You know, sometimes it seems like the Bible says opposite, almost contradictory things.  You read a few verses that make it pretty clear what you should do and then, just a few verses later, it says something completely different.  Of course, lots of wisdom is like that.  “The early bird gets the worm,” we say in one breath.  That’s true, isn’t it?  But “haste makes waste.”  Also true.  “Keep your nose to the grindstone.”  In other words, work hard.  True.  But “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”  True again.  Last Sunday, we heard the familiar story of the Good Samaritan which tells us that it’s a good idea for us to get out there and serve other people.  Today, the scripture lesson is the story of Martha and Mary where Martha works hard and Mary does basically nothing, where Martha is the one who serves, and what happens?  She gets chewed out for it, I guess you could say.  She, says Jesus, should be more like Mary, doing basically nothing except listening to Jesus.  So which is it?  What are we supposed to do?  Are we supposed to serve or study?  Sometimes the Bible seems to say opposite, almost contradictory things.

           We’re going to look at that this morning.  But, first, let’s pray.

           I don’t know about you, but I think that poor Martha sort of gets a bum rap.  I mean, here she is, doing her best to be a good hostess to Jesus – to be the hostess with the mostest – and she ends up catching it.  She’s doing what she does best – serving – and she gets criticized for it.  Listen to the story and see if you don’t agree.  [Read Luke 10:38-42.]  Now, let me ask you, don’t you think that Martha sort of gets a bum rap in this story?

           Listen.  You and I know that different people have different gifts.  You can do some things that I can’t do and I can do some things that you can’t do.  And there are some people who can do some things that none of us can do.  And that’s good.  At least we say that that’s good.  You all can be grateful today that somebody else is playing the piano and not me.  You can be grateful that somebody else is counting the money after the worship service this morning and not me.  You can be grateful that somebody else is making the coffee this morning and not me. Different people do things differently.  Different strokes for different folks.  Different people have different gifts.

           Martha’s gift in this story is service.  She knows how to serve other people.  She has the gift of hospitality, at least until she realizes that she isn’t getting any help or any recognition for what she’s doing; then she gets a little feisty.  Martha is good at welcoming people into her home and fixing them a nice big meal.  She knows how to put together a good menu.  This is no down and dirty quick eat on the run kind of meal that she’s fixing Jesus.  This is no peanut butter sandwich that she’s fixing.  No, she’s got lots of things cooking all at once.  This is going to be a several course, nutritious and probably visually attractive meal.  We’re not told last names in this story.  Most Bible characters don’t have last names.  But I wonder if this Martha wasn’t maybe Martha Stewart.   She knows what she is doing in the kitchen.  It’s her gift.  It’s something that she does well.  She knows how to cook.  She knows how to serve.

           But she had a sister named Mary.  And where in the world was Mary?  She lived there, too.  Why wasn’t she in the kitchen with Martha helping her out?  This was no ordinary guest in their home.  Jesus was developing quite a reputation.  You didn’t want to throw just anything in front of Him.  You wanted to do things right.  It sounds like Martha was perfectly willing to take charge of the meal.  She was a “take charge” kind of person, at least in the kitchen.  But she didn’t expect to do everything all by herself.  She couldn’t do everything by herself.  She had a sister.  Where in the world was Mary?

           Sitting down in the living room paying attention to Jesus, that’s where.  While Martha’s slaving away in a hot kitchen juggling a dozen pots and pans, trying to make things just right for their important guest, sweet little Mary just sits there.  Well, Martha puts up with it for a while.  Maybe Jesus is just telling a short story and Mary will be done listening in just a minute or two.  After all, it would be impolite to not listen to Jesus when He’s talking.  But it goes on and on.  And before you know it, the only thing hotter than the stove is Martha.  Before long, she can cook the meal just by looking at it.  She and the meal have both reached their boiling point.  She can’t take it any more.  She drops a few hints.  She bangs a few pots and pans together to try to get Mary’s attention.  Luke doesn’t tell us that she does that but you just know that she does.  But Mary isn’t getting the hint.  She isn’t paying attention to anyone except Jesus.  There’s a racket in the kitchen but Mary is taking things easy in the living room.

           Finally, Martha can’t stand it anymore.  In frustration, exasperation and anger, she appears at the kitchen door and says to Jesus, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?  Tell her to help me!”  You know, you have to be pretty upset with a family member to get the guests involved.  But Martha had had it.  Mary wasn’t picking up any hints.  It was time to get Jesus involved in the matter.  It was embarrassing but it had to be done.  “Jesus,” she said, “tell sweet little Mary to get her…well, just tell her to get in here.”  Martha couldn’t stand it anymore.

