One or the Other?

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 52
Luke 10:38–42

When I am fully alert to whatever or whoever is right in front of me; when I am electrically aware of the tremendous gift of being alive; when I am able to give myself wholly to the moment I am in, then I am in prayer.

Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World

Now that we have been in ministry together for more than five years, I bet you can imagine with whom I have always sided in this story of Mary and Martha. Now I purposefully pit them one against the other, because unfortunately Luke seems to set up the story that way—a story in which you take sides. You are either a Mary or a Martha. At least that is the way I have always heard it in women’s Bible studies. And I bet I am not the only woman who has experienced that.

With this story, we are so often given that dichotomy, that false binary choice. You are either one or the other. And not surprisingly, perhaps, I have always said I was more like Martha—going from one thing to another—rather than Mary, still and contemplative. The words Luke uses to describe Martha’s behavior have always fit with the pattern of my life.

Speaking of the words Luke uses, let’s do a little Greek word study. The NRSV says that Martha was “distracted” by her many “tasks.” That interpretation isn’t great. First, we will start with “distracted.” The Greek phrases used indicate she was not distracted, but she was in an uproar. The word has the connotation of being pulled and dragged in different directions at the same time. It has the same stem as our words spasm and spastic (D. Mark Davis, www.leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com). Another way we could state it is that the work in which Martha was engaged totally “discombobulated her” (D. Mark Davis).

Let’s also pause at the word for tasks. We usually assume that Martha was busily preparing a meal for Jesus and whomever else was with him, banging the pots and pans in the kitchen as her frustration grew over Mary’s inactivity. Yet neither food nor a kitchen are mentioned anywhere. Rather, the words used for “tasks” are forms of the word diakonia, service—words related to ministry (Holly Hearon, “Luke 10:38–42, Interpretation, vol. 58, no. 4, October 2004, pp. 393–395). A diakonos, a deacon, was a leader in the early church, just as they are today. In Luke–Acts, words related to this noun refer to a variety of duties—everything from table service, to financial or material support, to the proclamation of the word, to ministry in general. It is a real possibility that Martha might not have been rushing around trying to get a meal together for dinner.

Rather, she very well may have been rushing around because she was trying to get chairs set up for the house church she financially sponsored, or finish the Sunday school lesson for the children, or organize the clothes for those who needed them, or maybe even write a short sermon. Those important activities, the work of ministry, were what had Martha in an uproar, totally discombobulated.

Finally, with the way Luke writes the story, we can assume the weight and responsibility of all of those important things caused Martha great anxiety, almost like she was having a kind of panic attack. We come to that rather dramatic assumption when we listen to the words Jesus used in his response to her. Again, the Greek is more useful. The two verbs Jesus uses to respond to her are translated in English as “worried” and “distracted.” But when we put those two words together with all of the nuance found in the Greek, we end up with more of a sense of radical anxiety. We could translate Jesus as saying, “Martha, Martha, you are highly anxious about many things.”

You are highly anxious about many things. I must admit that this week, when I discovered that more nuanced translation of Jesus’ words, I had to stop studying for a while and just breathe, because I realized that I, too, was feeling highly anxious about many things, to an even more heightened degree than normal. And I know I am not the only one in this church sanctuary today who has been feeling that way. In the last few days, I have spoken with quite a few of you over cups of coffee or water who have said something similar. Aspects of our individual lives and our life together intersecting with the happenings in our world are sending many of us into Martha’s realm—feeling highly anxious, emotionally and spiritually in an uproar of sorts.

Speaking for myself, I’ve felt highly anxious for our church members of color who are hearing again in the public arena, “Go back to where you came from” or “Send her back” or “Love it or leave it.” Friends my age who are African American, Asian American, Jewish American, etc. have told me exact moments in childhood and adulthood when those kinds of racist taunts have been hurled at them, causing them to become highly anxious, making them fear for their safety, planting a seed of doubt if they really belong or not. And that is not just the experience of my age forty-something friends.

Midweek the New York Times asked for readers to send in their experiences of hearing those words in their own lives, and in just a day or so they received responses from more than 16,000 people—all speaking of those events as traumatic and how the language heard this past week was dredging it all back up again. As a people of Christian faith, we must be clear, if for no other reason than given the history of these phrases, that those of us who are white cannot tolerate other white people saying these things, for if and when we do so, we are denying the God-image in another person. We are saying, “We count but you do not.” We are not loving our neighbor as ourselves.

As the editor of the evangelical Christian magazine started by Billy Graham himself, Christianity Today, just wrote, “If white Christians wish to stand on the bridge with brothers and sisters of other colors and backgrounds, they need to stand with them first in the foxhole. We should all stand so close that attacks on ‘them’ are attacks on ‘us,’ until there is no longer a distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us’ remaining” (Timothy Dalrymple, “On Court Prophets and Wilderness Prophets: Christian Responses to the President,” Christianity Today, July 19, 2019). That is coming from someone who labels himself a conservative evangelical Christian. I point that out because I do not believe this is a partisan issue. But I do believe this is a faith issue. This is a gospel issue. But it is also just one example of what some of us have spoken about over this past week. Like Martha, many are highly anxious by the plethora of things going on in our world that directly impact our ministry, our congregation’s life together, and our Christian witness.

