Sit and Listen

July 18, 2010

Amos 8:11-12 and Luke 10:38-42

Imagine this church with no Gray Panthers. Or Gray Panthers who trade screwdrivers, hammers, electrical do-hickeys, plumbing supplies and power tools for Bible study materials and a pot of coffee. (Oh wait! They already have the coffee.)

Imagine the Mission Committee saying, “We’re not going to give any more money to local agencies, or plan work trips to the Gulf Coast or homeless shelters downtown. We’ll just read about the world’s problems and discuss them.

Imagine every one of our children’s Sunday School teachers deciding to attend the adult class … all our fine cooks showing up empty-handed at a potluck supper … or me deciding I’m not in the mood to write a sermon some Sunday. (Yeah, right.)

Imagine all of North America exchanging Larry-the-Cable-Guy’s mantra for Zen Buddhist meditation. Instead of “Git ’R Done,” we’d sit cross-legged on the floor, chanting “Om.”

I’m on Martha’s side. That’s what I’m saying. I bet you are too. It’s the culture we live in, the air we breathe. We have a “can do” mentality. Moses came down from the mountain with ten commandments; but Nike gave us Number Eleven: “Just do it.”

We “do it” pretty well, too, spurred on by sayings like, “Many hands make light work.” Or “A stitch in time saves nine.” And “Idle hands are the devil’s playground.” At work and in professional sports, the operative question is, “What have you done for me lately?”

Martha got it. But Mary? She sat at the feet of Jesus while potatoes needed peeling, the table needed setting, and the fire needed tending.

When a pot of lamb stew boiled over, so did Martha. She was speaking to Jesus, but her words were poison darts aimed at Mary: “Lord, tell her to help me.” She was so mad at her sister, she couldn’t even talk to her directly … much less say her name!

Yet far from resolving their differences, Jesus threw grease on the fire. “Martha, Martha,” he said, “you are worried and distracted by many things … Mary has chosen the better part.”

* *

Has she? In the passage immediately before this one, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan. We heard it last week. Then he instructed the lawyer (who prompted the story) to “go and do likewise.” Not sit and listen.

Likewise, when the Apostle Paul writes 2 Thessalonians 3:10, he will declare that, “Anyone who won’t work shouldn’t eat.” Lots of folks would agree – then and now.

In Matthew 25, Jesus says, “I was hungry and you fed me.” Not “I was hungry and you sat at my feet and begged me to keep talking.”

In James chapter 2 (15-16): “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and you say, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and do not supply their bodily needs, what good is that?”

Hebrews 13:2 adds, “Show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

Yet forgetting all that, Jesus tells Martha that, “Mary has chosen the better part.”

Since the scenario involves food, some translators give those words a mealtime twist. Eugene Peterson, for instance, has Jesus tell Martha that, “Mary has chosen the main course.”

Another version proposes that she “has gotten the better portion.” Martha is yet to bring food out of the kitchen, but already Jesus knows that Mary gets “the first helping.” Or first pick of dessert … without lifting a finger all night! Without doing a dad-gum thing to deserve it!

* *

So, if this contradicts everything we’ve ever known, what makes sitting and listening “the better part?”

Maybe Jesus is giving us a lesson on grace – a reminder that we can’t save ourselves, no matter how hard we work.

Or maybe he’s promoting the idea of sabbath – taking a rest now and then. Jewish scholars say there is nothing more important to Judaism than sabbath; and Jesus was a Jew, after all. One day out of every week, both men and women were to be excused from all their labors. Sounds like Martha had trouble with that.

So do we, for the most part. We live in what one person has called an “accelerated culture.” Someone else has said, “We worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship.”

By endorsing Mary’s preference to sit and listen, Jesus says it’s okay to take our foot off the proverbial gas pedal now and then. We don’t have to drive and talk on the cell phone and eat lunch in the car all at the same time. (Does anybody do that? My brother who lives in L.A. says he sees people brushing their teeth while driving down the highway during the morning rush hour. When traffic comes to a halt, they open the car door and spit it out on the pavement.)

Surely, Mary’s decision to sit and listen to Jesus is an improvement over our multitasking.

Here’s a third option. If it’s not grace or sabbath, maybe Jesus was thinking about what Amos said. Maybe he went to the synagogue that morning and heard the words we heard. Or the subject came up in conversation with Mary.

Remember what the prophet said? “The time is surely coming when there will be a famine in the land.”

