The Park Road Pulpit
Sermons from Park Road Baptist Church
Russ and Amy Jacks Dean, Pastors
Timing Is Everything
Luke 10:38-42
Amy Jacks Dean, July 15, 2001
I hate to talk about my in-laws, but my Mother-in-law is a true “Martha,” and I’m not talking about Martha Stewart. If you’ve ever heard anything about the biblical Martha, you’ve heard that she was a doer – always busy in the kitchen – always projected as the “hostess with the mostess” – always a flurry of domestic activity. Walt Wangerin calls her “a small storm of helpfulness.” (The Book of God) That is my mother-in-law. She rarely sits down to eat a meal with us because she’s too busy refilling glasses, serving 2nd helpings, washing windows and cleaning the carpet. If she runs out of things to do inside, you’ll find her picking up sticks and pine cones in the yard. When we were first married, it made me nervous for her to come to my house. I would think we were finished cleaning up from a meal so I would be in the den playing a game or watching a movie only to hear her cleaning out my refrigerator or cleaning my oven. One time when they came to visit, I was determined that I would have our house so in order that she’d have nothing to do but spend time with the rest of us. We got up the next morning to find her straightening my linen closet which wasn’t all that messy. She’s a Martha. She’s a small storm of helpfulness. The only person I know more Marthaesque is my mother-in-law’s sister. She will literally take your plate while you are still eating!
I find “Marthas” to be aggravating. They make me tired and they make me feel a little guilty. In writing on Hospitality Theology, Mary Anderson says that “hospitality is an art form. Along its spectrum we all fall somewhere between Martha Stewart and the person who has the pizza place listed on the speed dial.” I don fall somewhere in that category.
One interesting thing about Scripture is that it is read as a part of a larger story. We can’t fully grasp today’s text without looking at it in light of surrounding texts and in light of the scene in which it is set. Today, we find Jesus dining in the home of Martha and Mary. He has begun his journey toward Jerusalem so he is thinking profound thoughts. Energy and passion are always a part of who he is, but once Jesus makes the turn toward Jerusalem, the intensity is turned up. Just prior to the telling of this story about Mary and Martha, Luke tells the famous story of the Good Samaritan. The children of our church should know this story well. The end of the year musical was about this story, as well as, one day of Vacation Bible School was devoted to this story. An expert in the law asked Jesus “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said – you tell me. The man answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.” Good answer! Good answer! Jesus replied. Then the man said, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus told him a story. It was a story about a man who was walking down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho which was about a 17 mile journey. It was a dangerous road and everyone knew it. It was narrow and rocky with plenty of places for robbers to hide. Muggings were known to happen frequently on this road. So, lo and behold, as the man was on his journey he was robbed, beaten and left for dead. Along comes first, a priest, then a Levite (a very religious person) – both passing him by on the other side of the road. Then along comes a Samaritan who cleans and bandages the man’s wounds, puts him on his animal, takes him to an inn, and pays for all of his expenses until he is fully recovered. And the moral of the story is that the Samaritan is the neighbor because of all he did for one in need. A Samaritan?! A Samaritan?! When we tell this story at our house we have to stop and explain that anyone from Samaria was considered to be yucky, yucky, yucky. For this expert in the law to hear that a Samaritan was the hero of the story would have practically turned his stomach. You see, the people in Jesus day had a bad habit of making generalizations about groups of people. They had a tendency to lump people together because of the color of their skin or because of their status or because of where they lived. The genius of the story is that the most unlikely person to be considered as neighborly was the neighbor. Also, when we tell the story at our house, we point out that the priest and the Levite have gotten a bad rap. Maybe they weren’t bad people. If they, especially the priest, had stopped to help a person who was bleeding, they would have been considered unclean because of touching him. If the priest had been defiled by the blood, he would not have been able to go to the temple to perform his job. I believe both the priest and the Levite in the story made a bad choice, but they were not the villains we make them out to be. I think they may have been too scared to stop on this dangerous road, and I can relate to that. Being a neighbor might just mean taking a risk.
