9th Sunday after Pentecost, 07/21/2013

Sermon on Luke 10:38-42 [CEV], by Richard O. Johnson

³⁸ While Jesus and his disciples were traveling, Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him as a guest. ³⁹ She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his message. ⁴⁰ By contrast, Martha was preoccupied with getting everything ready for their meal. So Martha came to him and said, " Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to prepare the table all by myself? Tell her to help me." ⁴¹ The Lord answered, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. ⁴² One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part. It won't be taken away from her."-Luke 10.38-42 [CEV]

Just when we thought we had it all figured out, Jesus pulls the rug out from under us! Last week we heard the parable of the Good Samaritan, and we reflected on what it means to love our neighbor. We saw that loving our neighbor means being active in our charity and our help, and doing the hard work of loving those whom it is difficult to love. We were challenged by the parable to a kind of loving activism, challenged to do. Here in this week's lesson, we are challenged instead not to do-challenged by this remarkable little story of Mary and Martha-challenged to be less like Martha, the doer, and more like Mary, the quiet sitter.

It is no accident, of course, that these stories are back to back in Luke's gospel. We need to see both sides-the importance of doing acts of love and charity, but also the ultimate importance of sitting quietly in the presence of God. And I suppose for many of us, it is the latter that is more difficult. We are people of action, people who can accomplish plenty if we are just given a job to do. We are, we strive to be, people like Martha, who see needs and fill them. What Mary does is at least slightly offensive to most of us. After all, Jesus and his entourage have just descended on this home. There is hospitality to extend, the house must be cleaned, the meals prepared, and Martha is doing her best. But Mary just sits there! Who wouldn't be upset? Let her help with the food, and then she can sit and relax! But Jesus says that Mary has chosen the good portion, the one thing needful. And all us Marthas in the world gnash our teeth in disbelief!

Talking about prayer

I would like to use this little story this morning to talk about prayer. In a sense this is just what the gospel of Luke does, for immediately following this story comes a discourse on prayer. So the story of Mary and Martha is, in Luke's gospel, a way of introducing the subject of prayer, a way of saying that the qualities Mary represents are the "one thing needful" for one who wants to learn how to pray. And I suspect that all of us want to learn to pray, to make our spiritual life with Christ more fulfilling and meaningful.

Let us notice first that Mary sat at Jesus' feet. The wonderful contrast that is seen here is between Mary, sitting quietly, and Martha, rushing around trying to accomplish everything she has to do. I believe that the most important thing we all must learn about prayer is that we must slow down, sit down and be quiet. Our prayers seem so often to be quickies. Perhaps we rattle them off before sleeping at night, or we read quickly through our morning devotional reading or a brief Bible passage, and then we're on to the next thing. Mary sat at Jesus' feet, and in that act, she spoke volumes about how we approach God.

In our terribly busy lives, we so seldom take the opportunity to sit quietly. Maybe the closest we come to it is to sit down with the morning paper and a cup of coffee, but that doesn't really count. By sitting quietly I mean sitting alone and in silence, with nothing else to do and nothing else to accomplish except to be quiet. The truth of the matter is that we cannot accomplish much in prayer until we can learn to empty our minds and thoughts, and simply be. Prayer is communion between God and ourselves, and though God has promised that he is always there, it is you and I who are often not there, even when we go through the motions of prayer. The author George Moore was once asked by a young student how to go about the business of becoming a writer. He replied that she should buy a table and chair, a pad of paper and a pen, and then be there. Unless we are really there--centered on what we are doing, not distracted like Martha by dozens of things-we cannot expect to make much progress.

Calmed and quieted my soul

I have to admit this is one of the most difficult things for me. I have the nagging feeling that sitting quietly for an extended period of time is wasteful, and that I am failing to accomplish all the things that I have to do. That's the Martha in me! But I've been working on that in my own prayer life, trying to take some extra time to just be quiet. I've been finding that verses from the Psalms are especially helpful here. I find Psalm 131 particularly helpful, where it says, "I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother's breast." For me that is a powerful image of just settling in and being still, and I often begin my own prayer time by reciting that psalm a few times until I feel my spirit quieting down.

I've also found a verse from Psalm 103 useful in this-a very familiar one. "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name." As I read that Psalm one day, it occurred to me that I had never really concentrated on the phrase, "All that is within me." Was there a way that the distractions, the fears, the anxieties, the troubles within me might bless God's holy name? As I reflected on that, I began to see that those things might indeed bless God's name if I would let go of them, let them out of my heart and mind, open those parts of me up to the presence of God. I began to think about doing that, and what I discovered is that as I would repeat the phrase, "All that is within me bless his holy name," I had a sensation of all those anxieties and distractions pouring out into the open like dirty water into a sewer, leaving my heart and my mind free to center on God. This was incredibly freeing for me, and helpful in finding a focus in something other than my own distractions.

Trouble and vexation

Another verse I find very useful is from Psalm 10: "Thou dost see," the Psalmist says, "Yea, thou dost note trouble and vexation, that thou mayst take it into thy hands." What a remarkable promise! Our trouble and vexation, our distractions, God notices precisely because he wants to take them away from us! Just speaking that promise over and over is a way, for me at least, of letting go of my grip on troubles and vexation, letting God take them into his hand, and leaving my spirit free and quiet to begin to pray.

Once we have become quiet, and released all those vexations and distractions from our mind and heart, then we are ready to begin to pray. But there is something else for us to learn from Mary. She sits at the Lord's feet and listens. That is the other big thing we need to discover about prayer--that the most important part of prayer is not talking to God, but listening.

Maybe you remember the story of the little girl who had finished her evening prayers, said "Amen," but then stayed perfectly still beside her bed. Her mother told her to quit stalling and get into bed, and she replied, "But Mom, I'm waiting to see if God has anything to say to me." We could take a lesson from that girl, and from Mary! God wants us to bring our needs to him, and that is part of prayer-to share our needs and ask his help. But so often we treat God more like the order station at a fast food place-a spot to rattle off what we want, and then be on our way. Rather we must learn to treat him as a friend with whom we share our needs and our hopes and our dreams, and from whom we expect and solicit not just material results, but advice and counsel and support and love and strength! And we get all those things by listening.

The grace of Holy Communion

For me, Holy Communion is one of the best opportunities to learn to pray. There are many reasons for that, but let me share two. First, it is a time when we have some solitude. As we wait to come forward, or as we sit quietly after communing, we have precious minutes when we can reflect and listen to God. That teaches us a pattern, you see, that we can use in our prayer life-a pattern of sitting quietly and reflecting, not speaking any words, not making any requests, not taking any action, but simply being with the Lord.

And then secondly, Holy Communion trains us in another pattern-that of receiving. In the sacrament, we learn to open our hands and receive what Christ has to give us-himself. When we come to the Lord's Table, it ought not be with a list of things we think we want or need. Rather we come with an awareness that Christ knows, better than we, what we need, and that here he offers it to us. What we must learn is to incorporate that pattern into our daily prayer-to see prayer not primarily as a time when we tell God what we need, but a time when we open ourselves quietly to him to allow him to give us what he knows we need.

In these ways, then, the Sacrament is a paradigm of the one thing needful-to sit quietly at the feet of the Lord, and listen to him.

The Rev. Richard O. Johnson
Grass Valley, CA, USA
E-Mail: roj@nccn.net

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