A Sensitive Balancing Act

July 23, 1995

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Scripture: Luke 10:38-42

The truth is, I think, they were both right. Mary and Martha were both right. They both had a point, and a good one. They both represent something valid, even as they both represent something one-sided. EITHER SISTER WITHOUT THE OTHER LEAVES SOMETHING BASIC UNSAID.

It’s too simple, that’s all, it’s too neat, as is sometimes done, to lift up Mary as the sole exemplar in this story and heap scorn on poor ol’ Martha as the villain.

I’ve heard sermons based on that interpretation all my life, haven’t you, and I think it’s too simple. It’s not only unfair, it’s misleading. The truth is, I think, they were both right, in a way, just as they were both incomplete, and the real power, the real oomph of this graphic little vignette lies in recapturing a sense of the creative tension between the types of religious approach embodied in these 2 sisters. MAYBE NO OTHER BIBLICAL STORY ILLUSTRATES IT QUITE SO WELL.

I want to argue this morning the need for maintaining a sensitive spiritual balancing act, the need for fashioning, somehow, in our personal lives, and in the life of the Church, a proper sense of proportion between what we are and what we do....between piety on the one hand, and activism on the other, between conservatism and liberalism, to use those overworked terms, between being and doing as a Christian lifestyle.

If I’m not mistaken, this lies at the heart of much of our religious malaise. There’s a wide gap here, probably a growing one....The polarity between Mary and Martha, 2 sisters, 2 approaches, 2 emphases, 2 ways of life, 2 diverse kinds of religion...the polarity between these 2 represents a spiritual chasm that needs to be bridged, and if we want to be whole persons, complete, fulfilled, authentic people, especially spiritually, we’re going to have to learn to hold these 2 opposites in proper tension.

But that’s the bottom line, the coming out point. Let’s go back to the beginning, back to the text itself. Do you remember this old story that only Luke tells?  It’s so vivid, there’s just such a wealth of intimate detail it must reflect a personal recollection. It just has the “feel” of an eyewitness account.

The setting is a dinner party; the place is Bethany, a suburb of Jerusalem, up across the Mount of Olives to the east....In the home of a woman named Martha---it’s clearly designated, by the way, as HER home. Mary, her sister, lived there, too, presumably, and from other sources we know there was a brother, named Lazarus, but he’s not mentioned here---In the home of Martha, LOOK WHO’S COMING TO DINNER. The Master Himself has accepted her invitation....or maybe He just dropped in unannounced. Preachers have been known to be that brazen....

At any rate, they were delighted. They were honored, and the scene lights up. There’s Martha, the older sister, the bossy sister, the “take charge” sister...There’s one like her in every United Methodist Women’s group in the world....and in not a few Men’s groups, as well. Nothing in the story gives aid and comfort to male chauvinism.

But you can just picture Martha in your imagination, can’t you? All day long she has cleaned, and scrubbed, and polished....She’s been to Goodings;[1] she has bought, she has baked, she had roasted....everybody in the neighborhood knows about Martha’s reputation for bagels....NOTHING TOO GOOD FOR THIS GUEST.

It’s got to be perfect....EVERYTHING...and she has worked her fingers to the bone to ensure it. The Record says, with tremendous economy, “she was cumbered with much serving”, and I’m sure that’s not an overstatement. Martha was a Home Economics major, in the worst sense of the term, and the tragedy of the evening for her was that she was so frenzied over the details of the entertaining that she forgot the point of entertaining. She had no time to be with the Guest.

And there’s little Mary, younger Mary...exactly the opposite. She hadn’t swept, she hadn’t cleaned, she hadn’t done anything to help get ready....Oh, maybe she’d set the table—let’s give her credit for that---but, really, that was just about it. She had let her sister do all the rest, all the marketing, all the preparing, all the cooking...She didn’t lift a finger.

Indeed, all through the meal, while her beleaguered sister did the work to make it possible, Mary just sat there and enjoyed the fruits of the occasion. Luke describes it like this: “She sat at the feet of Jesus and heard His word.”

The tragedy of the evening for Mary was that she was essentially a freeloader. There are some like that in every group, too, male and female. She was the unthinking beneficiary of somebody else’s sacrifice.

