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Luke 10:38-42 · At the Home of Martha and Mary
Mary Has Chosen The Good Portion
Luke 10:38-42
Sermon
by W. Robert McClelland
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The Genesis creation narrative tells us that God created the world, and all that is in it, in six short days, a remarkable burst of energy even for God. Understandably, God was tired - an idea which has eluded learned theologians - but the author of the story insists that, "... on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work ... So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation (Genesis 2:2, 3)." Written on the first page of our Bibles and woven into the fabric of the universe is the divine provision for leisure time. The preacher's prayer falls on a sympathetic ear, "Slow me down, Lord. I'm goin' too fast. I can't see my brother when he's walking past. I miss a lot of things day by day when it comes my way. Slow me down, Lord, I'm goin' too fast."

Yet, slowing down and taking time off is just what we find so hard to do. We can easily empathize with Martha's plea, "Tell Mary to get off her duff and give me a hand." Preparing dinner for so distinguished a guest was worthy work. Clearly, Mary was goofing off. Our knee jerk assessment, therefore, renders the verdict, "That's not fair. Mary was shirking her responsibility and making more work for poor Martha. She was being thoughtless and self-centered. It wasn't very 'Christian' of her." Consequently, we are genuinely surprised and truly affronted when Jesus reprimands Martha, not Mary, and insists that Mary has, in fact, chosen the good portion.Martha's complaint from the kitchen reflects the commonly held assumption in religious circles that work is more godly than leisure. The young John Wesley is reported to have boasted, "Leisure and I have parted company." Indeed, our entire society views work as a virtue. The American free enterprise system is built on the assumption that work is the central purpose of life. To work is to be somebody. Apart from our work we don't know whO we are or what our worth is. Not to work is to be a cipher on the page of society's reckoning. I recently talked with a person who wanted to work with people. I suggested that perhaps some kind of volunteer activity might fulfill her need. But she said, "No. Working as a volunteer doesn't carry the same satisfaction or status that a paid job does." Doing something for nothing - even though we enjoy doing it - doesn't count for much in our eyes or that of society's. We need to be paid for it. The need runs deep in our psyche.

Most of us grow into adulthood with a poor self image. We do not like ourselves very much, so we have a compulsive need to earn our worth. Work is assumed to be the source of our identity and worth. The person who enjoys work may be even worse off than the person who finds it dull and tiresome because the tendency is to make work an all consuming passion. Some of us, literally, work ourselves to death trying to prove our value. A workaholic minister friend of mine delayed needed by-pass surgery until his vacation just so he could continue working; doing those "necessary things," without which his church and the kingdom could not survive. I suspect if he had died of a heart attack while in the pulpit he would have been regarded by his congregation and community as a Christian martyr. I suspect Jesus might have thought him a fool.

In any case, if work is the way by which we gain worth, then idleness is to be avoided. Extended leisure is not only the enemy of our capitalistic system but individual worth as well.

Ironically the whole goal of American industry is to produce more goods and services more efficiently and economically so that eventually we can eliminate jobs or spend fewer hours at them. Some surveys estimate that by the end of this century we will have a 20-hour work week. We are in the business of producing leisure. Unfortunately, leisure means time to think or worse: to feel. Studies indicate that many men and women seek moonlighting jobs not for economic reasons but to escape boredom.

Leisure, therefore, raises the identity question. As leisure time increases we may expect depression and anxiety to rise along with the incidence of attempts to escape such as drinking and doing drugs, suicide and crime. Extended leisure such as illness or retirement can be devastating and even fatal. A former parishioner dreaded retirement and was ill prepared for it. When the time came he didn't know what to do with himself. Gradually he underwent a change of personality. He disintegrated mentally as well as physically and soon died in a nursing home. His identity was tied up in his work.

Even vacation leisure time can be a problem for those addicted to work. One summer another couple joined my wife and I for a week at the lake in Minnesota. We had not been there 24 hours before our farmer friend was worrying about the corn back home. The weeds might be infesting his fields. His neighbors might be saying he was lazy. For him, the vacation was a bust. He and his wife went home three days early. He could not stand idle time.

