Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Striking a Balance"

Text: Luke 10:38-42

references to this story crop up in my reading.

Here’s one of my favorites,

from the Trappist monk Thomas Merton:

"A certain brother came to Abbot Silvanus at Mount Sinai,

and seeing the hermits at work, he exclaimed:

Why do you work for the bread that perisheth?

Mary has chosen the best part,

namely to sit at the feet of the Lord without working.

Then the abbot said to his disciple Zachary:

Give the brother a book and let him read,

and put him in an empty cell.

At the ninth hour the brother who was reading

began to look out to see if the Abbot was not

going to call him to dinner,

and sometime after the ninth hour

he went himself to the abbot and said:

Did not the brethren eat today, Father?

Oh, yes, certainly, said the abbot, they just had dinner.

Well, said the brother, why did you not call me?

You are a spiritual man, said the elder,

you don’t need this food that perisheth.

We have to work, but you have chosen the best part.

You read all day, and can get along without food.

Hearing this the brother said: Forgive me, Father.

And the elder said: Martha is necessary to Mary,

for it was because Martha worked that Mary was able to be praised.

It’s interesting to me that Merton, a monk,

a "Mary" in lifestyle by choice,

would include such a story in one of his books.

It’s also interesting to me that the story is told

not about a regular parish priest,

in the comings and goings of his daily duties . . .

but about an abbot,

the head of a monastery.

The man in charge of a place

where other men went to escape the world

and all its burdens and concerns.

Yet here we find him, this abbot,

praising the burdened, concerned, troubled Martha.

A man whose life is modeled on Mary

seems to give higher praise to Martha.

Which might not seem to be a big deal,

except that if you’re at all like me,

you may not actually have ever

heard anyone do that before!

We’ve questioned among ourselves.

I’ve heard it . . . I’ve done it.

- Did Jesus really mean to say that it’s always better

to sit at his feet and learn

than to scurry about serving others?

Historically, the church’s answer to that question has been "yes".

Particularly up until the time of the Reformation,

it was considered a "higher calling"

to be a priest that to be "just" a layperson.

And it was an even higher calling

to become a monk, or a nun,

and to cut yourself off from the world and its cares

for study and contemplation of God alone.

No distractions of work or family;

just you and God, alone together.

Even Thomas Merton, who gave us that story of Abbot Silvanus,

seemed usually to argue the other way, the traditional way.

In another of his books,

he talks at length about how Christians have the option

to choose the active life or the contemplative life.

And he makes it clear that both of these,

if lived faithfully, are good choices.

But he also makes it clear that,

as far as he and the church are concerned,

the contemplative life is better.

That it’s good to be a Martha,

but it’s even better to be a Mary.

And my guess would be,

that’s the message most of us have heard.

We may not have agreed with it;

we may have muttered under our breath about it,

but chances are, it’s what we’ve heard.

And yet, I’m inclined to agree with old Abbot Silvanus:

Mary and Martha are necessary to one another.

"It was because Martha worked," he said,

"that Mary was able to be praised."

Martha without Mary

will burn herself out.

Mary without Martha

will starve to death.

I also think, though, that we cheat the issue a little

when we make it strictly either/or.

"Are you a Mary, or a Martha?"

He’s a Mary, she’s a Martha.

And so on.

Truth is, both Mary and Martha

reside within each of us.

And the decision we have to make is not

which one of them will I be,

and which will I refuse to be?

but rather,

given the circumstances of my own life,

how do I strike a balance between the two?

When, for the sake of other people and their needs,

do I need to be Martha,

and serve them?

And when, for the sake of my own growth in faith,

do I need to be Mary,

and sit quietly with God,

setting everything else aside?

You see, Martha’s problem was not

that she was hurrying around and serving people.

Her problem was

that she didn’t know she had a choice.

And she didn’t know Mary had a choice either.

If I had to guess, my hunch would be that Martha was probably

the oldest child in the family . . .

And like other oldest children,

she felt it incumbent upon herself

to be hardworking and responsible.

She didn’t know she could let dinner wait.

Furthermore, being a woman in that society,

she would have understood it to be her job

to fix the dinner, and set the table,

while the men – Jesus and Lazarus –

talked about important ideas and issues.

