Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received 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 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; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:38-42

(Note: This is one type of sermon that combines material for children and adults in the same sermon. Sometimes - when done properly - this "works.")

The other day I discovered that my nine-year-old granddaughter was reading a book that she - and her mother before her - had read to her as a little child; the book is Charlotte’s Web. It is, you remember, the story of a pig, Wilbur, and his friend, Charlotte, a grey spider who happens to live above his pig pen in the barn cellar. The Zuckerman family owns the farm - and Wilbur, of course; they planned to turn Wilbur into pork chops, and that is where Charlotte went into action. She got the idea that if she could convince Mr. Zuckerman that Wilbur was an unusual pig, his life might be spared. So she wove a web one night - above his pen - and right in the middle of it she spelled out, in silk letters, "some pig." The next morning, when Lurvy saw it, he went for Mr. Zuckerman, who read the two words and said, "It’s a miracle." He got his wife and showed her the "miracle," and they decided to keep it a secret. But the word leaked out and soon it was in the newpapers, and before long people were coming from near and far to see Mr. Zuckerman’s pig.

When the initial interest began to wane a bit, Charlotte wove another word, "Terrific," over the pen one night, and then another word - and the excitement began to build again. Caught up in

what was happening, Mr. Zuckerman decided to take Wilbur to the county fair and enter him in the hog competition. And Wilbur won it, of course, but in the process he lost Charlotte; she laid her eggs, entrusting them to Wilbur to take them back to their home barn, and then she died. "No one saw her die" - except Wilbur, who kept his promise and later saw the eggs hatch. Three of the little spiders stayed with him, asked for names, and inquired about their mother. Wilbur showed that he really was "some pig," and "terrific," as people remarked about him: he was faithful to his promise to Charlotte as she was dying.

But you see, it was really Charlotte who was really special - "some spider" - but only Mrs. Zuckerman said, "That is some spider." She alone saw that the spider was the one who had worked a "miracle" in the story; she knew Wilbur for what he was - an ordinary pig whose life had been saved by the concern and ingenuity of Charlotte, who gave up her own life so that Wilbur might live. That sounds a little bit like what Jesus did long ago, doesn’t it, when he gave himself over to his enemies and to death on a cross so that you and I might have life?

Now, it would be rather easy to come to the conclusion that Jesus, in this touching story of Mary and Martha, was saying of Mary, "Some woman." Jesus rebuked Martha, gently, it seems,for his words were, "Martha, Martha, you are concerned about many things...," and he seems, at the same time, to be praising Mary. "Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her." Mary really looks good through Jesus’ words, doesn’t she? She was someone special; she did choose properly, it seems, between her duties as co-hostess when Jesus visited the home where she and Martha and their brother Lazarus lived. She wanted to hear what the Christ had to say, so she "sat at the Lord’s feet" and drank in every word. And that was too much for Martha. No wonder she complained to Christ, asking him to tell Mary to get to work, but he did no such thing. Instead, he commended Mary as if to say, "Some woman." She was.

Mary had a different set of priorities than did her sister Martha. Christ came before everything else; she had discovered a person with whom she needed to have a lasting relationship. He was crucial to her life and well-being, and it would seem she got as close to him as she could. And in that relationship, she learned much about God and his love, about her Lord and about herself and about life. She had not simply, you see, chosen a pattern of piety that could be expanded from listening to Jesus’ teaching to a life of prayer and devotion, although that could have happened. She knew that Jesus had something to say to her and that it was important to her future. In the movie, Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell, the "flying Scot" who was expected to run in and win the 100-meter dash in the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, refused to run because the heats for the 100-meter dash were on Sunday afternoon. His sister - they were children of missionaries to China, and they planned to return there - didn’t want him to run at all. But he said to her, "I believe God made me for a purpose; he also made me fast." And so he ran in and won the 400-meter run later in the games. Liddell might be accused simply of living by a rigid set of rules and laws because he would not run on the Sabbath, but more than that he had a relationship with the living Christ. In him he had discovered a purpose for his life, as the film suggests, for at the end of the movie a postscript told how he went to China as a missionary and died there at the end of World War II, and "All Scotland mourned for him." He had found what Mary must have discovered, a lasting relationship with the Christ that raises one’s life to higher levels of love and service.

Mary is the kind of person that all of us ought to be, persons who are able to sort out priorities in life and able to put first what should really count. And Martha? She’s so much like so many of us really are, especially in our relationship to God and others. The so-called "work ethic" of modern America could have originated with her, couldn’t it? But wasn’t she the type of hostess in whose home we would like to be entertained? At least, she was "some hostess" - and there had to be commendation in Jesus’ words, "you are anxious and troubled about many things ..." They were important; she wanted to be the best hostess and homemaker that she could be, didn’t she? She’s something of a model for finding one’s vocation in life and then doing it to the best of one’s ability - involving ourselves in our jobs in the quest for excellence.

But that isn’t enough, is it? Important as it is to the world and to our well-being, what we do is not the most critical matter in our lives. Meaningful work, financial security, and a successful career are vital, and we might make numerous contributions to humanity, but these ought to be connected to our relationship to God in Jesus Christ and not simply as "my work," "my career." Work and career might be the key to personal satisfaction and a sense of worth in life, but they don’t sustain in crises. And a long and successful career can suddenly be cut off through illness, economic recession, and, as so many fifty-five to sixty-year-old persons have experienced, by forced early retirement. Then what?