So, there they are, the two of them. It’s not hard to picture in your mind’s eye, is it? It makes a striking contrast---

Martha the doer..............Mary the dreamer..

Martha the activist..........Mary the pietist...

Martha the materialist.........Mary the idealist.

Martha the pragmatist............Mary the visionary,

Martha the manic....................Mary the mystic,

Martha the achiever.................Mary the aspirer,

Martha the realist.....................Mary the escapist,

Martha the Aristotelian................Mary the Platonist---I learned that in Philosophy class about 100 years ago. It’s basically the only thing I did learn----

Or to change it to a Church history motif:

Martha the Pelagian.....Mary the Montanist---that for the benefit of my reverend clergy colleagues---

Martha the prose writer.......Mary the poet,

Martha the traditionalist........Mary the innovator.

Martha the defender of the old ways......Mary the proponent of new ways.

Martha who prefers Lawrence Welk.............Mary who prefers Hootie and the Blow Fish---is that something of a stretch?

Martha the believer in elbow grease.............Mary the believer in prayer.

Martha who solves things by rolling up her sleeve….....Mary who solves things by going back to the source.

Martha the advocate of common sense........Mary the advocate of the uncommon Truth.

Martha the performer........Mary the believer.

At almost every point there is tension, up and down the line, and fundamental difference in approach. THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT ONE IS ALL RIGHT AND THE OTHER IS ALL WRONG. It’s to say that both are right....partly....even as either by itself, is incomplete.

You sort of feel sorry for Martha, don’t you? And you know, I don’t think Luke is denigrating Martha, certainly not entirely, though that’s how the story is often interpreted.

Jane Jones has written a little poem...you know Jane--she’s Ed Jones’ wife, or maybe a better identification would be Ed is Jane’s husband. Jane is a sensitive, talented, and extraordinary insightful Christian woman.....

She dashed off a little poem a while back she calls “Now There Are Varieties of Gifts”, or “A Defense of Martha”. It goes:

              Of Mary and Martha-may I be so bold,

              The tale as it stands is unfinished, I hold.

              And tho’ it is Scripture and treasured like gold,

              It does leave your everyday homemaker cold.

              The probable ending I think should be told.

              The compassionate Christ to this home often fled,

              Where his mind and his spirit with friendship were fed.

              When all of the loftiest words had been said,

              And they all thought they had to go hungry to bed,

              I bet they were thankful that Miss Empty Head

              Had stayed in the kitchen and baked all that bread.

That touches a responsive chord, and I don’t think Luke would argue with it. He’s not writing an anti-Martha diatribe. He’s writing a corrective.

He’s not saying Martha is all wrong...He’s saying there’s something else that’s also important. It’s a mistake to have to choose between the two, either/or, black or white. They both need each other; they both complement each other, and any religion that is worthy of the name, any religion that is alive, and vibrant, and vigorous must avoid the tendency to go too far in either direction.

As corroboration for that, is it an accident, do you suppose, just coincidence, that this graphic little story in the Gospel of Luke is placed where it is, just after the equally vivid story of the Good Samaritan? Did that just happen to happen? Vance preached on the Good Samaritan last week, you remember. These two stories together form a kind of counterbalance.

The punch of the Good Samaritan story is in the line, “Go, thou, and do likewise.” Here’s the example for you...RUN WITH IT. “Go and do”. That’s a  Martha story. The Christian life, the life of discipleship calls for action. It says, There are hurting people out there, out on the road, out on the highway, all around. Get up and respond to that need with compassion and service.

Then, WHAM, comes this story, immediately following, side by side. And here the emphasis shifts to a new focus, not contradictory, but complementary.

The Christian life ALSO calls for a time apart, a withdrawal, a stepping back temporarily from the arena of constant activity to, as he puts it, “sit at the feet of Jesus and hear

his word.”

It’s not a condemnation of Martha when Jesus heaps praise on Mary for having chosen the better part. He’s not suggesting that busyness, energy, sweat, preparation, industry, gumption, diligence in service are wrong. It’s not a plea for laziness or escapism into a land of irresponsibility. Isn’t He saying rather that all these fruits of Christian devotion are rooted and grounded in a relationship, are nurtured in a one-on-one communion with Christ, which, as with any deepening friendship or live affair, requires time to be spent in just being together, experiencing each other in intimacy.