She didn’t know it was okay to join them.

To be interested in what they were talking about.

To listen, and to ask questions.

So when Jesus says that

"Mary has chosen the better part,"

to me, the key word is not better

so much as it is chosen.

Mary chose. Martha was stuck.

Again, nowhere does it say that

God doesn’t want us to be busy about

serving one another every now and then.

In fact, if nothing else,

that earlier reading from the book of Amos suggests

that God will be very displeased with us

if we aren’t looking after the needs of the poor

and perhaps others who can’t look after their own needs.

So the question isn’t, and never has been,

whether we ought to be active in serving other people.

The question is, when?

The question isn’t,

should I be active or contemplative?

The question is,

given the needs of people around me

and my own personal needs,

which will I choose to be in the present moment?

What should I be doing

to keep the balance between

these two aspects of my life?

Having said all of this,

let me make the case for the story as Luke tells it.

I think maybe we need to hear Mary praised

and Martha gently rebuked,

because most of us have tended to overbalance

on the Martha side.

We are busy, and troubled with many things.

We have families to raise,

or grandchildren to look after.

We have jobs to be done,

whether they are paid or volunteer.

Indeed, we seem to live in a time now

when even retired persons are expected to stay busy

just about all the time.

We have houses that need cleaning

and bills that need paying.

We have plans to make

and promises to keep.

We know Martha very well;

she governs most of our daily life.

We value her,

because she gets things done.

And we need to hear Jesus say to her,

and to that part of ourselves,

"Don’t just do something; sit there!"

We need to be reminded that our life does not consist

only of running, and going, and doing.

Sometimes we need to sit at Jesus’ feet.

Instead of feeding others,

we need to be fed.

And that’s not just a painful necessity,

or another requirement to meet;

it’s something good.

Our chance to receive instead of give.

To be served rather than to serve.

This is not only true for us as individuals believers . . .

it’s also true for us as congregations as well.

Listen to these words of wisdom from a sermon preached at, of all places,

a convention of the American Guild of Organists:

"People can talk until they are blue in the face

about what the Church should be up and doing.

They can see all the needs

that the Church should be tackling.

They can see injustices.

They are blatant (and there are many),

and the Church’s influence in challenging them can be effective.

When Christian people are inspired to protest and to move against

the evil of racial discrimination,

or the marginalization of the homeless and hungry,

or the vindictiveness against sufferers from AIDS

or against whatever side of the sexual fence

some people find themselves placed,

or financial cheating by powerful organizations;

whatever it is that the Church intelligently and thoroughly tackles

in its fight for righteousness and justice

is all to God’s glory.

The ancient prophets demanded that the faithful should realize

that justice is intrinsically dear to the heart of God;

and we had better remember that.

"But it is not the first priority.

The first priority is worship.

Worship comes before anything else.

Good works flow from the worship of God.

The psalm doesn’t say,

‘O God, my heart is ready, my heart is ready’ . . .

[therefore] I will distribute clothes to the homeless,

or I will wear the AIDS ribbon.

It says ‘I will sing and give praise.’

I will worship."

Even Jesus himself,

though he spent most of his time in Martha-like activity:

preaching, teaching, healing, feeding, traveling . . .

Jesus himself took many quiet times

away from all that activity.

Times when he went away somewhere,

to a quiet place, to pray, to be with God.

Sometimes with the disciples,

sometimes all by himself.

He knew that he had to keep that balance

between his Martha side and his Mary side.

And if Jesus needed it,

how could we possibly believe that we don’t?!

This morning, we are Mary.

God is here among us, and we rejoice in that presence;

we rest in God’s presence.

We celebrate God’s being here,

and we make a joyful noise about it!

The rest of this week, we may need to be Martha.

Or we may not, who knows?

What we do know is that

number one,

we need to keep the balance between the two sisters within us,

and number two,

it’s okay to choose in a given moment which we will be.

The world needs us,

and we need God,

and both of those needs are very real.

Mary and Martha need each other,

and we need them both!

May we welcome them,

and honor the gifts of each!

Amen.

© 2004 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)