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Being Busy for
Jesus versus
Living in Him
Mary & Martha
Message from Ben Gregory on July 13, 2003
Luke 10:38-42
If I were to ask you to list your life’s priorities, what
would be on
your list? Don't worry about putting them in order yet. What would be on
your list? Job? Family? Spouse? Baseball? God? Church stuff? (Sleep came
up a lot.) Now if I asked you to prioritize them, you’d probably put God
and the spiritual sounding stuff first, then your family, then maybe
work. Remember the old J-O-Y thing? Jesus first, then Others, then
yourself? I’m not sure that’s a healthy approach to life. At the very
least it’s a compartmentalized, modern, western approach & none of those
words describe Jesus or the world he lived in.
I bought a book not long ago called Rob Neyer’s Big Book
of Baseball
Lineups. It has the author’s all-time lineups for each of the 29 Major
League franchises, plus the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Its very orderly, and
very sorted out and it has become one of my favorite baseball books. I
love to think that way. Was Ted Kluszewski better than Tony Perez? Mantle
or DiMaggio? We’re analytical people.
A friend of mine emailed me a question several weeks ago.
She wanted to
know which I thought was the more significant story, the temptation of
Christ, or his crucifixion. Sounds like a no-brainer at first, the
crucifixion right? But how can you separate them? It’s the same story.
Obviously, without the crucifixion/resurrection the temptation doesn’t
matter much, but if the temptation doesn’t go well, the crucifixion
doesn’t matter either. Jesus life was all one story, but for some reason
we like to chop it up into little single-serving episodes we can watch
and evaluate on their own (like I’m about to do).
And so these priority lists can get tricky. How can you
separate the way
you treat your wife from you relationship with God? How could you put
Jesus ahead of the other people in your life when what he’s called you to
is a life of service to those people?
Ruthie and I have a friend who has been unhappy in "the
ministry" for
years. He told me once that a lady had said to him, "My family is more
important to me than God is and that’s why we went boating Sunday instead
of to church." And whatever else you want to make of that, I’m not sure
that her absence from a meeting indicated what she thought it did. I’m
not so sure it works like that. I heard a preacher say something once
that sounded scandalous until I’d had time to let it soak in. He said,
"Jesus is not a priority." Jesus never asked to be placed somewhere on a
list of other things that are also important. Not even at the top. Jesus
transcends lists and compartments. More on that later.
Often what we mean by "putting God first" is "busying
ourselves for him."
I think that Jesus is trying to tell Martha that that’s not what he
wants. Lets look at this part of The Story.
Jesus and his disciples are "on their way." Luke doesn’t
tell us where
they’re going, but we do know that Mary and Martha lived in Bethany,
which was just outside of Jerusalem. And Martha (not Mary) opened their
home to him. Now he hadn’t called ahead, and he certainly hadn’t emailed
to say he was coming. He just seems to have shown up, so there’s work to
do. I know how that is. When someone is coming to stay with us or just to
visit we run the sweeper and make sure the kitchen is clean and that we
have food to serve and clean hand towels out. There’s lots to do, and
that’s what Martha’s doing and there’s nothing in the world wrong with
that. And while Martha is doing that, Mary is listening to Jesus. I had
always pictured Martha in the kitchen and Mary and Jesus off in the
living room somewhere, but I talked to Tommy and its more likely that
they were in a small house, and that they all in one room.
A couple springs ago I got together with three friends and
went down to
Lexington for the Regional Semi’s and Finals on the NCAA basketball
tournament. One of those afternoons together, before the evening’s games,
we dedicated to playing Sega and frying things to eat. We fried
everything we could think of. Jared’s fryer was out on the porch by the
front door, which entered into the living room where the Sega was and
then, through the living room into the kitchen, where the rest of the
preparation was going on. It was a little frustrating to me, as I tried
to play Sega, that my three friends kept passing between me and the
television working on our meal. Finally Jared stopped and looked at me
and said, "You just go ahead and sit there—we’ll take care of
everything." I got the message. That’s a frustrating feeling.
We need to understand that what Martha is doing is not bad. She’s serving
Jesus! And he doesn’t give her a hard time for what she’s doing, but for
thinking that its better than what Mary has chosen. In verse 40, Martha
has one of those uncomfortable moments where she realizes that what is
important to her, which she assumed was important to Jesus, wasn’t.
