This morning God gave me a powerful online sermon which really struck home – from Luke 10:38-42.
“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.”
Having just opened my home to care for my friend as she recovered from intense, complex spine surgery I really related to the generosity of Martha opening her home in love to Jesus and his disciple-entourage.
It takes a lot to open your home to guests.
Martha wasn’t just opening her home to Jesus. She was opening her home to a large group of traveling men (13 men, maybe more). To be honest, I would be overwhelmed opening my home to a large group of 13 or more dusty, dirty, tired, hungry men. That’s a lot of people! That’s a lot of people to cook for! And hungry men can eat a lot!
Martha needed to provide clean water for all 13 or more dusty, dirty, tired, hungry men to wash their dusty dirty feet. Can you imagine the effort of carrying that much water for that many people to wash their dusty, dirty feet!
And then there needed to be towels to dry their feet afterwards. Can you imagine the pile of dirty laundry in a wet heap on the floor afterwards. Dirty laundry which now needed to be washed.
Everyone was thirsty. Can you imagine getting enough drinking water for 13 or more tired, hungry men. You have to carry that water from somewhere … perhaps draw it up out of a well. That’s exhausting. And you already just drew and carried large amounts of water for washing everyone’s feet. Maybe the large group of men helped to draw the water??
You will need cups for everyone to drink from. In my own home I do not have enough glassware for a group this large. Did they share cups/ladles back then?? (ewww! … perhaps that was the custom at the time though?)
Cooking for a large group is a lot of work! They probably had some sort of bread … maybe Martha already had some flour ground and set aside? But most likely not … as freshly ground flour will spoil and go rancid quickly if kept at room temperature, especially in a warm climate. So Martha probably had to grind flour. Then she had to mix up enough bread dough for a large group. Can you picture in your mind the large bowl full of bread dough.
Then she had to get a good hot fire going. She had to pat little balls of dough out and put them on the fire to bake.
She had to get some olives and figs plated to serve.
When it came to caring for my friend after her surgery, it took a bit of effort. I was constantly checking with her to refill her cup … sometimes with cranberry juice, sometimes with just water, sometimes with orange juice. I brewed coffee for her; I made cups of Cinnamon-Orange tea for her.
My friend was gluten-free, so I was very careful in what I served to make sure it was gluten-free. My friend was also diabetic, so I was likewise careful to make sure there was not a lot of sugar in what I served her.
I made sure my friend’s laundry was caught up and kept clean. I made sure my friend had ice packs ready if she needed them. Etc. …
Every sermon I have ever heard about Martha has presented Martha in a negative light. Martha was distracted doing stuff. Her sister Mary, on the other hand, is always presented as the hero of the story. Mary sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to Jesus’s teaching. But bad for Martha being distracted with all the preparations of serving.
“Martha, Martha,” Jesus said, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” – Luke 10:41-42
As I have listened to all these sermons in the past, it has made no sense to me to turn Mary into the hero simply because she sat and listened. The house was full of hungry guests. Everyone was expecting something to eat. It would be terribly disrespectful and rude not to take care of your house guests. Even today, it would be disrespectful and rude not to take care of your house guests.
If Martha neglected her responsibilities and just sat around listening to Jesus too … then she still would have been the “loser” of the story because she didn’t take care of her guests.
So it seems like Martha loses either way.
She “loses” if she is distracted and overwhelmed trying to care for her guests. And she “loses” if she ignores her guests’ needs and just sits around enjoying herself, listening to Jesus too. She “loses” either way.
As I listened to the online sermon this morning, the main takeaway lesson I learned, that Jesus was teaching Martha, was this:
“Yes, there are tons of responsibilities and demands weighing heavy. Yes, that’s true. You can’t just ignore your responsibilities. But you have to ‘listen’ at the same time. You have to ‘be present’ at the same time. You can’t get it all done. You’ve got to let some of it go. You’ve got to let your expectations of yourself go. You’ve got to let others help you ‘carry the load.’ And in the middle of it all, you’ve got to ‘listen’ and ‘be present’ at the same time.”
