Genesis 18.1-10a; Colossians 1.15-28; Luke 10.38-42

I love the story of Mary and Martha. I think the main reason is that I seem to spend my life racing around doing things like Martha, with never enough time to stop and sit at Jesus’s feet. Like Martha, I find it frustrating that there is always work to be done, and never enough time to spend in prayer.

I love Jesus’s response to Martha. He is telling her she has got it wrong, but he does it in such a gentle way - “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.”

I wonder what happened after the point at which our story ended this morning. Did Martha relax and join her sister at Jesus’s feet, once he had assured her that there was something more important than a meal at this moment? Did she storm back into the kitchen and stomp around angrily, because Jesus appeared to be praising Mary more than her? Did she perhaps burst into tears and retreat because she knew deep down that Jesus was right, but her pride wouldn’t let her admit? We just don’t know.

But we do know that it wasn’t only Mary who had faith. In John’s Gospel, we see Martha again, at the time of her brother Lazarus’s death. There she expresses her belief in Jesus quite clearly.

So we are not talking about a contrast between faith and not faith; we are talking about different attitudes of people who do trust Jesus.

And Jesus can’t be saying you must spend all day sitting at my feet. If we had heard last week the normal lectionary readings, rather than the ones for St Margaret, we would have heard the story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus’s instructions at the end of that were to “Go and do likewise,” to go and be good neighbours to others. It’s hard to be a good neighbour when you’re sitting around at Jesus’s feet. And the week before we heard the story of Jesus sending out the 70 to go and tell people that the kingdom was near.

So, there has to be a balance between time for sitting at Jesus’s feet and time for serving him in practical ways.

I think where Martha had really gone wrong was in not recognising the moment. There was nothing wrong in itself about wishing to offer hospitality to Jesus. After all, he had told the disciples he sent out to accept hospitality where it was offered and to pass on through towns and villages where it was not.

In being so caught up with preparing a meal for Jesus, she had left behind the ability to treasure the time spent with him.

Sometimes time spent with Jesus has to take priority over daily tasks. Martha had not grasped that at this point it was time with Jesus that was more important than a meal on the table.

It’s comforting to know that stress is not confined to the 21st century, but that the tension between work and refreshment was, even then, not always straightforward.

We’re very good on the whole at doing the Martha bit, racing around feeding our families or friends, going to work, coming home again, chauffeuring the children and so on. And there’s nothing wrong with those things in themselves. Where we get it wrong though, too, like Martha, is that so often we fail to recognise the time when we should stop and join Mary at the feet of Jesus.

Let’s think about how we approach worship each Sunday. Do we prepare for it calmly, slowing down, giving ourselves some space before we worship so that we can concentrate and centre ourselves on God?

Or are we in such a rush on a Sunday morning that we’re racing around, worried we’re going to be late, distracted by whether we’ve prepared our Sunday lunch or not, and end up arriving in church hassled and distracted from worship so that it takes half the service for us to begin even thinking about God?

When we arrive at church, do we spend time in the pew before the service begins calmly preparing ourselves for worship? Or are we racing around trying to find out whether we’re reading today or laying up the altar, because however early we arrived at church, somehow time runs out and we’ve only got five minutes before we start?

Often for those with a role in the service, the quiet preparation time needs to take place earlier. I find, not surprisingly, that the services I feel most ready for are the 9 o’clock ones or the 10.30s where they are the first service of the day, because I’m not rushing in having already led worship elsewhere.

Is our Sunday worship our main priority? Or does worship get pushed out altogether because we’ve friends coming to lunch so we need to make a decent meal for them? Or because we’ve had a party the night before and we need to clear up? Or the garden is such a tip and it’s going to rain later so we really must mow the lawn?

It’s about not missing the moment. Because when we do miss the moment, our lives push out space for God. When we, as we all do, constantly give in to life’s demands and expectations, struggling to say no, we push out God.

Martha was pushing out space for Jesus. He hadn’t much longer to live; she wasn’t going to have that moment again when Jesus was in her house, giving his attention to her - or rather to Mary because Martha was in the kitchen.

We’re a society that loves busy-ness and hates silence. We’re a people who love to proclaim how busy we are but who struggle to make time for prayer. 

As I was reflecting on what I would say in this sermon, a friend sent me one of those e-mails that do the rounds. Normally I glance at them quickly and either delete them or leave them in my in-box in case they might come in handy in the future. Some of them make me laugh; some of them are tacky beyond belief, particularly the religious ones; but the one I received this week, though a bit slushy seemed to fit very well with the story of Mary and Martha, and for that reason I will share it with you.

Unfortunately we don’t have Power Point so I can’t show you the beautiful images of God’s creation that went with it. Almost more than the words, they made me realise that this e-mail was worth taking the time and space to read.

Here we go:

“I dreamed I had an interview with God.

‘So, you would like to interview me,’ God asked.

‘If you have time,’ I said.

God smiled. ‘My time is eternity. What questions do you have in mind for me?’

‘What surprises you most about humankind?’

God answered
o ’that they get bored with childhood, they rush to grow up and then long to be children again.
o that they lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health
o that by thinking anxiously about the future they forget the present, such that they live in neither the present nor the future
o that they live as if they will never die and die as though they never lived.’

God’s hand took mine and we were silent for a while.

And then I asked, ‘As a parent what are some of life’s lessons you want your children to learn?’

o ’to learn they cannot make anyone love them, all they can do is let them be loved
o to learn that it is not good to compare themselves to others
o to learn to forgive by practising forgiveness
o to learn that it only takes a few seconds to open profound wounds in those they love and it can take many years to heal them
o to learn that a rich person is not the one who has the most but is the one who needs the least
o to learn that there are people who love them dearly but simply do not yet know how to express or show their feelings
o to learn that two people can look at the same thing and see it differently
o to learn that it is not enough that they forgive one another, but they must also forgive themselves.’

‘Thank you for your time,’ I said humbly. ‘Is there anything else you’d like your children to know?’

God smiled and said: ‘Just know that I am here. Always.’

Martha didn’t take the space to receive Jesus’s love at that point; she compared herself with Mary and became jealous. She missed the treasure that was hers because she was too busy at the wrong moment.

I hope that we too don’t miss treasured moments with God because we are too busy at the wrong moment.