1/17/60

Scripture: Luke 10: 38-42

The village is not named. Our Scripture lesson of today only says that Jesus entered a village “and a woman named Martha received him into her house.” Martha had a sister named Mary who was with her there. The story about the way in which they received Jesus, as hostesses might, is one of the most exquisite in the Gospels. Luke is the only writer who tells us about it.

You recall the way in which these two sisters reacted. Martha was the busy hostess. Things must be just right in her house. The furniture was well cared for, the floors cleaned, the walk “spic-and span.” The meal for the guest must be a “company” meal, well prepared, with plenty of variety, and tastefully served. And this was a bit more than one person could well handle alone. She needed Mary’s help.

But Mary seemed oblivious to these housewifely matters. She had become so interested in what Jesus was saying that she paid no heed to anything else. Martha, in something of a fluster as meal time approached, finally broke in: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” The words that Jesus then spoke to Martha are among the most famous in all the Bible: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion; which shall not be taken away from her.” [Luke 10: 41-42].

And so Martha and Mary have become symbols for two possible attitudes toward life; for two forces in a person and in mankind as a whole; for two kinds of concern. Martha is concerned, anxious, worried about many things -- all of them finite, preliminary, transitory. Mary is concerned with one thing, which is infinite, ultimate, lasting.

Why did Luke put in this story in that place in his narrative? Is it because he wished to caution against a concept of the Christian life which would make it consist alone in good deeds, like that of the Good Samaritan? This may be possible. But there seems to be more to it than that.

Martha’s busy way is not contemptible. On the contrary, her way is one that keeps the world going. It is the driving force which keeps the world’s work running. Without that well arranged and properly functioning home, Jesus could not have easily talked to Mary, nor could Mary have well listened to him. It would be possible to dedicate a whole sermon to justification of Martha. There are innumerable concerns in human life which demand attention, and devotion, and enthusiasm. But they do not demand infinite attention, unconditional devotion, nor ultimate passion. They are important for you and for me. I need a certain amount of good food and decent housing for any sense of well-being; and you do too. And so do the hungry poor of the earth. But these are not ultimately important. And therefore it is Mary who receives Jesus’ praise, and not Martha. Mary has chosen the thing that mankind needs, the right thing, the thing of ultimate concern for every person.

The hour of a church service, and every hour of meditative reading is dedicated to listening in the way that Mary listened. Something is being said to us, to the preacher and the hearers, to the speaker and the listeners, something about which we may become infinitely concerned. It is the meaning of every hour of worship, and of every sermon, that we shall be awakened to an infinite concern.

Now, of course Martha was concerned -- much more consciously than was Mary. Martha was “fluttery,” flustered, anxious that a well-planned meal should go right. And it was precisely this anxiety that Jesus gently chided. Martha’s concern made her fussy. She was busy preparing an elaborate meal -- many dishes -- at a time when only a few were needed; really only one good dish of food would have been sufficient. There she was, using up much of the time that, just then, could be put to better use. In a sense, her use of time was wasteful because she had lost the perspective in which her activities were to be viewed. For the moment, Martha was losing out on the word of Christ. And so she was losing the real meaning of her work. Work itself, when it ceases to be significant or satisfying, becomes neither efficient nor satisfying. The one thing that means most is the word of the Lord, which is what Mary was hearing at the time of this story.

Man really needs, much more, to find meaning in his life than to find life itself! When he gets into a frantic nervous search for many things, attempting above all else to enjoy various novelties and luxuries without any other meaning, his efforts merely hide the lack of the one thing which he really needs and wants most.

Now this point has possibility of wide application. Building an economic order in which everyone shall have a fair share of the goods produced, is one of the most important aims we can have. The most natural and most universal concern of everything that lives is concern for the preservation of life -- for our daily bread. In recent times, large groups in our Western world have almost forgotten the urgency of this need. Food in this neighborhood, for instance, is plentiful. And most people of this community seem to have enough of it.

But we are being awakened again to the fact that, to the greater part of mankind in this world, the simple concern for food is so overwhelming that it suppresses most other human concerns. And it absorbs the minds of all classes of people. Millions of India’s people are hungry, many starving, some dying for lack of food. Leaders of that land, who may have enough to eat, are nevertheless plagued with the problem of how to produce or secure enough food for the rapidly growing population. The same has been true of China; and in Africa and elsewhere. There are more people in our own country who are hungry than we know or like to think. And so we dare not be unconcerned with the problem, even if our own stomachs do not, for the time being, lack for enough nourishment.

But, even so, do not people of every sort have a higher concern than that for daily life? Does Jesus himself witness to us? He was moved by the misery of the masses; and his social concern has been grasped by many people of many times, that they may be liberated from the worry for their daily lives. When he is moved by pity for the sick, and heals them, he consecrates the concern shared by medical healers and healers of the spirit. When he gathers around him a small group in order to establish a community within it, he consecrates a concern for life together. When he is teaching the masses and his disciples, he consecrates the concern for learning and education. When, in his parables, he describes the beauty of nature, and creates sentences of classic perfection, he consecrates the concern for beauty, and the elevation of mind, and the peace which the contemplation of beauty brings.

But are all these noble concerns, even as commended by Jesus, the “one thing” that Mary has chosen? Or are they perhaps the highest forms of what Martha has chosen? Are we, like Martha, concerned mostly with many things -- even rather good things, rather than with the one most significant thing?