And that anxiety, that sense of uproar and discombobulation, is why we might be both challenged and drawn to Jesus’ words to Martha. Challenged and drawn to the words he speaks after she gives voice to her extreme irritation that even though there is so much important, life-critical ministry work to do and even though the authorities are already starting to plot and plan Jesus’ death and even though Jesus himself has talked about suffering and dying—even though all of that is swirling around, all Mary is doing is just sitting there and listening to him, seemingly oblivious to it all. Martha expresses her frustration with Mary’s inaction, and Jesus responds with “Martha, Martha, you are highly anxious about many things; there is need of only one thing and Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

What do you think Jesus means that there is need of only one thing? Only one thing? We’ve got people sleeping on the sidewalk because they cannot get the kind of mental health treatment they need, and Jesus says “only one thing”? This weekend marks the 100th anniversary of the 1919 race riot here in Chicago yet we are still deeply segregated as a city, and Jesus says “only one thing”? The suicide rate of Chicago police officers is 60 percent higher than in other communities (Patrick Smith, “Chicago Police Officers Seeking More Help from Department Therapists,” 13 June 2019, www.npr.org) and Jesus says “only one thing”? Tensions with Iran are beginning to heighten again, not just with us but with our allies, and Jesus says “only one thing”? What does he mean? What has Mary figured out that Martha and the rest of us are somehow missing in our constant state of uproar and important justice-seeking, mercy-desiring activity?

Perhaps it was that though Mary, like Martha, also knew that there was a lot of ministry to do; that Mary, like Martha, also knew that the state of her homeland was indeed in a kind of uproar; that Mary, like Martha, also knew that wrongs did demand to be righted and people did need to be loved into wholeness; perhaps it was that Mary, unlike Martha, also recognized the importance of the fact that Jesus, the Living Word, was sitting in their house. And Mary knew that on that day she needed to listen deeply to his words of life and gospel or she would not last.

It might very well be that the one thing Jesus knew was absolutely always necessary to do in order to maintain the stamina and courage for long-haul discipleship was to regularly and intentionally immerse oneself into his presence, his grace, his peace. That’s what Mary was doing. She was sitting at his feet, an act of worship, and listening to him, the Living Word, letting it all wash over her like a gentle rain, like the waters of baptism, like a drink of water on a hot summer day.

And that kind of Living Word-immersion is what we always hope happens in here, too, in this time of worship that we share weekly. Those of us who have the honor of leading worship always pray (literally: it happens out in the Loggia every Sunday) that somehow, no matter how highly anxious you might feel, no matter how much of your life feels like it’s in an uproar, no matter how exhausting it can be to try and keep up with all that is going on in our world, we pray that there is a point in each service when through the music or moments of quiet or in a prayer or in the sound of a little one’s voice or in the smile of a fellow pew sitter or even from time to time in a sermon—we pray that you, like Mary, will experience the presence of Jesus, the Living Word, and allow his grace and his peace to cover you.

We pray that you, like Mary, will take an intentional moment to sit and to breathe and to remember you do not go this way alone. You do not make your way in this world alone. You do not carry all of the trouble of the world alone. You are not alone. Not only do we, as a faith community, have each other, we have Jesus with us, all the time. Yet it is our decision to notice that presence and receive it.

Friends, I know there is much to do in our world. I know there is much, so much, to be highly anxious about, to be in an emotional and spiritual uproar about, and it is important to feel that way. It is important to not allow ourselves to become numb or too cynical to care. “Go and do likewise” was how Jesus ended his parable of the Good Samaritan, the story right before this one of Mary and Martha. Acting our faith into the world, being a light in the city, is a critical part of our discipleship. Speaking up for each other, being in the foxhole alongside each other, learning to love each other—those are incredibly important aspects of living out our baptism.

But we also need to be just as aware and intentional of spending time with Jesus, too, the Living Word. Spending time in prayer, even when we have no words. Spending time in worship, even when our to-do list is a mile long. Spending time grounding ourselves in God’s mercy and peace—whatever that practice looks like for you. Because if we do not, we are making room for the powers and principalities of resentment, of hate, of bitterness, of extreme anxiety to take root and grow. And when we make that room, we start to forget who and whose we are, and we end up being unable to be God’s partner in this world, unable to love our neighbor as ourselves, unable to love ourselves. We end up being unable to live out Christ’s light into the world. We flame out.

A life of discipleship for the long-haul is a life of partnership between Martha and Mary in each of us—moving from one to another and back again. We sit at Jesus’ feet in worship, allowing his grace and peace to fill us, and then we move back into the world ready to jump into the fray while resisting the fray taking control of us. That is the invitation that Jesus, Mary and Martha offer this day. That is our invitation every day.

And that is why we are changing the hymn we will sing in response to God’s Living Word of scripture. Instead of singing the hymn listed, we are going to sing a hymn that might have brought comfort to Martha and to Mary as well. Please turn to Hymn 834, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” and rise in body or in spirit as we sing this prayer together, allowing it to center us in the presence of our Living Lord, whose mercy is everlasting. Amen.