University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

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Luke 10:38-42

A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Dedication Sunday     October 25, 2009

            It seems an odd text for Dedication Sunday, I know.  There’s no mention of money, or of tithing, or of sharing what we have… no reference to dedicating our lives to Christ’s service. In fact, it sounds like a simple story of a small domestic dispute between two sisters, with Jesus caught in the middle.  But I would argue that it is more than it seems and, in reality, more than fitting for this day, for it is a story about choosing what matters most in a moment of decision.

What we have before us is this odd story of Jesus’ visit to the home of Mary and Martha. It’s a bit aggravating to many modern readers (particularly modern American readers) because they are sensitive to Martha’s complaint, a complaint that her sister is not helping with all the work that needs to be done to extend hospitality to guests – an important task in Hebrew homes. Yet, in the end, Jesus praises Mary and chides Martha.  It rubs against our modern sensibilities.

Some of you have heard Garret Keizer tell of his childhood household as a way of explaining what’s at stake in this story for many readers. He says:

My mother believed in a standard of housekeeping that brooked no compromise. She believed in the Bible, too, though on that score she was less of a zealot, more open to interpretations. I cannot recall a single time when she quoted scripture at me; I do recall the few times when she expressed her views on [this] passage to me…. This was all she said: “I always felt that Jesus was a little hard on poor Martha.”

Of course, I knew whom my mother saw in poor Martha . . . . My mother saw herself. My mother would have been that bustling sister … who troubled herself with much serving. Frankly, I doubt she would have protested against Mary's failure to pitch in. I doubt she would have protested about anything. She would have set the dishes on the table, sat down after Jesus and Mary had sat, and then sprung up again within the minute because someone was missing a spoon. Uncomplaining though she was, in the Lord's rebuke of Martha, my mother heard herself rebuked.

Anyone with a Martha streak does, and in this obsessively driven culture of ours, it would be hard to believe that anyone doesn't. Most of us are “troubled about many things”; in fact, popular spirituality is prone to define perfection as the ability to “balance” many things.[1] 

And yet Jesus praises not Martha, but Mary – because she has chosen “the one thing” that matters.  Maybe what he praises is her single-mindedness. Or, perhaps, her awareness of what time it is… and with whom she is spending that time… her sense that the Kingdom of God has come near, and she needs to pay attention. Maybe what he praises is her claiming of Sabbath in that moment – not Sabbath as a rest, but Sabbath as focusing on the “one thing” matters most.  Tom Long says:

Martha, preparing that meal of hospitality, is doing a good thing – a necessary thing – an act of service – but if we try to do this kind of service apart from the life-giving Word of the gospel, apart from the vision that comes only from God, it will distract us and finally wear us down. Mary has chosen to listen to the Word. Jesus, the living Word, is present, right in her house, and if she is going to love God and love neighbor, if she is going to show hospitality to the stranger and care for the lost, then everything depends on hearing and trusting that word.

Years ago [Tom says] I served as part of an advisory group to the chaplains at a major university. Our job was to meet, to listen to reports from the chaplains about their work, and to offer support and counsel. One year, we had heard the reports of the chaplains, and we were asking them questions. An older member of the council asked the chaplains, “What are the university students like morally these days?” The chaplains looked at each other, wondering how to answer that question. Finally one of them took a stab at it. “Well,” she said, “I think you'd be basically pleased. The students are pretty ambitious in terms of their careers, but that’s not all they are. A lot of them tutor kids after school. Some work in a night shelter and in a soup kitchen for the homeless. Last week a group of students protested apartheid ....” As she talked, the Jewish chaplain who was listening to her began to grin. The more she talked, the bigger he grinned, until finally it became distracting. “Am I saying something funny?” she said to the Jewish chaplain. “No, no, I'm sorry,” he replied. “I was just sitting here thinking. You are saying that the university students are good people, and you're right. And you're saying that they are involved in good social causes, and they are. But what I was thinking is that the one thing they lack is a vision of salvation.” We all looked at the Jewish university chaplain. “No, it's true,” he said. “If you do not have some vision of what God is doing to repair the whole creation, you can't get up every day and work in a soup kitchen. It finally beats you down.”[2]

            Where do we get such a vision? We get it within the community of faith and its weekly rehearsal of the Good News.  We get it in worship and in study and in prayer and in praise. We get it in the hymns we sing Sunday after Sunday. If we are going to sustain Christian faith and practice, it will require a proper stewardship of time. It will require the regular recurring rhythms of service and Sabbath, of individual Christian discipleship and the re-energizing strength of the Christian community. 

