… it’s about why you’re doing it. Another batch of Jesus-talk coming your way!
Luke 10:38-42; Colossians 1:15-18; Psalm 15; Genesis 18:1-10
A long time ago (about two thousand years ago), in a galaxy far, far away (actually this galaxy, even this very planet) two women and their brother were living in a town called Bethany, not far outside of Jerusalem. Martha, Mary, and Lazarus seemed to be fairly typical of the time; nothing was particularly out of the ordinary, although a few extraordinary things happened to them. One of them being the events recorded in our gospel lesson for today.
You see one day this guy named Jesus just happened to be in Bethany, so Martha invited him to stay at her house. Now, this Jesus guy happened to be kind of a big deal. He had been going around and teaching things about God that didn’t sound at all like what the church was teaching, and he was teaching with an authority that the churchy people just didn’t have. So people wanted to hear what he had to say. He even walked around with an entourage – he had twelve people that were really close to him – and usually a big crowd was following him wherever he went.
So when this celebrity took Martha up on her invitation to dinner, she was excited and worried all at the same time. Everything needed to be perfect for Jesus – nothing could be out of place. So she immediately went to work. She started cleaning the second she got home, to make sure there wasn’t anything out of place. She scrambled as fast as she could to make sure everything was ready before Jesus got there. Then she started with the cooking, and the table setting – everything that has to be done when someone is coming over for dinner.
All the while, Martha wasn’t sure what her sister Mary was doing. She kept calling and asking for help, but she never heard any response back. The work was piling up, and Martha was getting so she couldn’t do it all by herself. Finally, sweating and overworked, she looks out to the living room where Jesus is sitting and sees Mary there quietly sitting and listening to Jesus teach. That brat! Martha thought. What’s she doing just sitting around? We’ve got things to do!! So Martha walked into the living room irate and said to Jesus, “I’m doing all this work in the kitchen to get everything ready for our dinner, and my lazy sister is just sitting here! Make her come and help me!”
Now you’d think at this point that Jesus would just say, “Sorry Martha, I kept Mary from her work. Mary, why don’t you go help your sister?” At least, that’s what Martha thought would happen. Instead Jesus said, “Martha, you’re worried about everything else that’s going on, but only one thing is truly necessary. Mary has chosen the better option, and nothing can take that away.”
I find it curious that the story ends there. We don’t know what either Mary or Martha did next. We know that later, when Jesus returns to Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead, that she exhibits great faith saying, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” But for right now, the gospel just continues one to another topic.
It seems like Mary and Martha were each focusing on different aspects of who Jesus is – something that we deal with all the time even today. Martha was looking at Jesus the way our lesson from Colossians describes him: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: …all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” That’s a pretty big Jesus. That’s the image of Jesus that leads to wanting to scramble and make sure all the preparations are perfect before he comes over for dinner.
But Mary saw a different Jesus. He saw the side of Jesus that Paul describes in Philippians 2. Everything Colossians 1 says about Jesus is right, but he also set all that aside to become human – to be a servant – and ultimately to die on the cross for our sins. Mary saw that side, the Jesus who humbled himself to serve all people, and wanted to sit at his feet and learn from him.
It’s the dual nature of Jesus, fully God and fully man, that often cause us trouble. It’s hard to think of Jesus as both so we try and make him one or the other. Martha saw Jesus as God, but missed out on the relationship with Jesus the person, while Mary saw both and sat at his feet, learning and developing a relationship. We still tend to view Jesus either more God than human, or more human than God. It’s hard to wrap our heads around the God-man that Jesus is. We think, at best, that Jesus is half God and half human – a kind of 50/50 hybrid. But that isn’t it.
Throughout history Christians have wrestled with this, and the pendulum is always swinging. Sometimes the Church focuses on the divinity of Jesus, as was true for much of the middle ages. Jesus is the Son of God, the eternal judge, the king of kings and lord of lords. In recent years the focus has been on Jesus’ humanity. We like to think of Jesus as our friend, the husband of the church, we talk about having a “personal relationship”. Both views are totally correct when taken together, but when the focus is on one or the other, either view becomes distorted.
The challenge for us is to experience Jesus as he is. To see Jesus as God the Son, through whom all things were made, but also to see Jesus as God come to earth, the one who teaches us, and intercedes for us with the Father. To see Jesus as the judge of the whole world, yet also the forgiver of our sins. To see Jesus as the king of kings, and our best friend.