A couple of years ago ourS entire community was shocked when the news media announced that a prominent professional man who lived in a luxurious home in a wealthy suburb of St. Paul killed his wife and two teen-age daughters and then committed suicide. This was a close-knit and apparently a loving family. They all did things together; they were active in their community and in their church. They had no financial problems; the man’s practice was extremely successful, and they had all the money they needed. The murders and suicide were a mystery; there was no reason for this tragedy to happen. But it did. And when the police searched their home, they discovered a note that indicated that the man was afraid that he had terminal cancer. The week before he had a malignant mole removed from his face, but his physician told police that the operation was successful and full recovery was expected. The man himself wasn’t convinced because the note read, "Be sure to take close up pictures of those moles." The coroner’s autopsy showed no evidence of terminal cancer other than the mole that was removed the previous week. When he needed someone - and especially needed the comfort and assurance of God - the man had nothing to fall back upon that would sustain him, and he strangled and bludgeoned to death the three people who were closest to him before he asphyxiated himself in the garage.

But, "Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her." Martha, however, "anxious and troubled about many things," had locked herself into a style of life that restricted her relationship with God and perhaps with other people, too. She was building a kind of cage around herself, and limiting her opportunities for growth and the development of important relationships. Jesus wanted her to see how she was cutting herself off from God when she had a unique opportunity - the Son of God was guest-teacher in her home and she was locked into her kitchen-chores. A convicted murderer who had spent close to two decades in jail recently described what it is like to be put into - and have to live in - a 6’ by 9’ cell: "You feel like you’re in a cocoon with no means of communication. You are totally isolated, really ... You know something is going on out in that world because the wall is how far away? And on the other side of the wall life is going on. Your children are there, your friends are there. There’s activity ... books to read, music to listen to ... plays to go to. You can’t do any of that. You can’t even know if it is going on." He is supposed to spend his life, the rest of it at any rate, in that sort of situation. Oddly enough, so many people choose the wrong priorities in life and fashion, as did Martha, a limited style of living that is almost like a self-made prison or jail-cell.

Martha was troubled and worried about preparing and serving dinner to the Lord; she wanted things to be perfect, and she needed help, but she didn’t get it from Christ. "Mary has chosen the good portion," he told her, "and it will not be taken away from her." Scott Nearing has been called the "father of modern ecology." Fifty years ago he concluded that the course of things - life - had to be reversed, but all of his efforts to change things for the better had failed up to that point. He lost his professorship at the University of Pennsylvania because, in a study of the city government of Philadelphia, he had uncovered corruption, and even his pastor deserted him when he was attacked because he - the well-known Dr. Russell H. Conwell of the famous "Acres of Diamonds" speech and pastor of the Baptist Temple - sought financial support from the city for the university he had founded. He obtained a teaching post at the University of Toledo but was fired when he was tried for treason - though found innocent - during World War I. He had to publish his own books to circulate his ideas, but he didn’t give up his convictions or his faith. In 1932 he and his wife bought some acreage in Vermont, built their own home and lived off the land. They divided their days into four hours of "bread labor," four hours of creative effort (he wrote over fifty books and built a couple of houses and other buildings), and four hours of being with people. Dr. Nearing and his wife have lived that way for half a century, and they have been happy, fulfilling years, but it might have been different. He might have put a gun to his head when his pastor declared that Philadelphia was "the best governed city in the country." He never went back to the Baptist Temple, where he had served as Sunday School superintendent as well as a faithful member, but he never relinquished his relationship with God and his faith. Not long ago, one of the first books he published, Living the Good Life, was rediscovered and republished by a well-known firm; it has sold over two-hundred-thousand copies, but more than that, it is vindication of his convictions and that he had "chosen the good portion" - a relationship with God and not just a good way of life, and it wasn’t taken away from him.

But the story of Mary and Martha is not simply about "some woman," is it? It is about "some man," Jesus Christ, who stopped at that home in Bethany that day and released a woman from the bonds that she had fashioned for herself. His was a liberating presence, wasn’t it? And he did it with a few kindly words, enlarging her horizons, correcting her good intentions, and inviting her to enter into an enriching and lasting relationship with himself and the Father. It is the Christ who is unique - "some man." He is the source of what we call "life" and he is the one who offers to all of us this lasting relationship with the Father through the Word and the Spirit. He not only offers and gives us the gift of the Father in himself, but he sustains it in us as long as we live.

Charlotte’s Web is a delightful and much loved story, isn’t it? But it is only a kind of fairy tale about an ordinary sort of pig and an extraordinary spider, who gives all she has, including her life, so that Wilbur might be spared from certain death. It is a children’s story, beloved by children of all ages, and perhaps it is because we know a Story so similar to it in the Bible - this little story told only by Luke in the four gospels - that we may read too much into it. But the story of Mary and Martha and Jesus is for all of us, and when we read it and hear it again and again, we know that God has sent us "some man" - his Son - to save us from sin and death. He was born in a barn, the kind of place where Charlotte died, but he died on a small hill - on a cross - "to draw all men to himself" and begin an everlasting relationship with each of us. Amen.