We Need To Know Why

Sermon-8 Pentecost-Proper 11-July 18, 2010
The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today’s gospel is really scary. I am amazed that the church left it in the Bible. Jesus comes to the home of his friends, Martha and Mary. Martha, a wonderful symbol of hospitality, receives Jesus into their home. Then she goes in to cook and clean and make a good welcome for him. Mary, her no-good, worthless, do nothing sister, simply sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to him. And Jesus has the audacity to praise Mary??? "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."
Why is this a scary story? What if Virg stopped all of her work all of a sudden, decided to sit down and just pray? What if Morris said, “you know, the church doesn’t really need those repairs, I think I’ll just go on retreat for a couple of months? What if you came to church and the only sign up in the parish hall was to sit and listen? What if we discouraged people from doing anything. What if a visitor came to Trinity and we persuaded them to sit over there in the pew and just be quiet, don’t do anything, don’t try to help. Just pray, listen, be quiet. What if we told people, please choose the better part-don’t do anything? This is a frightening thought.
The former presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Frank T. Griswold, preached a sermon several years ago, telling the story of his going on a weeklong retreat. But nothing happened. He didn’t hear God. At all. He got bored at the monastery where he was at on retreat, so he went walking around the neighborhood. He saw a soup kitchen and went in, but no one knew him, so they ignored him. THIS WAS THE PRESIDING BISHOP OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH! The BIG CHEESE. So he went up and offered to help feed people, and they told him to go sit down and wait, that his food would be ready in a minute. They thought he was a client! A homeless guy. The next day he went back and told them who he was, and there was STILL nothing for him to do. He said he was never so happy as when they let him wash dishes, because he finally had something to do-a purpose!
This is a terrible gospel reading. I read today’s gospel, and I keep thinking, Jesus, was clearly confused-how could he possibly be praising MARY? Martha was the good one. What if in every church throughout the land all the outreach, all the fellowship, all the social, all the committees, all the youth and children’s programs all stopped immediately, as we sat around and just waited, listened, learned? "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."
Right about now, all of you who work hard, doing things around here are thinking, “hmm, this doesn’t sound so bad-maybe we should…”.
I read a sermon by Dr. Tom Long the Bandy Professor of Preaching at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, that helped me understand this gospel so much better than I ever have before.
First, let me tell you another story. I was serving in a small church in the Upper Peninsula many years ago, and one fall we were the host church for the city wide ecumenical service. All the other churches in town came to our church for joint worship. So I’m leading the service and I look out, and there isn’t one of our parishioners in the congregation. Not one. I was mortified. So, after the service the women of our church put on a luncheon in the parish hall-and there were all the church members-helping prepare and serve the food. They put on a great reception, but I was angry and hurt. I went up to them afterwards and asked why none of them had attended the worship service-and the answer was, “because they had to get the luncheon ready.” And I said, “but you had the whole town in our church for worship- and not one of our members was present.” And they told me that I had my job, and they had theirs. Every time I hear this gospel I think of that story. And that’s why Tom Long’s insight helped me understand. This is what Long wrote:
Years ago I served as part of an advisory group to the chaplains at a major university. Our job was to meet, to listen to reports from the chaplains about their work, and to offer support and counsel. One year, we had heard the reports of the chaplains, and we were asking them questions. An older member of the council asked the chaplains, "What are the university students like, morally these days?" The chaplains looked at each other, wondering how to answer that question. Finally one of them took a stab at it. "Well," she said, "I think you'd be basically pleased. The students are pretty ambitious in terms of their careers, but that's not all they are. A lot of them tutor kids after school. Some work in a night shelter and in a soup kitchen for the homeless. Last week a group of students protested apartheid in South Africa....." As she talked, the Jewish chaplain who was listening to her began to smile. The more she talked, the bigger he grinned, until finally it became distracting. "Am I saying something funny?" she said to the Jewish chaplain. "No, no, I'm sorry," he replied. "I was just sitting here thinking. You are saying that the university students are good people, and you're right. And you're saying that they are involved in good social causes, and they are. But what I was thinking is that the one thing they lack is a vision of salvation." We all looked at the Jewish university chaplain. "No, it's true," he said. "If you do not have some vision of what God is doing to repair the whole creation, you can't get up every day and work in a soup kitchen. It finally beats you down.
Do you really think Jesus was telling Martha that hospitality was bad? Do you really think Jesus was saying that serving people was ungodly?
Every week I keep reminding you the key verse this summer. Jesus is in Galilee (tired of this yet?) and “he set his face to go to Jerusalem”. Why do you think I keep pounding away on this verse? Because Jesus is focused so strongly on what he has to do, on who he has to be. Setting your face towards Jerusalem, means Jesus has a goal-and he is single minded in his direction. But even more it means that Jesus is so clear on why he is going to Jerusalem. This is from Tom Long, again:
“Martha, preparing that meal of hospitality, is doing a good thing--a necessary thing--an act of service--but if we try to do this kind of service apart from the life-giving Word of the gospel, apart from the vision that comes only from God, it will distract us and finally wear us down. Mary has chosen to listen to the Word. Jesus, the living Word, is present, right in her house, and if she is going to love God and love neighbor, if she is going to show hospitality to the stranger and care for the lost, then everything depends on hearing and trusting that word.”
In other words, what if we are doing good, but never really knowing why? What if we are so busy doing the right thing, the good thing, that we forget why we’re doing-at all? What if we are so busy that we can’t remember why we are doing good works, showing hospitality, trying to do the right thing?
This makes sense to me. There have been times in my life when I was working so hard to accomplish something, being single minded, focused, and one day I woke up and thought, “wait a second, why am I doing this?”
I think Mary sat down with Jesus to learn why she should do what she was called to do. She wanted to understand why he was going to Jerusalem-and what this meant for her life. I think Mary wanted to have a life that was more than just doing good deeds-she wanted to know why her life mattered at all. In other words, Mary was being praised for wanting “a vision of salvation”.
I have served on the boards of Habitat for Humanity and the Boys and Girls Club. I have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited those in prison, and mentored children. And so have many of you. But one thing I have learned, is that if I don’t have a bigger picture, don’t understand the purpose for all this, don’t know why I’m doing these things, eventually I lose my commitment, my direction, my passion. Mary sits at Jesus’ feet to understand what her life is supposed to be about. She wasn’t a slacker, she wasn’t even the better sister. She just realized that she had to know what her purpose was, what her life was supposed to be, before she could be a servant like Martha. That’s why we sit and listen. That’s why we come to church, first, before putting on the luncheon. We need to know why, we need to know what it all means. And when we understand who we are and why we are, what is the vision for salvation- then we truly serve. ."If you do not have some vision of what God is doing to repair the whole creation, you can't get up every day and work in a soup kitchen. It finally beats you down."