You can’t work effectively in the kitchen, at least not for long, without periodically, and regularly, withdrawing to “sit at the feet of Jesus and hear his word.”

Well, O.K., what can we do with it now, this old story from the First Century? Your imagination begins to run, doesn’t it? Look at all the possibilities it seems to touch on. This is more than just history. This is preaching material.

These 2 sisters, Mary and Martha, could stand as symbols of a need for balance in a number of areas, couldn’t they? Maybe the balance needed between the generations---the practicality of the older vs. the idealism of the younger. Maybe the balance needed within the nation---fiscal responsibility vs. social reform. Maybe the balance needed within ourselves as whole, healthy, spiritually mature individuals. Most of us tend to lean one way or the other slightly, either tilted toward Mary or toward Martha somewhat in expressing our religious faith.

There are several directions we could go with this, and perhaps any one of them could prove instructive.

I’d like, though, in the limited time remaining to take these 2 Biblical sisters and suggest them as pertinent symbols for recovering a sense of balance in our understanding of the CHURCH. Would you go with me in that direction?

To court either Mary or Martha alone as an ecclesiastical patron saint is to court disaster. It’s to misunderstand the true nature of the Church of Jesus.

A purely Mary Church is an escapist Church. It’s an irresponsible Church. It’s a Church that operates with blinkers on its eyes.

We’ve been guilty of it at times in our history. This summer marks the 30th anniversary of the Freedom Marches in Mississippi, and the confrontation at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. It seems centuries ago now.....

The Church, lamentably, acted too much like Mary during the early days of the Civil Rights movement. We regret it now, but it’s part of our story. We sat there, for a long time, absorbed in our spirituality, while just outside the dirty dishes of racial injustice were left untended.

Our Baptist brothers and sisters, God bless them, recently faced up to the wrong of that era, when they publicly and officially confessed repentance for past injustices and civil rights neglect. I’d call it Jim Henry’s finest hour. THAT WAS THEN. But even today, THERE ARE ELEMENTS of the Church, including our Church, who want the Church to be escapist, isolated like that. They want it to be just like Mary, spending all its time sitting at the feet of Jesus, as if He, Himself, were always sitting...immobile.

They want it to be a thing apart, a fellowship of exclusiveness, a gathering of congenial people, like themselves, who like each other, who enjoy being together, and who never want to be reminded of jarring ideas that might upset the status quo.

They want the Church to focus primarily on the cultivation of individual piety, the nurture of individual virtue, the meeting of individual needs.

They want the Church to be principally a HAVEN, a place we go to get away from the world, away from the cares, and problems, and undone things that keep crying out for attention. THEY WANT THE CHURCH TO BE COMFORTABLE, FIRST AND FOREMOST, where, in an undemanding setting, they can be inspired, uplifted, and spiritually “fed” as they like to put it, without having to fret over the light bill...or anything else that might demand substantive response.

This is the Mary Church, one extreme---overdrawn? Of course! Exaggerated? Admittedly, but still too prevalent. AND, IT’S A CARICATURE OF WHAT THE REAL CHURCH IS MEANT TO BE.

On the other hand, there is the Church which is fashioned after Martha alone. Its error is in precisely the opposite direction. It never wants to pray. All it wants to do is WORK. It’s the socially involved Church, the “concerned” Church.

It sees the fallacy of escapism and decries it. But what it fails to recognize is that pure activism without going back again and again to the motive source of that activism can never be sustained.

It degenerates before you know it EITHER into a syrupy do-goodism that lacks the power to evaluate itself....OR into a bruise cynicism that pulls back exhausted after a couple of defeats. But here is the one-sided social emphasis which many Christians today espouse. The Church must be in the world, they say, not apart from it....It must be outspoken on social issues, and world affairs...as a top priority.

It must be involved and relevant....that’s the word everybody uses. Fie on quietism and introspection. It’s not the Church’s business to be priestly; it’s the Church’s business to be prophetic.

