They are sisters living in the same house, and I don’t feel that we need to put our own experiences or theories about sibling rivalries and resentments on these two women.  They live in the same house.  They are representative of hearing and doing.  We said last week that hearing Jesus’ words and doing them is a theme that runs through the Gospel of Luke.  Hearing and doing are not to be held up in opposition to one another.  They exist together in the same house.

I want to encourage us in “both/and” thinking as we consider the story of hospitality and welcome, which is before us this morning.  There is a lot of talk around about “both/and” thinking versus “either/or” thinking, and it’s good for us to engage in the same talk as followers of Christ.  Either/or can lead to polarization, alienation and even conflict.  You’re either with us or against us, is one example.  Both/and recognizes that two things can be true and can be held together.  Consider some of the truths of our faith that we hold together at the same time:

God is wholly other/wholly holy, and God lives within us

The kingdom of heaven or reign of God is a present reality, and it is coming

God is in control, and we have a part to play in God’s work (even in a miracle, as we saw last week)

Jesus is, at the same time, fully divine and fully human

Hearing and doing are both operative in our story.  They are not an either/or proposition.  Here is Jesus in 8:21 “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”  Here is Jesus in 11:28 “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”  In a good position are such people!

So I am not going to pit these two sisters against each other.  The other thing we need to guard against here is seeing either of them as some sort of caricature.  Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, and we may see this as a very passive or simply adoring or even grovelling.  In the language of the day, to sit at someone’s feet meant to learn.  Paul speaks of sitting at the feet of Gamaliel in Acts 22:3: “…brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law…”  To sit at the feet of a rabbi didn’t simply mean gaze up, lost in admiration, but to listen intently and with purpose.  It meant to be a student.  Life-long learning in our case, with Jesus.  The purpose was to become like the rabbi.  As we’ve heard, when it comes to Jesus, it’s the thing that goes along with doing.  We mustn’t make a caricature out of sister Martha either.  As someone has said, “…we must not cartoon the scene: Martha to her eyeballs in soapsuds, Mary pensively on a stool in the den, and Jesus giving scriptural warrant for letting dishes pile high in the sink.”

Martha is serving.  It’s the same word that is used to describe the women who were with Jesus and the 12 back in chapter 8.  Mary from Magdala.  Joanna.  Susanna.  They provided for them, is how the NRSV translates the word diakoneo (same word we get deacon from).  To wait on, to attend to, to serve.  Luke has no problem talking about women alongside men in service to Jesus.  Martha was distracted by her many tasks, by her diakonia (same word in noun form).  There’s no mention of what those tasks were exactly.  She’s serving.  This is good, right?

Before that, she is welcoming.  The 10^th chapter of the Gospel of Luke starts with Jesus sending out 70 followers ahead of him as he travels to Jerusalem.  He sends them out in pairs, and his instructions are simple (and familiar as we heard last week – tell and show, do and speak) – Cure the sick and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” (10:9)  Jesus tells the seventy to remain where they are welcomed.  They are to carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.  Their lives in service to Jesus are to be marked by dependence and trust.  Dependence on God.  Dependence on one another.  Trust in God.  Trust in one another.  Trust in others.  Eat what is set before you.  Do what is set before you to do.  Grounded in our dependence on God and our need for God.  Grounded in our trust in God and God’s trust in us.

Aside – It’s amazing to consider that God trusts us.  We pay a lot of attention to trusting God and speak of faith as trusting in God, who has shown himself to be trustworthy and faithful to his promises, and rightly so.  We mustn’t forget, though, as we consider our own significance in God’s renewal/restoration plan, that God trusts us to make God’s kingdom known.   There is a verse in 1 Thessalonians that goes like this, Paul is speaking of the good news:  “² but though we had already suffered and been shamefully maltreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. ³ For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, ⁴ but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts.” (1 Thess 2:2-4)

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem in Luke 10.  “Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.” (10:38)  Martha receives Jesus into her home as one receives a guest.  One of the ways in which we describe life in Christ is following.  “Follow me!” said Jesus to Levi, and Levi got up and left everything and followed him.  It’s a good image to describe the Christ-following life.  Here is another one.  Welcoming.  Receiving as one would receive a guest into one’s home.  “How Shall I Receive Thee?” asks a hymn.  The first lines go like this:

“O how shall I receive Thee,

How meet Thee on Thy way?

