Luke 10:38 - 42
We get a couple of great contrasting examples about relating to God in the adventures of the Martha and Mary story. Martha represents what our secular culture defines as an ideal response to a challenge. She is productive. She surpasses her potential with great results. She is motivated to jump in and pick up the slack. She sacrifices for others. I mean, really, she is an all-star.
Mary doesn’t really score a lot of points on the secular world scale. Evidently, she’d rather sit around and listen to someone talk than help out. She is obviously not motivated to serve when needed and you might even think she is a bit lazy.
But from Jesus’ perspective, Mary was the one He commended for her choices and Martha was corrected for her complaining and finger pointing. So let’s look at this and try and find the problem and how to avoid it.
Let’s pretend we are just taking it easy and we see a crowd of folks walking down the street and decide we want to have them over for a meal. You go outside and see it’s Jesus so you invite Him and His friends to come in. You realize there is a lot to do in order to feed a dozen or more people so your mind goes into warp drive and you formulate a plan to get everything done. You can’t just order pizza so you are going to need help to pull this off. No problem, your sister is here and she can help. “Now,” you wonder, “where is she?”
Mary sees the same crowd and also realizes it is Jesus. The rumors about who He is and what He has been doing is no secret so she is thinking she is going to get right in front of Him and get the full story. She sits at His feet, a place of submission, and waits for Him to start talking to her. She wasn’t there to tell Him her plans, she was there to listen. So He talks.
Martha had expectations and Mary had expectations and the two didn’t intersect. Martha is working as fast as she can and seeing there is no way she is going to pull this off by herself. She walks out into the living room and sees her sister sitting there, relaxed and attentive. Martha takes one long look and loses it. “Jesus, don’t you care I’m in this burning hot kitchen working my derriere off to get your food ready? Tell Mary to get out here and pull her own weight.”
How fascinating. In this instance, Mary is listening to find out what God wants and Martha is giving God orders, telling Him what He is to do. You ever tell God to “Jump” and He just smiles?
Jesus didn’t ask Martha to cook up a feast. She took that on by her own initiative, she was self directed. When we see a need and then respond with self-direction, there could be problems coming as there were for Martha. You have to wonder how Jesus talked to Martha after she blew up. Did He say, “MARTHA! YOU ARE DISTRACTED!!!…MARY IS DOING WHAT IS NEEDED!” Or did He say, “Martha, you are distracted. Mary is doing what’s needed.” I tend to think the first way I wrote it would be how I would have responded and the 2nd way, gentler and reconciling, is the way Jesus would have said it. Who knows, He might have even invited Martha to come over and sit down so she could listen with Mary.
We don’t really know what happened after that, but let’s use our imagination. Perhaps Martha did come over and she sat down next to Mary and they both listened to Him talk about the Kingdom of God. He told them things that angels wanted to know about. After an hour or so, they may have both gotten up and gone into the kitchen and made a meal for everyone. In that scenario, there is no winner or loser--there are simply 2 sisters working together to be a blessing to their guests, extending hospitality and doing what’s needed in waiting before the Lord and in serving.
When we get distracted by an urgent need, before we jump in and start cutting down trees and erecting church buildings, we need to be at Jesus’ feet awaiting a word from Him. We humans tend to see the need, jump in, sometimes ask God to bless it and take off. How much better would it be to sit quietly before the Lord and await His directions? Lots better! In fact, Isaiah says it this way: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint (Isaiah 40:31).
We need Martha and we need Mary, too. Martha was no lightweight. When she saw Jesus coming in response to the news of Lazarus’ illness, she ran to Him and after a short conversation concluded with this: “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God,who is to come into the world Jn 11:26).” However, too much Martha in us makes us crazy and too much Mary in us makes us lazy. So we need to find the balance between hearing and doing instead of doing and then crying for help to clean up the mess we’ve made.
In 1991 we lived in Hong Kong and were running a 5-month school that had 3 months of classroom teaching and training and 2 months of outreach. Our outreach was going to India. Every morning I had my students pray in groups of 5 or 6 and pray about the outreach and other issues and then have them write down what they thought God was saying when they took time after praying and to just sit and listen.
I was in the process of finding airline tickets and Air India was going to be the cheapest fare I could get by $1000s of dollars for our group. It came out in one of the groups they had a “vision” of a fiery plane crash with our team on board. So being the wise man I am, I booked our tickets on British Air and paid more money. Air India and British Air both left Hong Kong about the same time so both our flights arrived in India within minutes of each other. But the Air India flight was off to the side with rescue vehicles around it. We didn’t know what happened, but we later found out a bomb was found on board but didn’t go off. We prayed for that flight every morning prior to our outreach and I can’t help but believe God had mercy on them because of it. I was still glad we flew on British Air though!
In John 12 Mary anointed Jesus for His burial. How did she know to do that? Why would she out of the blue pour “costly” (year’s wages worth) perfume over Jesus’ head and wipe His feet with her hair? Judas was upset and chastised her for not selling the perfume and giving the money to the poor, but Jesus defended her saying she had done this in anticipation of His burial. What if back in the living room in Luke 10 when Jesus was talking to Mary, who was at His feet, said, “Mary, I just want you to know that in the near future I’ll be crucified by the Pharisees. I’m allowing it to happen because I am going to die for the sins of the world. It will be a terrible thing for you to bare, but don’t worry, “I’ll be back.” (That’s right. Jesus came up with that line first.) On the 3rd day my Father will raise me from the dead and all of mankind will have a way out of the mess that started back at Eden.”
With Luke 10 knowledge Mary was again at Jesus’ feet in John 12 but this time she is anointing Him for His burial. The disciples, though they had been told what was to become of Jesus, were oblivious to what was going on. Maybe they were still arguing about which one was the greatest and didn’t comprehend what Jesus had told them was going to happen to Him. Whatever the reason, the one who sat and listened for Jesus’ words was the one who knew what was expedient to do at the appropriate time. And there’s our lesson for the day. Before you attack the next thing that jumps out at you, sit down and listen to God and get a “word” from Him about what to do next. You are the determiner of the quantity, quality and intimacy you give to God and that will determine what He may say to you. We will meet God’s presence when we are present before Him. As you can see, it’s important that our actions come in response to a word from the Lord rather than from self-direction.