It’s not the Church’s business to comfort the afflicted; it’s the Church’s business to afflict the comfortable. It’s not the role of the Church—I heard a young minister in our Conference recently, a young social activist....He said, “It’s not the role of the Church to spend its time holding the hands of old women”. He said that. Then went on...We have more important things to do. Away with irrelevant pietism.

We must move out into this post-Christian, secular, world-come-of-age and serve it through the spending of ourselves in committed outpouring. END OF QUOTE. Let’s hear it for Martha and get in there and scrub.

Now, am I being unfair? Sure I am. I’m being unfair to both sides. I’ve overdrawn the picture deliberately to make the extremes distinct.

 The truth is, both sides are right, partly; both sides have a point, even as either side, taken by itself is distorted. If the Mary Church is escapist, the Martha Church is rootless. If the Mary Church errs in the direction of a purely personal kind of religion, the Martha Church errs in the direction of a shallow, amorphous humanitarianism.

If the Mary Church needs more social conscience, the Martha Church needs more spiritual anchor. To be too much like Mary is to be irresponsible; to be too much like Martha is to be irresolute....and in danger of being washed away when the rain begins to fall.

But do we have to make a choice here? Can’t there be a synthesis? The New Testament suggests it.

The Church MUST play a Mary role. It MUST be priestly, protective, personal, pious...It is precisely its role and function to hold the hands of old women, and God help us if we ever forget it. To deny that, or downplay it, is to deny the most characteristic theme the Master ever uttered: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give thee rest.”

AND, the Church must play a Martha role...It must be prophetic, working, doing, fussing...It has a responsibility to be outspoken.

It must be in the world because God so loved the world...and it was FOR the world, after all, that he sent His only begotten Son. To deny that, or downplay it, is to slap in the face the whole magnificent heritage of the Old Testament, the whole thrust of Jesus’ world affirming outlook, and even to negate the fantastic miracle of Incarnational involvement.

We simply cannot be a Church, a true, whole Church, without being like both Mary and Martha. Martha without Mary is like a bird without wings. Mary without Martha is like wings without a bird. Martha without Mary is like a car without a steering wheel. Mary without Martha is like steering wheel without a car.

Martha without Mary is like crying to rush out and cut your grass with a malfunctioning lawnmower. Mary without Martha is like sharpening up the blades of your machine, getting the engine purring smoothly...and then letting the whole apparatus rust in the garage unused. Martha without Mary is like trying to pass an exam without studying for it Mary without Martha is like mastering the material completely, and then failing to show up for the test.

The Church at its best has always maintained a proper sense of balance here, a rhythm between being and doing, faith and works, prayer and activity.

It comes apart, like Mary, as the gathered community, to sit at the feet of Jesus and hear His word....then it moves out, like Martha, as the scattered community, to hit the dirty dishes in the kitchen, to do the work for which the withdrawal was preparation.

It sings with Mary, Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, Forgive our Feverish Ways...and then it sings with Martha, Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War...recognizing that either emphasis without the other is incomplete, but that BOTH TOGETHER hold a power that this world right now is desperately in need of seeing turned loose.

Well....a few years ago now I came across an article in Time Magazine that I clipped and saved because I knew it would come in handy one day. Preachers do that. It was an article about Karl Wallenda, the famous circus high wire performer. Up in the North Georgia mountains, near Tallulah Falls in Habersham County, Karl Wallenda gave what at the time was billed as his farewell performance.

He was in his 60’s, and all his life had been a circus performer, the original star and patriarch of the Flying Wallendas, that daring troupe of tightrope artists.

Karl announced that he would retire from active performing by making a final walk over Tallulah Falls gorge, a precipitous mountain chasm that yawns down hundreds of feet from top to bottom...Some of you have been there.

The cable was stretched across the gorge, fastened securely at both ends, and as the crowd gaped and gasped in tense, uncertain fascination, Karl Wallenda started out.

From the moment he left the platform on one side, until he reached the safety of the other side, one misstep would have sent him plummeting to the rocks below. He couldn’t afford to lean too far in either direction. His very life depended on BALANCE.

So, in similar fashion, the Church of Jesus Christ. It is balance we need, and that right early......Mary and Martha, the sisterly paradox of spiritual wholeness.

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[1] This was a small supermarket chain in Central Florida