But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” -- Luke 10:40-42
Right, Lord, and, if everybody sits there like Mary, you all
are going to get mighty hungry. Somebody
has got to fix the frijoles. Western
civilization was not built by people sitting on their butts listening to pretty
stories.
Or was it?
I am extremely lazy.
If it’s work, I try to avoid it, but I’ll work and wear myself out
playing. I like listening to and telling
stories better than I like cooking and cleaning. Strangely, most people like my stories better
than my cooking, now that I think about it.
I’d rather be Mary than Martha, but I am also enough of a pragmatic Scot
to know that once in a while the corn needs plowing and the taters won’t dig
themselves – unless you do the straw thing like John. And remember that Paul said anyone who doesn’t
think they ought to work ought to give up eating while they are at it (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
One way for us to understand the attitude the Lord expressed
here is to make it a sort of allegory of the works versus grace approach to
salvation. The one thing that is
necessary is faith, without which it is impossible to please God, no matter how
many good deeds we do. Mary typifies grace
through faith while Martha is the type of one who tries to ascend to heaven by
piling good works on top of good works.
Understood this way, the Lord’s call to resting with and in
Him makes more sense and eases our fears that we are doing something wrong by
working hard and putting in the hours to provide for and care for our families,
build our business, save for retirement, etc.
Isaiah said, long before, “For
thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest you shall
be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you were unwilling “(Isaiah 30:15).
I think, though, for some us, there is also a lesson about
giving the work we do for the world too much of a priority. Remember how we are told to pray without
ceasing? We no longer have to sit at the
feet of Jesus to attend to and hear Him, and we don’t have to lament that He
isn’t walking around with us, because the Holy Spirit is walking around in us. In others words, if we want to, we can kind
of be Mary and Martha at the same time. All
we need to do is get our thinking in the right order, realize, and recognize
the presence of God by His Spirit. If we
can practice giving precedence to the still, small voice over the shrill,
lurid, cacophonous demands of the world, we can get Mary’s commendation and
still not scorch the beans.