So, along with Martha, we ride off into the sunset, singing, "Hi Ho! Hi Ho! It's off to work we go ..."

Some time ago a friend of mine came to me with the exciting news that he had just received a job promotion. He said it would mean professional advancement and a sizable increase in salary. Unfortunately, it meant leaving the community. "My family doesn't want to leave," he lamented. "We simply hate to leave our friends here, and the church which has meant so much to us. The whole thing is tearing the children apart."

As his pastor, I found myself reassuring him by saying "The kids will get over that. Children adjust very well. After all, that's a normal part of life."

Later, when I had a chance to reflect on our conversation, I wondered why we both had assumed that a promotion should be accepted when it is offered, even though it means tearing up spiritual and social roots? Is such dislocation to be expected, and accepted, as a normal part of life? It is precisely that assumption which is called in question by Jesus' reply to Martha.

One-fifth of our nation's population moves every year. This means, theoretically, that all of us can expect to move once every five years. If we do not move that often, someone is moving even more frequently to average out the statistics. Many of us have, in fact, moved within the last five years, and therefore, can remember the trauma such moves caused our families when we had to leave dear friends behind. Frequent moving has, among other effects, the unfortunate result of making relative that most important of human values, human relationships.

That we find new friends in our new location is a gift of God's grace. But notice, it is God's grace, not the company's. The company gets no credit for this gift, nor does it offer it. The system asks, indeed, demands, that we sacrifice human relationship for its sake. People are simply functions who fit into it and make the system work more effectively.

The subtlety of this self-interest appears when a business hires a person. It first develops a job description. The job description defines the function that a person will fulfill in the corporate structure. The company does not hire a person. It hires a complex of talents, abilities, and skills to fit the job description whith, in turn, makes the system operate more smoothly. The system cares only about itself and its self-perpetuation.

When we put the matter this way, we can see that there is something slightly hypocritical about the benevolent P. R. that would have us believe the company has our best interests at heart. It justifies itself because it makes a better brand of aspirin to relieve our headaches, or produces better shoes so we can live more comfortably, or develops a better deodorant so we can enjoy one another's company.

Of course, the company wants us to be happy and fulfilled people. After all, happy and fulfilled people are contented workers. Orwellian experiments have been carried out in which tiny electrodes were implanted in the brains of rabbits. By pressing a lever the rabbit could cause a minuscule amount of electricity to flow to its brain activating the so-called pleasure areas. The rabbits became so addicted to the self-induced pleasure that they seemed to live for nothing else. Happy rabbits and contented workers do not seek to escape the system. They do just what the system wants. Promotions, benefits, and salary increases are the carrots held out to workers so that we will produce more, contentedly, and loyally. And the carrots work as incentives because they bring pleasure and a sense of worth.

Brazilian theologian, Rubem Alves, suggests that we imagine ourselves locked in a room with no windows or doors. No matter how nice the room is furnished we will very quickly become bored and suffer claustrophobia. Inevitably we will begin to probe the walls and floor, looking for a way of escape. Then, Alves suggests, that we imagine ourselves in a castle with a thousand and one luxurious rooms, filled with surprises and pleasures. As we tire of one room we can move to the next, and the next, indefinitely exploring the castle. So absorbed are we in our search that we never notice that the castle, like the other room, has neither windows nor doors. We are equally a prisoner but it never occurs to us to escape.

Enslavement is the issue. And Martha was trapped in her virtuous castle of work fixing dinner for Jesus. Yet, it is Jesus who says the idle Mary has chosen the better part.

Every institution, whether it be government, business, or the church, develops a system to secure its own interests and survival. The extent to which a system will go to survive becomes shockingly evident if we remember the Watergate affair and the more recent attempts to cover up the illegal sale of arms to Nicaraguan contras. In both of these, any means - criminal or otherwise - were justified in order to perpetuate the system and guarantee its survival.