We all are “Martha.”
We all have tons of responsibilities and demands weighing heavy on our lives. It’s a lot! We can’t just ignore our responsibilities. But we have to ‘listen’ at the same time. We have to ‘be present’ for others in our life at the same time.
We have to do both!
We have to be faithful to our responsibilities … and we have to ‘listen’ and ‘be present.’ We have to do both.
There will be seasons in our life when it all is just too much! We simply can’t get it all done. There is no way … it’s just too much. This is where Martha was in the passage in Luke. It was too much.
In situations / seasons like this, we have to let some of it go. We’ve got to let others help us “carry the load.” And, even in the stress and the press of feeling “pulled apart” by it all, we have got to “be present” at the same time.
The week my friend was in the hospital following her complex spine surgery, I was down at the hospital with her every day. I did not get home in the evenings until after hubby had already gotten home from work. I was exhausted from the heavy traffic commute! We both were hungry!
Because I had chosen to “be present” for my friend in the hospital … the tradeoff is that there wasn’t enough of me left over to fix something nice for dinner. On those nights, hubby and I had warmed-up little bowls of shelf-stable pre-prepared Korean Fried Rice. Not gonna lie, it wasn’t very tasty. But it made the hunger go away. Or we had fried eggs with chips & salsa. Not fancy. But once again, it made the hunger go away.
Because I was prioritizing being with my friend in the hospital, there was no time for me to get the laundry done. The dishes piled up on the kitchen counter.
The lesson of “Martha, Martha” God showed me this morning is this: We have to be faithful to our responsibilities … and we have to ‘listen’ and ‘be present.’ We have to do both!
And sometimes that means we have to let some of it go. In my case, I had to let go of my expectation on myself of having a delicious meal prepared for hubby when he got home from work. I had to let go of my expectation on myself of keeping the laundry caught up and the dishes washed.
After my friend was discharged from the hospital and came to stay in our home for the next week as she recovered, there was a lot I simply could not keep up with. Writing blog posts was one of the things I could not keep up with. So I had to let it go. For a time.
The lesson of “Martha, Martha” – I needed to be faithful to care for my friend well … and I needed to ‘listen’ and ‘be present’ for my friend in her time of need. I had to do both! Which meant some things I had to let go.
The online sermon I listened to this morning blessed me so much because it really struck home! We all are “Martha.” We all have tons of weighty responsibilities and duties.
We can’t just abandon them to “sit at Jesus’s feet.”
We can’t just ignore our loved ones who need for us to be there for them and need for us to love them, simply to read Bible, do Bible studies and “listen to Jesus.”
We have to do both!
We have to do both!
There are bills to pay. Our loved ones need us to be there for them. People are counting on us!
“Martha, Martha,” Jesus said, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.” Or in other words … you’ve got to do both. Your responsibilities matter but so does “being present.” You’ve got to do both.
And sometimes that means you’ve got to let some stuff go. Sometimes that means you’ve got to let your own expectations go. Sometimes that means you’ve got to let others help “carry the load.”
The large group with Jesus would have been happy to pitch in and help get the meal on the table. Everyone would have been happy to help “carry the load.”
“Martha, Martha … be present. Listen. Be right here, in the moment.”
“And … we’ll get the stuff done together.”
Love is “present.”
(As an aside – I intentionally chose this photo of Mukilteo Light because, as you can see, the ferry is just pulling into dock in the background. So much coming and going! People loading and unloading from the ferry! So much busy-ness going on! So many pressures and demands! This is each of our lives! This right here is life. And in the middle of it all, Jesus is telling us: “Yes, keep up with the responsibilities and demands … but make sure to ‘be present’ at the same time.”
Jesus is saying: “In the middle of it all, make sure to stay tuned in to Me at the same time. Make sure to love others well at the same time.”)
