A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. James G. Kirk

Harundale Presbyterian Church

Glen Burnie, Maryland

July 22, 2001

Text: "there is need of only one thing." Luke 10:41

First Reading: Amos 8: 1-12

Second Reading: Col. 1:15-28

Mary and Martha is the classic story of type A and type B personalities. Martha frets over many things. Mary is content to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to what he says. Some have painted Martha as the ultimate hostess. It is she who invites Jesus into the home. It is she who looks after the meal. Her table would be the center of the visit and her meal the highlight of the invitation. No wonder she frets over many things.

Mary, on the other hand, is pictured as the other woman who listens to what the guest has come to say. From the order of things we gather Mary is the younger sister. "Martha had a sister named Mary…" We’ve heard about them before. John has a similar story after Jesus has raised their brother Lazarus from the dead. In John’s story Mary is much more active. She anoints Jesus’ feet with costly perfume. Luke is content to portray Mary more passively as she listens to what Jesus teaches. In Luke the two women seem to compete with one another, while in John they seem to compliment one another.

Type A personalities will more likely sympathize with Martha, type B with Mary. Luke does seem to provide a choice. There are those who fret while others ponder. Those who fret get quite frustrated with those who ponder, because they don’t seem to do anything. Like Mary they just sit there. Those who ponder cannot understand why others fret so much. They think if others would just sit quietly for awhile a lot of what they fret about would resolve itself.

Luke does say some important things to us in this story. They all center around Jesus’ response to Martha: "there is need of only one thing." Since he never tells us what the one thing is, we can assume what it could have been. One thing Jesus could have meant was, we all need to do a little of both, we need to fret some and ponder some.

I have to admit I fret more than I ponder. It seems there’s always something to worry about. As you know I feel very comfortable in the kitchen and would have probably gotten in Martha’s way. I certainly wouldn’t have been out in the living room with Jesus and Mary.

It took me twelve years to get my doctor’s degrees. I can certainly sympathize with those people who say they have completed all their course work and all they have left is their dissertation. All I had left was my dissertation, yet that took eight years to write. Finally, the Dean told me if I didn’t finish the dissertation in a year I would be out of the program. Needless to say, I finished, but it was the hardest thing for me to do. I couldn’t bring myself to write. I just wanted to ponder the subject. There was always one more book to read, one more footnote to check, one more idea to chase. That went on for twelve years! Finally, there was no more time to ponder. It was time to fret. I had to leave the living room at the feet of Jesus and go into the kitchen.

How often have you been at a party and hardly seen the hostess? The woman, and sometimes the man, too, are constantly in the kitchen. They want everything to be just right. Often it is, but they seem to worry over it so. They work themselves into a frenzy. They get themselves exhausted. They love to entertain, but their guests leave the party exhausted from watching them. They just seem to fret over everything and what should be a fun, relaxed evening turns into a marathon of activity.

To those who just want to ponder, someone has to tell them to get busy. Otherwise the Dean knew I wouldn’t get my degree. To those who constantly fret, Jesus says it might be good to relax a little. To our hostess he would say, take some time to enjoy your guests. You invited them into your house, listen to what they have to say, make them feel comfortable rather than exhausted.

Luke seems to imply Martha and Mary compete with each other. Martha wants Mary to be more active rather than just it at the feet of Jesus. Jesus says it would be well for Martha to spend some time at those feet. John’s account is probably the more balanced, since Mary and Martha complement one another rather than compete with one another.

"There is need of only one thing" could mean the balance we find in John’s gospel. Those who fret need to take some time just to be quiet. Those who ponder need at some point to get busy. That’s one of the joys of preaching. All week long preachers ponder the text. At some point the Spirit guides them to put those thoughts into some cohesive form. Through the sermon the Spirit breathes life into the text for you who hear it. You can then ponder the text and fret over its meaning for you.

There’s another meaning it may have. Jesus says, "there is need of only one thing." Both Mary and Martha seek something. Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and ponders his teachings. Martha works in the kitchen to prepare the meal and seeks some help from her sister. Jesus says, "there is need of only one thing." Since we don’t know what that one thing may be, it could be to make the most of each moment.