Blessed hope of every people,

My soul's delight and stay?”

Martha welcomes Jesus.  What would it be like for us to welcome Jesus every day into our conversations, into our meals, into our thoughts, into our tasks, into our work, into our play, into our sorrow, into our joy, into our assurances, into our doubts?  Martha welcomes Jesus.  Martha is serving.  Mary is listening.  The two sisters are the embodiment of two instructions that have already been heard in Luke.  In Luke 9:35, at Jesus’ transfiguration, we read, “Then from a cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’”  At the end of the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus asks the expert in the law, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  The answer comes back “The one who showed him mercy.”  Jesus replies, “Go and do likewise.”

Sit and listen.  Go and do.  Both/and.  There is a radicality to this story that we must not miss.  As someone has said, “Jesus is received into a woman’s home (no mention is made of a brother), and he teaches a woman.  Rabbis did not allow women to ‘sit at their feet,’ that is, to be disciples.”  Living space within the house that would be designated for men or for women is being shared.  Walls that would keep people apart from one another are being broken down here in Jesus’ reign.  Jesus is looking beyond labels or markers of identity.

But Martha was distracted by her many tasks.  Literally, Martha was pulled away by her “lots of” service.  Martha’s service has distracted her from the one she serves.  We get this.  We can get lost in acts of service to the point where we get resentful.  Here’s a painting by Diego Velasquez (early 17^th century) which illustrates this, and shows the two sisters very much in opposition to one another.  We may look at others and say things like, “Why aren’t they doing as much as me?”  We may know what it’s like to feel that our work is taken for granted by others (and maybe even by God?).  We know what it’s like to feel snowed under by tasks and people who depend on us.  Jesus is not too hard on Martha here, and neither should we be.  Let us not to be too hard on ourselves either, but let us hear Jesus calling our name twice here.  “Martha, Martha.”  Martha has become so pulled away from the one she is serving that her focus has shifted to herself.  “Lord, do you not care (does God even care?) that my sister has left ME to all the work by MYSELF?  Tell her to help ME.”  Even in the middle of her being distracted, Martha is still talking to Jesus.  She has welcomed him in, and she hasn’t forgotten him. 

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but there is need of only one thing.” (10:41b-42a)  What is the one thing needful?  It’s the Sunday School answer, but let us never forget it.  It’s Jesus.  He had sent his followers out without a bag or stick or extra clothes or money to remind of this.  This work to which his followers are called is completely and wholly dependent on him. 

What is the one thing needful?  What is the one thing that the church needs?  What is the one thing that I need that you need?  Perhaps we had better say “who”.  He’s right here.  Jesus is right here (gesture at heart) when we receive him, and the invitation is before us – receive him, follow him.  We were not created for distracted worry or resentment or being snowed under by endless tasks.  The one thing needful is Jesus, and Mary is fixed on him.  It has been suggested that we not be overly harsh on Martha in case she gives up serving altogether.  At the same time, we mustn’t commend Mary too too much, in case she may sit there forever.  In answer to the question “Are you a Mary or a Martha?”, perhaps the best reply on our part should be “Yes!”  There is a time to sit and listen.  There is a time to go and do.

Martha and Mary lives in the same place, after all.  There’s another painting of this scene by Alessandro Allori (16th cent.), which reflects the complementary nature of listening and doing with our eyes firmly fixed on Christ.  Hearing and doing.  So may Jesus be in our hearing and in our doing as we ask God to help us fix our eyes on the one we need.  Jesus in our stillness.  Jesus in our tasks.  Jesus in our getting up and lying down.  Jesus in our ears and eyes and hands and feet.  May this be our prayer of each and every one of us? Amen