           And that’s when she received the surprise of her life, well, maybe next to the time when Jesus raised her brother Lazarus from the dead.  Because Jesus did speak up.  Jesus did get involved.  But He didn’t talk to Mary like Martha wanted Him to.  No, he talked back to Martha.  “Martha, Martha,” he said – can’t you just hear the compassion in His voice – “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.”  I’ll come back to those words in just a minute.  But right then Jesus said something that either Martha didn’t understand and couldn’t understand or, if she did understand it, probably hurt her more than she had ever been hurt before.  “Mary,” Jesus told Martha – Mary who is just sort of sitting here – “has chosen what is better.”  In other words, just sitting there listening and doing nothing other than listening to Him was a better thing than slaving away all day in the kitchen “and,” he said, “it will not be taken away from her.”  You know, whether she understood those words or not, Martha probably dropped her mouth as well as her pots and pans when she heard Jesus say that.

           But, listen.  Jesus said two things that need to be understood in their right context.  He said that Martha was worried and upset about many things and that only one thing was needed.  You know, some people think that Jesus wasn’t just talking about all of the things that Martha was trying to do all by herself.  They think that Jesus could have been referring to the food.  From what Luke tells us, it sounds like Martha was busy fixing lots of different dishes for Jesus.  She was probably fixing some meat and some vegetables and some bread and a salad and maybe a dessert.  She was trying hard, apparently, to impress Jesus.  What Jesus may have meant when He responded to Martha was that she was simply being too extravagant.  All that He wanted, all He really needed, some people think He was saying, was a simple basic meal.  One thing or maybe just a couple of things would have been more than enough for Him to eat.  Or maybe Jesus meant that the thing that He needed most of all wasn’t food at all but somebody to listen to Him – to study under Him – like Mary had been doing.  Whatever the case, Martha was worried and upset about many things and the fact was that only one thing was needed.

           The second thing that needs to be understood – and, friends, this is important, very important, so listen up – is that Mary wasn’t just sitting there doing nothing.  Let me say that again because what she was really doing and what it looked like she was doing were two different things.  She wasn’t just sitting there doing nothing.  Fact is, she was doing something, perhaps just about the most important something that anyone could ever do.  Friends, listen.  The most important thing that you can ever do for Jesus is to sit at His feet and to study His words and study what it means to follow Him.  Yes, it’s important to serve Jesus like Martha wanted to serve Jesus.  But here’s the thing.  If you’re so busy serving in so many different ways that, to use Luke’s words, you get “distracted by all the preparations that [have] to be made,” and you start feeling alone and abandoned by others that you think should be there next to you and helping you, and if all you can think about is that you’re so busy trying to do everything at once – friends, if that’s how busy you are, then you need to take some time and just sit at the feet of Jesus.  The fact is, that is the most important part.  Sitting at the feet of Jesus – in other words, studying Him and His words, in still other words, worshiping Him – is something that we all need to do.  Mary wasn’t sitting there doing nothing.  She was doing what all of us, including the Marthas of this world, all need to do.

           Another woman named Mary, this one named Mary Anderson, wrote an article a few years ago called Hospitality Theology [in The Christian Century, July 28, 1998.]  This Mary understands what true hospitality is all about.  Listen to her words.

Southern women are great Marthas and proud of it.  Having been raised in this culture, I know that supper in a southern kitchen is a wonder to behold.  Those who have traditional southern hospitality refined to an art never sit.  They hover.  Plates are never allowed to go empty.  Guests are continually asked if they need anything.  In fact, many times the hostess will continue to cook all through the meal. 

This is one of the South’s mysteries.  The hostess keeps working, huffing around the table, a trickle of perspiration running past the string of pearls on her neck.  She misses all dinner conversation, all sharing of feelings and information, and gives herself totally to serving.

Also a wonder is the woman [she writes] who greets the guest unflustered at the door with the table already set, the kitchen spotless.  This hostess sits, talks, laughs and eats the appetizers with her guests.  She excuses herself, goes to the kitchen, and returns with food that’s prepared and ready to eat.  At dinner, she remains around the table, getting to know the guests, asking about their lives, sharing her own thoughts and feelings.

You see, friends, the fact is that this world needs both Marthas and Marys, people who know their way around a kitchen and people who know how to listen to Jesus.  If you are blessed enough to have someone who is both a Martha and a Mary in your house, then you are blessed indeed.

It seems to me that there are six quick lessons to be learned from this story.  You can follow along in the screen if you’d like.

First, service can be a gift.  It can also be a distraction.  Luke says that “Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.”  Listen carefully.  Sometimes people serve because they find that easier than worship.  Please don’t get me wrong.  There are lots of acts of service that take place around here and out in the world in Jesus’ name.  There are people in and out of the church all week long who do things to keep things running smoothly and to keep this building functioning like it should.  We need people to cut the grass around here.  We need people to serve on committees.  We need people to watch children.  We need people to count the money and sweep the floors and answer the phones.  But, friends, if any or all of that is done without a sense of worship, without a conviction that we do this stuff, all of this stuff, because we love Jesus Christ and give ourselves completely to Him, then we have all of our carts before the horse.  I hope you hear what I’m saying.  I am not telling you not to serve.  I spent this time last Sunday telling you that that’s exactly what you need to do to share Christ with the world.  But you need to serve knowing the One whom you do serve.  Without that, all of your service may be just a distraction.