Life passes by pretty quickly and people miss out on a lot of it. I was over at the airport the other day and saw a lot of people with the same tee-shirt. It said they had been to the Knox family reunion last week in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It gave the dates of the reunion and had a picture of what must have been the homestead on it. I thought to myself how meaningful that reunion must have been to everyone of the Knoxes who attended. So often families only get together when someone dies, or happily, when someone gets married. Some families may not want to get together. Obviously, the Knoxes did and they did something about it. They didn’t wait for someone to die. They didn’t have to wait for someone to get married. They decided this year they would have a reunion, planned it and now some of the family were proud to show they’d been there. Life goes by too quickly. The Knoxes made sure they celebrated the moments of their lives together.

Make the most of each moment. Raymond Camp wrote a column, "Wood, Fish, and Stream," for the New York Times. One day he received a letter from a boy. It read: "Would you tell me where I could find a place to fish that is not more than five or six miles from my house in Queens? I am 14 years old and have saved up enough money to buy a rod, reel and line, but do not know where to go fishing. My father goes almost every weekend, but he fishes with older men who do not want a boy along, so I have to find some place I can reach on my bicycle or the subway."

Camp managed to find out the father’s name and sent him the letter with a brief note. He received this reply from the father: "You handed me quite a wallop in your letter, but I am sorry you did not hit me harder and sooner. When I think of the opportunity I might have lost, if frightens me. I do not need to point out that I now have a new fishing companion, and we have already planned a busy spring and summer. I wonder how many other fathers are passing up similar opportunities?" ("Lectionary Homiletics," Vol. VI, Number 8, July 1995 p.32)

Mary is like the Knox family reunion. She knows how important it is that Jesus is a guest in their house. She wants to make the most of the moment. Martha is more like the father to whom Camp wrote the letter. Martha should make every effort to be the hostess she is but not overlook the opportunity the moment affords with Jesus there in the house. Make the most of each moment. They go by so quickly and are often lost forever.

What we have here in Luke is what I call the onion theory of ministry. In verse 40 we hear how while Mary listened to what Jesus taught Martha "was distracted by her many tasks." You see, what Mary was doing was trying to construct her onion. Martha’s many tasks were peeling away her onion layer by layer. When Jesus says to her, "there is need of only one thing." I think the one thing is for her to reconstruct her onion.

What we find in a large part of society today is a people more prone to peel away their onion rather than construct their onion. Just as it takes layer upon layer to peel, so also it takes layer upon layer to construct. People aren’t willing to take the time to construct their onion layer upon layer. What happens is they get so involved in so many activities, each one of them a layer of the onion, that eventually their onion is peeled away and they lose their core.

What they need to do is to stop for a moment their multitude of activities, the "many tasks that distract them," and recognize the core upon which they need to start to construct their layers. Who are they really, not who are they trying to be? How then can they build upon that core without becoming unraveled in the process? As long as they pursue the many tasks that distract them, as long as they fret over their inability to get the help they need, the more the layers of their onion unravel and the longer it takes to build on their core.

A chapel in Wisconsin has a stained glass window over its door. As people enter the chapel Jesus is seen with his arms extended. He welcomes them to worship and beckons them to prayer. As the people leave they look at the same window from the other side. Now they see Jesus welcome them into the world where he will surround them as well. When the world engages so much of our time, we need to take some of that time for worship as well. Many don’t do that. It’s so much easier to get lost in the frenzied activity of the world and forget to spend crucial time at the feet of the Lord. The little girl said her prayers alongside her bed one night. After a rather lengthy litany of requests she made of the Lord, she concluded, "And now, Jesus, what do you want me to do for you?" Jesus doesn’t so much want us to do something for him as he wants us to do for ourselves.

While few of us need to fret more, the majority of us need to ponder more. We are distracted by our many tasks. We do ask for help and seldom get it. In that respect we are more like Martha than Mary. But I don’t think they are competition with one another. I think they are meant to complement each other, just as when we ponder is meant to complement when we fret. We all have some of both Martha and Mary is us. We just can’t let our Mary go unnoticed, for in so doing we may lose our core!

Thanks be to God,

Amen