A good deal of our struggle in life --- even joyous, hopeful struggle --- is to build up the resources of comfortable existence -- wages for enough food, clothing, education, good housing, transportation, occasional travel, and so on. But is this ultimate? Even our ordinary common sense tells us that it is not. Sometimes these must be given up. Sometimes they are taken from us. Jesus used to speak of the beauties of the lovely temple in Jerusalem being doomed -- and they were. Modern Europe has learned how much of the things built up by a rich culture can be smashed. We know it when we see how the buildings and even the customs of yesteryear wear out.

As Jesus indicates, in his words about Mary, these things, however desirable, can be taken from us. They all come to an end. And the anxiety of the end dwells in the happiness they give. We maintain our transitory concerns as if they were ultimate; but we know that they are not. And Jesus says to our minds: “Man shall not live by bread alone.” [Luke 4: 4a] Bread? Yes, it is necessary. All of the good concerns to be promoted and advanced by our Martha-like anxiety and enthusiasm? Yes indeed! Our campaign for clean government; our promotion of justice, our Red Cross, our support of church and college, our ministry of relief and restoration, and so on and on. But, even so, man shall not live by these alone, “but,” says Jesus, “by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” [Luke 4: 4b] Without bread, one cannot live, but without the word which gives meaning to life, why should one desire to live?

The author of the 4th Gospel, in the Book of John, understands this very well. He reports that Jesus, on one occasion, watched the multitude depart, disappointed and angry because they had asked for bread and he had none to give. He turned to his disciples with the question, “Will you also go away?” Their answer was: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” [John 6: 67-68]

Well, dare we try to define what are the words of eternal life? Not if we are to make them up, but only if we are to receive them from Him. That is why we meet, like the Marys of history, in His presence. One hesitates to try to define what is the right thing that Mary has chosen. Almost any answer can be misunderstood. If we say “she chose ‘religion’”, it can be misunderstood as a set of beliefs and activities. At this kind of religion Martha was at least as religious as was Mary. Religion can be a human concern on the same level as others, with the same anxiety as others. And I fear it is often so in our experience. There are even special people, blasphemously called “religionists” who are supposed to cultivate this concern. It is a sign of decay. If religion is the special concern of special people, and not the ultimate concern of all people -- of every person -- it becomes nonsense.

Perhaps the answer to our question about the “one thing needful” is that we be concerned, as Paul Tillich said, “Ultimately, unconditionally, infinitely.” Not much can be said, beyond this, about Mary. Much more can be said about Martha. But Mary was infinitely concerned. Martha felt this and it made her angry. Jesus praised it in Mary. This is the one thing needed.

If we can learn to look, with what Mary was getting -- an infinite concern -- at our “Martha sphere” of life, everything will look the same, and yet will look different. For the anxiety is gone! The anxiety still exists and tries to return, but its power is broken and it can no longer destroy us.

Oh, to be grasped by the one thing needful, the good portion, the word of life, the everlasting yes! But how to find it? Is not the transmitter of the word, Jesus, someone in a far off time and a distant place? How can we hear?

Let me tell you a story as related by Rufus Jones. It came to me with simple force after I had, this week, looked through a copy of the publication called “Paradise of the Pacific” loaned to me by one our church members. On one page of that illustrated booklet was a picture of a scene in which I lived for nearly eight years -- the ocean beach in front of a parsonage in Kahului, looking up at the mountains of West Maui. I could hear again the roll or breaking waves; feel the salt spray; smell the kelp and other sea weed at that island bay in the Pacific ocean.

Rufus Jones’ story has to do with a visitor to the Atlantic ocean coast of Maine. The visitor had an impulse to start a Sunday School on one of the offshore islands within sight of his summer home. This particular island was a rather small one, small enough so that the surrounding ocean could be seen from every part of it. A few families had planted themselves and their abodes on its inhospitable rocks like swallows planting their mud nests on the eaves of a farmer’s barn. Amongst the scrubby trees and blueberry bushes, amidst boats and fish nets and lobster pots; in the undying noise of endless breakers and tumbling surf that continues to beat whether one wakes or sleeps, the children of that island play and toil. Even if they thought of it, there is no place to go to escape the sea. It resounds in their ears. It fills their vision. Its salty tang is in their nostrils and on their tongues. It is almost the exclusive source of their daily food. Their first adventure, and their only excursions away from home, were out on its heaving swells.

The kindly summer visitor collected all of the children of the island together and gathered them around in friendly fashion for the first Sunday school lesson. Before trying to tell them of invisible realities, he though he would begin with visible and familiar things. “How many of you,” he asked, “have ever seen the Atlantic Ocean? Please raise your hands, like I do, for I have seen it.” To his surprise, not one hand went up. They looked stolidly at him without knowing in the least what he was talking about. The Atlantic Ocean was as foreign to their understanding as the South Pole would have been if he had asked how many had seen that. They had been born on a shore of the Atlantic Ocean, they had lived by it all their lives, enjoyed its beauty, respected its stormy strength, received its sustenance, boated on it, bathed in it. But nobody had ever named it to them. It had not been interpreted to their minds. It was their constant environment. They had never discovered that there was such a thing as the Atlantic Ocean rolling, unexplored, right in front of their eyes.

This simple story may be taken as a parable of living. We may never even dream that our little island of spirit is surrounded by the deep world of the Spirit, from which we may draw all of our central being. But, in our hours of worship, and our moments of meditation, the Great Teacher can reveal the Word of Life to us. And it is always time that we went to school to Him so that we may grow in wisdom and understanding.

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, January 17, 1960

Wisconsin Rapids, June 16, 1968

Wood County Infirmary, June 19, 1968

Kalahikiola Church, March 5, 1969

Kohala Episcopal Mission, March 5, 1969

Waioli Hiuia Church, April 23, 1972