Similarly, the buck-passing and legal maneuvering employed by companies guilty of spilling oil, dumping toxic chemicals, spouting air pollutants, and over-cutting timber remind us that the modern corporation is not, and cannot be expected to be, a responsible institution in our society. For all of the self-congratulatory handouts depicting the large firm as a good citizen, the fact remains that a business exists purely and simply to make more profits, a large proportion of which it proceeds to pour back into itself.

Such an indictment may be worded more harshly than we would like to hear. But I know of no company that takes pride in submitting an annual report to its shareholders revealing mere business as usual. Each year it strives to show an increase in sales and profits. Businesses are self-serving. Despite the claim of a fast food chain that they do it all for us, the fact is that if doing it for us did not prove profitable they would change their motto and their policy.

The point to be grasped is not that business is bad or work is evil. The point is simply that those means for getting ahead provided by the company are not designed with our well-being in mind. They are designed with the system's good in mind; its survival and growth.

Mary chose to turn her back on the system. She chose to leave Martha with all those pots and pans in the kitchen in order to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to him. He had a lot to say about life and its meaning. He shared his thoughts, without remuneration or enslavement to a publishing deadline, with anyone not too busy to listen.

It is surprising how often the Bible commends those who take time off to wait for the Lord. "They who wait for the Lord," says Isaiah, "shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint (40:31)." In Jesus' eyes, work was not the fountain of life. Therefore, it could wait for more important matters. He was not, as the phrase diplomatically puts it, gainfully employed. Others, less diplomatic, might have said he was irresponsible and lacked ambition; a parasite on the human race - dawdling away his time on the hillsides with cronies, playing with children, talking about birds and flowers - instead of helping out in the family carpentry shop. Clearly, if Jesus had been born in our time he would never have been offered a promotion by his employers. He was not on a career track.

What ought to disturb us is that our faith calls this man Savior. He who did not fit in is called Savior. He who did not sacrifice anything to get ahead is called Savior. He who took time to consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air is called Savior. He who enjoyed living and spoke of its abundance is called Savior.

Why? Because he forgives our sins? Yes! But more important for our thinking here, he saves us from the authoritative claims of the system that says sacrificing our humanity for the sake of the system is the normal way of life. The system that expects us to fit in and go with the flow because that's the way it is.

Jesus is our Savior because he offers us an alternative. When Jesus was tired, he got away from people and took a rest. He took his vacations when he needed them, not when the company said he could. He left some of the pressing crowd unhealed, untaught. When Jesus saw children he gathered them around him. When people wanted to talk, he took the time to listen. The machinery of production ground to a halt because he believed we do not live by bread and paychecks alone. And he justified all of his actions by saying, "This is my Father's business!" Mary too had chosen the good portion.

Jesus is the Christ because he demonstrates a lifestyle that saves us from the system which would have us believe fitting in is more important than living. To call Jesus "Savior," is both revolutionary and liberating because to call him "Savior," is to say that his set of values is the divine definition of what is really important in life.

And - he was crucified because he did not fit into the system. It was the system that demanded his death; Pilate on hand to speak for the government, the high priest representing the interests of religion, the temple moneychangers speaking for the business tycoons. All of them wanted this threat removed from their midst. The crucifixion is the grating reminder that the systems to which we so easily give our allegiance are locked in a life and death struggle with him who represents Life.

The other day I was in an office building and saw an interesting bit of life take place in front of my eyes. A woman came into the office to talk to her husband who was sitting behind his desk. When she finished and was about to leave, she leaned over to kiss him good-bye. Nervously, he looked around and brushed her aside. He said it would not be appropriate to kiss her there. His perception of what was appropriate in his working environment disallowed him to relate to the person he loved most in life.

The crucifixion reminds us that the system and Life sometimes come at each other from opposite sides of the ring. The resurrection represents God's permission to say "No!" to the system's demands. The resurrection is God's vindication of Christ's values. We do not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Mary sat leisurely listening. And Jesus said, "Mary has chosen the good portion."

C.S.S Publishing Co., FIRE IN THE HOLE, by W. Robert McClelland