            The judicious stewardship of time, the capacity to make wise and faithful choices about how we will spend our time, always includes Sabbath observance. The fourth commandment of the ten charges the people of God to “remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy.”  In our day, it seems to me, we have forgotten both dimensions of the command, indeed, have forgotten the command entirely.  We live in a culture that has virtually no sense of Sabbath at all.  We live at breakneck speed.  We cram meetings into our mealtimes. We have Blackberries and i-Phones so that we are always on call. There are soccer games and swim meets and ballet performances and Scout activities all weekend.  We go and go and go, and so do our kids. 

            Of all the good news the Bible offers us, perhaps none is more needed in our day than the Sabbath command.  I know we tend to think of commandments as restrictions and prohibitions, but they are more like guardrails on the bridge that keep us safe and alive.  The fourth commandment is no different than the others; it shows us the way to fuller, richer life in communion with God and in community with one another.  We need Sabbath to keep human life human.  We need it to give order and shape to the rest of our days. Wayne Muller says:

Sabbath is more than the absence of work; it is not just a day off, when we catch up on television or errands. It is the presence of something that arises when we consecrate a period of time to listen to what is most deeply beautiful, nourishing or true. It is time consecrated with our attention, our mindfulness, honoring those quiet forces of grace or spirit that sustain and heal us.[3]

When Mary sat down at the feet of Jesus and let go of all other expectations, she was marking Sabbath – stewarding time by choosing not to spend it busily or mindlessly, but consecrating it with her attention, her mindfulness, honoring the quiet force of grace she discovered in the presence of Christ and in the midst of others.

            I know from my own failure to find Sabbath for my life, to steward well the time I’ve been given, just how deadening and exhausting such a failure can be.  And as one of your pastors, I have to tell you that my colleagues and I worry about the strains and stresses we see pressing on so many families in the congregation…strains and stresses that seem to grow out of an unwillingness to say “no” to the frenetic pace of life that leaves too little time for Sabbath…and too little opportunity to claim and enjoy fully the gift of the time we have been given.

            I know I am preaching to the already-converted, so take this message with you today and share it with your friends and neighbors.  But let me be very clear here. I am asking something of you today.  I am asking you to consider stepping away from everything that gets in the way of Sabbath for you or for your children, from everything that keeps you or your children from focusing on the “one thing” that matters most.  I am asking you to remember the vows made at your baptism and the baptism of all our children. I do not do this often, but in the name of Jesus Christ I am asking you (and through you others who aren’t here today) to make a choice to be more intentional in claiming the importance of worship and nurture in the life of the Christian community… to claim them as crucial Sabbath practices that equip us for discipleship and service, for the mission of the church, for faithful living.  I am giving you permission in Christ’s name to say “no” to all that distracts you and your children and makes demands of you or them, so that you all can say “yes” to the center of Christian faithfulness. To be a Christian is to put Christ at the center, and we cannot do that alone, for the Christian faith is a faith shaped, lived and sustained by Christian community. 

            Tom Long underscores the need for Sabbath as he recalls a friend’s story about a mission trip to Jamaica he took with his church youth group.

On their trip they visited one of the local elementary schools, and they spent some time observing in a classroom seriously overcrowded with children, most of them very poor, all of them needy and wiggly and noisy and unruly. It was a difficult, sometimes even chaotic, learning environment; but the youth group marveled to see that the teacher carried herself with great calm and patience, treating all of the children with love and respect, despite the poverty and the chaos. They decided that the only way she could do this was that she must really love being a teacher. But they were surprised to hear her say, “Oh, I don't come here every day mainly because I love teaching. I come here every day because I love Jesus, and I see Jesus in every one of these children.”

[Tom says] I think that teacher had been like Mary, sitting at Jesus' feet [Sunday after Sunday]. And because she had, she could get up like Martha and teach those children, seeing Jesus in the face of every one of them.[4]

What it all comes down to is choosing what matters most in the various moments of our lives.  What it all comes down to is choosing to hold to Jesus at the center, and that means choosing to keep Sabbath, so that together we can keep life’s rhythms whole and healthy and faithful.  That is, after all, what it means to be stewards of time.