[Gen. 18:1-10a; Ps. 15; Col. 1:15-28; Lk. 10:38-42]
Peace to all of you who are in Christ. Amen.
How do we serve God?
Abraham ran to meet God and bowed low to the ground;
The psalmist led a seemingly blameless life;
Saint Paul suffered imprisonment;
Mary sat at our Lord’s feet, listening to him.
How many rules and regulations do you think you can live by?
365, a rule for each day of the year? Ten, two stone tablets? Two, both equally important? One Golden Rule?
Some churches and Christian organisations are ‘better’ at imposing rules on their members than others.
Some are wonderfully and chaotically rule-less, while others are very well organised, rigidly organised.
Some have more dogmas about sexuality and morality, others have more tenets on hierarchy and church structures.
And so on...
How do we serve God?
When hearing/reading our Gospel passage this morning, who of you feels that Jesus is being unfair to Martha?
There she was, making sure the honoured guest and his entourage were being looked after, while her sister seemed to be slacking off.
In Middle Eastern cultures, guests are considered sacrosanct; if anything happens to them while under your roof, or if they become ill or go hungry or thirsty or any other mishap befalls them, it’s considered a shameful failure, a kind of blasphemy.
When a guest or guests arrive, from the moment they step over the threshold, they become the centre of everything. You immediately drop what you’re doing -like Abraham did- and focus solely on their wellbeing, their happiness, their lives are all that matter.
Hospitality was and is considered a religious duty: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Hebrews 13 (v. 2) reads.
So, when the Incarnate Deity came to her house, you would expect Jesus to be more appreciative of Martha fulfilling this holy task, this holy hospitality the best she could.
After all, she was literally serving God, waiting on God.
And while she was busying herself organising the whole of her household around this famous guest and his friends, distracted by her work, her sister was mingling with them, listening to what they were saying, perhaps even interrupting and giving her own opinion on topics being discussed.
What she should’ve been doing, however, was leaving the men to their deliberations and help her sister pamper this prominent rabbi and his students.
But Mary chose not to stay behind the scenes like Martha did.
It’s not the last time we’ll encounter sibling rivalry in Luke’s gospel; in chapter 15 we read the parable of the Prodigal Son, his father and his older brother. The latter refuses to enter the house, refuses to join his father and brother because he too feels that all his hard work isn’t being appreciated.
His father then tries to convince him by pointing out that the two of them are always together, they can see each other and talk to each other every time they want to.
His younger brother however had been missing, gone, and now he was back with them, back in their presence.
Martha’s often admired and commended for her service and her practicality, but even so, Jesus tells her that her sister “has chosen the better path.”
We might want to find a compromise between the sisters, to reconcile the opposing sides, or look for some symbolic meaning in the text; we don’t want Jesus to be telling Martha off.
But his reply to her is pretty straightforward, tough he doesn’t directly critique her: her sister has judged the situation correctly, she however hasn’t.
Martha -at least in this instance- has gotten the wrong end of the stick, just as we so often get the wrong end of the stick.
How do we serve God?
Jesus was perhaps being stern with Martha, because he expected more from her; after all -if we take the passage from John to have preceded this one- at the raising of Lazarus, Martha had come out to meet Jesus while Mary had stayed at home, and it had been Martha who had shown great insight as she professed “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” (Jn. 11:27b)
Martha could’ve just enjoyed the present circumstances, that Jesus was there, and sat down and listened to him, taking time off all the duties she as a woman was supposed to carry out, a break from society’s dictates.
She could’ve ignored religious and cultural precepts and socialised with Jesus, her sister and the other guests, and simply enjoyed their company, just like they would’ve enjoyed hers.
God doesn’t demand rules and regulations from us, no good works, to be allowed to come into his presence and sit at his feet.
Too often, we overcomplicate matters, like Martha did, we become overzealous, neurotic even.
Too often, we think we have to earn God’s approval before we can approach him.
If God wouldn’t want us to approach him, to come into his presence, God would never have bothered being born.
James Alison, an English Roman Catholic theologian, has talked about faith as relaxing, in the sense that you relax in the presence of someone you’re certain is fond of you.
Presence means being together, there’s no distance, it means koinonia or fellowship: a fellowship of being physically close to each other, to God.
As if God is saying: ‘Relax, please just enjoy my being here, lets enjoy each other’s closeness. My closeness, my communion (communio) is unconditional.’
Martha, it seems, needed a reminder of her faith, of the fondness Jesus had for her, she had to be reminded of the affirmation she had previously made in the presence of the divine.
So, does this mean that there are no laws to approach God, to serve God?
At least not those imposed by society, politics, religion, gender inequality, sibling rivalry, etc.
How do we serve God?
How many rules and regulations do you think you can live by?
The Church very often gives the impression as if rules are the only thing that matter: tick the right boxes and you’ll get to see God.
The pressure, we know, is on, and it certainly seems as if it’ll never be enough, it’ll never suffice.
But for God it will, every time: ‘Come sit by me and listen to what I have to say. I’m glad you’re here.’