What does all of this have to do with the text for today? Everything. Because it has to do with timing. Today’s text immediately follows this Good Samaritan tale, and we find ourselves in a home obviously owned and run by women. Martha opened her home to Jesus. There are other occasions when Jesus finds himself with these women – they are obviously good friends and he had come to dine with them. And there plopped Mary at his feet listening to every word that was uttered from his mouth. That was the place for only the men – as disciples at the teacher’s feet. Luke is again spinning an unbelievable tale. As unlikely as it was for a Samaritan to be the hero of the story – now we’ve got a young woman sitting at the feet of Jesus. Rabbinic lore says this: “Let thy house be a meeting-house for the Sages and sit amid the dust of their feet and drink in their words with thirst . . . [but] talk not much with womankind.” (New Interpreter’s) Mary broke the rules while busy Martha – trying to get everything prepared just right – is frustrated and perturbed. Instead of going to the source of her frustration – namely Mary – she attempts to triangulate the situation by asking Jesus to scold Mary. “Jesus! do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to get up off her lazy . . . self and help me!” I’m sure that’s what she said. But Jesus would not be pulled into such a passive-aggressive behavior. He just gently scolds “Martha, Martha – you’ve got so many things on your mind, so many fires burning – your life is so cluttered and you are distracted by so many things. There’s only one thing, Martha, and Mary has chosen it and it will not be taken away from her. I don’t care how Southern and genteel you are. I don’t care if this does not seem right to you, Martha, that a woman would take time for herself – away from the clutter and bustle of life. I don’t care, Martha that sitting around without spinning 1000 plates makes you feel like you are going to crawl out of your skin – This will not be taken away from Mary.” I’m sure that’s what he said. But Martha, like the priest and the Levite, sometimes gets a bad rap. Let’s not forget that Martha was trying to love Jesus the best way she knew how. Let’s not forget that she had the courage to confront Jesus with her frustration. And let’s not forget that it was Martha who shows Jesus how much she believes in him by saying “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” (John 11:27) – only Peter rivals her high recognition of Jesus.
In these two back-to-back stories we see a model of discipleship: go and do AND sit and listen. Love your neighbor AND love your Lord. Seeing a need AND hearing a word from God. It seems to me that timing is everything. We need to be sensitive enough to our own bodies – our own spirits – our own souls to know when we need to sit and listen and learn. We need to be sensitive enough to the world around us to know when we need to get our hands dirty and risk our own comfort to care for another. But timing is everything.
Some of us need more Mary and less Martha. Some of us need to be more neighborly, and less priestly. Some of us need to spend more time in quiet worship and study and prayer – nourishing and nurturing our innermost selves so that our faith can come to life by living the teachings of Jesus - to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and care for the poor. Timing is everything. Some of us spend all of our time and energy doing all the things we’ve been called to do without taking time to connect the doing to our life of faith. We do plenty, but without a real connection to the One who calls us in the first place. Timing is everything.
But my biggest fear if that some of us do neither. We don’t have to time to carve out a niche for quiet, Godly reflection yet the things that fill our calendars have little, if anything, to do with the Kingdom of God. We’ve got plates spinning – but mostly just out of control. We’re saying prayers like, “Lord, I need your help. I don’t have time to stop or I can’t stop because if I do the plates will crash.” But the truth is there’s not much on the plates. I’m afraid our lives have much clutter.
The most important thing I heard at Furman’s Pastors School two weeks ago was that we need to learn to stop making urgent things necessarily important and we must learn to make important things urgent. I am going to try to unclutter my life and make the important things urgent. And I am going to try to stop making all the seemingly urgent things so important. The funny thing is that as I have looked at my calendar, I don’t think I can enact this new vision for my life until August 19th!
Timing is everything and it is time for you to, like Mary, sit at the feet of the teachings of Jesus and take it all in. It’s time for you to be quiet and listen for a word or a nudge or a call from God. It is time for you to take care of yourself and stop worrying about the dishes.
Timing is everything and it is time for you to, like the neighbor, bandage some wounds and pay for the recovery of the battered and bruised. It’s time for you to serve the homeless or build a house. It’s time for you to take some risks and be a neighbor.
The hard part is developing a sense of timing. Comedians make their living almost solely on their sense of timing. Christians make their faith alive and real in their sense of timing. May it be today, that our timing would be precise. May it be today, that our timing would be everything. Amen.