But it won’t be a famine Martha can fix, no matter how many plates of savory food she puts on the table. “Not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord,” Amos says.

At the feet of Jesus, Mary got a feast to ward off that kind of famine, a feast you can’t purchase at a fast-food drive-thru in the middle of the night or a grocery store down the street. It’s a meal that comes only from prophets … or from a savior who will say, “I am the Bread of Life.”

Listening to Jesus, Mary filled her storehouse against a time we all dread, when prayers go unanswered, and our bellies knot up in pain over God’s apparent silence.

While Martha scrambled to put food on the table for one night, Mary stocked up for the long haul, stocked up for three perilous days to come, when the Word of God would depart from the world and lie dormant in a tomb.

Isn’t that what worship is all about? It doesn’t do much. For a pretty good chunk of time, we just sit and listen, like Mary. Rarely does worship give us anything we can use right away. But it builds reservoirs of spiritual reserves we can draw on later. It offers a word to stash in our back pocket, knowing we will need it sooner or later. Worship gives us a word from the Lord for the times that otherwise might leave us speechless … times when God is speechless.

Which would you rather go without – the meal Martha prepared that night, or the word of God? Given the choice, there’s no doubt Mary chose “the better part.”

* *

All of those are good theological reasons Jesus may have sided with Mary. But I suspect his real reason was more mundane. Mary did what only men were allowed to do.

In those days, all the perks and favors fell to men. They had the better part. The playing field was tilted in their favor. Women were second class. When a dinner party was held – like the one Martha and Mary hosted for Jesus – women got chores. Men got to chat.

The Mishnah, a commentary as old as the Jewish Bible itself, divides up the work load like this. Clearly speaking to man-to-man, it says, “Let your house be a meeting place for the wise, and … drink in their words with thirst … but do not talk much with women.”

Mary crossed that boundary – a boundary that wasn’t a God-given commandment, but merely a social rule or convention of the time.

For that, Jesus praised her. He let it be known that women – and men – are not one-dimensional creatures, able to serve God only one way. He showed what the Apostle Paul later would write, that in Christ, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; all are one.”

We are multi-dimensional, all of us, men and women, called to serve God with our whole being – hearts and minds, hands and feet – body and soul. Or, as the Great Commandment declares: to “love God with heart and soul and mind and strength.”

We don’t need rules or self-imposed limitations, or sisterly complaints, saying we can’t!

The truly radical statement from Jesus that day was not that Mary chose “the better portion,” but that “it will not be taken away from her.”

There are voices within us and around us constantly telling us what we can or can’t do. Some of that is good. But some of it is tired and worn out advice. And a lot of it doesn’t come from Jesus. So we can lay those voices to rest.

Societal norms and institutionalized patterns try to put us in boxes, limit our choices. But Mary made a choice that would not be taken away from her. What made it “the better part” wasn’t that she was allowed to be a couch potato while someone else did all the work. That’s our big fear with this passage, isn’t it? But it wasn’t that. Rather, it was “the better part” because it meant she no longer had to serve God with one hand tied behind her back, using her kitchen skills but not her ears and mind.

* *

We’ve come a long way since the time of Martha and Mary. Women have more opportunities than ever before. But we still have ways of putting ourselves into boxes. “I can’t go in there with the guys – I’m a woman.” “Take up knitting? What kind of man do you think I am?” “Oh, I won’t do that! I’m too old!”

But Jesus challenged a lawyer (a man accustomed to sitting and thinking) to “go and do.” And he applauded Mary – a woman long-relegated to doing and doing and doing – when she chose to sit and listen for a spell.

It’s almost as if he was inviting all of us to try something new – something that someone somewhere sometime said we couldn’t.

* *

So imagine again: What if the Gray Panthers set down their tools and picked up Bibles – once in a while? What if someone went in a classroom now and then, so a regular Sunday School teacher could have a week or two off? What if someone who can’t boil water opened a cookbook and made a casserole – just once – and brought it to a potluck?

What if …? I’ll tell you what if. Somebody would get nervous. Somebody would tell Jesus to tell them to get back in their little box, like Martha did with Mary. We’d all tremble a bit with fear … excitement!

But Jesus might say we chose the better part too – because we quit being a stereotype … quit being what somebody else said we had to be … quit accepting a role consigned to us … and entered a fuller, richer, more three-dimensional relationship with Christ as disciples.

To the glory of God.