Listen to her. "Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the
work by myself? Tell her to help me!" And I have had days like that. See,
she’s not working because she’s some kind of workaholic who just loves
sweeping and making beds. She’s serving Jesus. She thinks that’s where it
is.
I was in a Goodwill store with Ruthie not long ago. My
favorite flannel
is wearing out, but I don’t like to buy a flannel new. I like one after
someone else has purchased it, worn it, broken it in, worn it out, given
up on it and dropped it off at the Goodwill. So I’m flipping through the
hangers and I come across a Garth Brooks concert sweatshirt—the nice kind
with the embroidery on it. Now I don’t know how much that shirt sold for
originally, but I do know that ten years ago, when I saw Garth Brooks,
t-shirts were $50 and the nice embroidered sweatshirts were closer to
$80. It was now priced to sell at $4. At some point whomever bought it in
the first place realized that, not only was it not worth $80, it wasn’t
worth having around at all. This is what’s about to happen to Martha.
What happens when you realize that all the busywork that you thought
impressed God isn’t what he died to give you after all? And what’s left?
What was it that Mary had chosen that was better than Martha’s working to
serve Jesus? I don’t know. We could take the easy answer and say that its
spending time with Jesus, but I’m not sure she was any more with him than
Mary was. And anyway, there’s a bigger problem with what might seem like
a simple answer.
To say that a believer needs to spent time with Jesus is
to imply that
its possible for a believer to do anything else. The fact is, you’re not
any more with Jesus when you’re at church (as if church is something you
can be at), or having a quiet time, or doing anything else that seems
spiritual, than when you’re at work, or at a ballgame, or on a boat, or
doing something wrong. Listen to what Paul wrote to the believers in
Galatia: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but
Christ lives in me." We’ve already talked this morning about how its in
him that we live and move and have our being. If you’re in Jesus today,
you’re entire life is swallowed up in his. Not just the things that seem
religious. Not just the things that make you feel productive. Jesus
didn’t have much to say about religion or accomplishing things. He talked
about life—not little compartments, but life.
Listen to what Brennan Manning says in The Ragamuffin
Gospel (you’ve
heard this before from me): "Quite simply, our deep gratitude to Jesus
Christ is manifested neither in being chaste, honest, sober and
respectable, nor in church-going, Bible-toting and Psalm-singing, but in
our deep and delicate respect for one another." I work with a lady who is
very active in her church. She teaches Sunday School and I think she’s a
deacon. She’s active. But outside that compartment, she’s short-tempered,
abusively profane, and dishonest. She’s religious, but she’s not alive.
Jesus didn’t come to bring the world a better religion, he came to bring
us life. Mary seems to have chosen life instead of busyness and
distraction. Jesus said that what she chose was better.
What happens when we turn from busyness to life? For one
thing, we’re
freed to love. We’re freed to cultivate real, healthy relationships.
There was a big article in Time Magazine about the Harry Potter
phenomenon—came out just before the most recent installation of the
series. That article quoted a teacher from Detroit, who said, "Many of
these kids have grown up without parents, but they still have to make
moral choices in their lives. Before, those choices might have been
dictated by church, by family, by community; now you have to face that
alone, and the choice lies within yourself. This is a generation that
needs Harry Potter." Maybe if the body of Christ wasn’t so busy, we could
be the light that Jesus has called us to be and a generation wouldn’t
have to learn to how to make moral choices from children’s fiction. When
we turn from busyness to life, we’re freed to live the life that Paul
described to the believers in Rome. Listen to what he wrote:
"So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday,
ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around
life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for
you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well adjusted
to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix
your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily
recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the
culture around you, always dragging you down to its own level of
immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity
in you.
"I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that
God has given me,
and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living
then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you
not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to
God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand
ourselves is by what God is and what he does for us, not by what we are
and what we do for him."
So don’t get distracted. There are bumper stickers around
that say,
"Jesus is coming—Look busy." That seems unfortunate to me. Maybe better
to say, Jesus has come—be alive."
"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and
more in
knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what
is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ."
Repent: The Key to
Healing and Miracles (Mark Scherer, Nov. 2002)
Doing Versus Being in the
Kingdom (Jay Horn, Aug. 2002)
The Kindness of God Leads
to Repentance (Ben Gregory, Feb 2003) |