Second – and I really believe this with all of my heart – when you do serve the Lord, for goodness’ sake, you really could say, for God’s sake and not be profane – when you do serve the Lord, don’t call it work.  It’s not work.  It’s a ministry.  Work is what you do to support your family.  Ministry is what you do to serve Jesus Christ.  You know, I’m not sure exactly why Jesus responded to Martha like He did but I wonder if maybe He was reacting somehow to Martha’s use of the word work.  “Lord,” she said to Jesus, “don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?”  She was treating her activity in the kitchen as some sort of daily toil instead of a ministry of love for her Lord. That’s important so let me say it again.  Martha was treating her activity in the kitchen as some sort of daily toil instead of a ministry of love for her Lord.  Listen.  That which we do for Jesus is not work.  It’s ministry – it’s really worship – because we love the Lord.  We may all need to work for a living, including me.  And some of what I do in and around this place is just plain work.  But I would hope and pray that the ways that we serve Jesus around here and wherever we may go in order to do that are really more of our ministry than anything else.  When you serve the Lord, it’s not work; it’s ministry.

Third, when you serve Jesus, do it to glorify Him and not yourself.  Do you see what Martha was doing?  Banging her pots and pans together, fussing and fuming, and then finally going to Jesus and saying to Him while she pointed her finger at Mary, “Tell her to help me!” – all of that was a way to focus her deeds on herself rather than on Jesus, on what she was doing rather than on the one she should have been doing it for.  When you go forth to serve Jesus, don’t be like Little Jack Horner saying to yourself and to anyone else who can hear, “What a good boy am I!”  Don’t point to yourself and your actions.  It’s not you that matters.  It’s not your actions that matter.  It’s Jesus that matters.  Jesus is all that matters.  When you serve Jesus, do it to glorify Him and not yourself.

           Fourth, what Jesus really wants from us, more than anything else, I believe, is our devotion and not our extravagance.  Martha was worried and upset, Jesus said, about many things, too many things.  Whenever you try to do too much, to have too many irons in the fire, or in this case, too many pots and pans on the stove when it’s simply not necessary, that is an unneeded and unnecessary and quite possibly a distracting extravagance.  There’s an old hymn called Jesus, Only Jesus.  What Jesus wants from us is our complete and total allegiance, our unadulterated and undivided devotion.  He does not want extravagance.

           Fifth, the best way to serve Jesus and to share Him with others is to give Him our undivided attention.  Notice that I said that that is the best way – not one way, not another way, but the best way.  Mary was commended because, unlike Martha, she had taken the time to sit at the feet of Jesus – which was, of course, the posture of worship, sitting at his feet – and simply listen to Him and learn from Him.  You know, what Martha was doing in the kitchen wasn’t wrong.  It might have been her way to show attention to Jesus.  It might have been an excellent way of showing Jesus that she really cared about him.  Problem was, it appeared like it was her way to focus the attention on herself and on what she could do and what she was doing.  It’s not wrong to serve Jesus.  What’s wrong is to do it with you and your efforts and your own reward in mind.  What Jesus wants most from us is for us to simply sit at His feet and worship Him – a worship that can and should move us to go into the world and serve Him.  The best way – not just one way or another way but the best way – to serve Jesus and to share Him with the world is to give Him our undivided attention.

           And sixth, it seems to me that the bottom line lesson from these few verses of Luke is that both service and study are necessary components of the Christian faith.  There is no such thing as one without the other.  They are two sides of the same coin.  And sometimes we will act out our faith by serving Jesus like Martha did while sometimes we will act out our faith by studying Jesus and listening to Jesus like Mary did.  The thing is that you need both.  The fact is, study without action is fruitless, but action without study is rootless.  Let me say that again.  Study without action is fruitless but action without study is rootless.  You know, in the gospel of John, Jesus talked about the vine and the branches.  He, He said, was the vine and we are the branches.  But both are necessary.  The vine dies without the branches and the leaves bringing life into the vine through the process of photosynthesis.  But the branches and the leaves die without the roots bringing life to them.  The point is that either without the other is dead.  There are lots of people who love Jesus but who never get around to serving Him.  And there are lots of people who serve Jesus but who don’t know Him well enough to really love Him.  If all you do is listen to Jesus and study His ways in church or by reading the Bible but you don’t then follow through on your faith and do anything about it, then friends, you have proven yourselves to be fruitless.  And your job is to bear fruit.  But if all you do is bang some pots and pans together to make a loud noise about all that you are doing to serve Jesus and you never stop to sit at His feet and learn to love Him, to really, really, really love Him for who He is and what He has given you and what He does for you, then you, friends, are in danger of being rootless.  Service and study are necessary components of the Christian faith.

Here’s the bottom line.  Jesus can’t afford for you to be fruitless and you can’t afford to be rootless.  You think about that this week.  Amen!