and Martha and calls them to listen before serving.

Later in the story, when Jesus visits Martha and Mary again after the death of their brother Lazarus, Martha will make one of the greatest declarations of faith in the Bible. She says to Jesus, “Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” (John 11:27) Martha too is a powerful example of discipleship for us.

I appreciate Mary and Martha because they demonstrate some of the tension we run into as Christians, the tension between listening and studying in church, and serving and working in the rest of our lives.

We are called to serve and act in Jesus’ name out of liberation and gratitude, not obligation. The work we do for Jesus is not transactional. God’s love does not depend on what we do. But everything we do depends on God’s love.

Beloved of God, may you know the love of God for you. May you know God’s presence with you in the listening and in the serving, in the morning, and the midday, and the evening, as we’ll sing in a moment. And may God’s love for you set you free to love and serve your neighbors.
Amen