The one thing

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 11, Year C (July 17, 2022).

View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Proper 11C (Track 2)

Preached at Christ Episcopal Church, Jordan, New York

Photo by Lewis Darby on Unsplash

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Edited Transcript

May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I invite you to be seated.

So all through this week, I have found I've been struck by Jesus saying to Martha, "There's only one thing." And I thought about it. There's only one thing that is necessary. And I realized, I was like, I don't know what that thing is. What does he mean? What does he mean? What is that one thing? And long story short, I didn't really figure it out until I was driving here, and I'm curious...I'm not going to say yet what I think the one thing is, but it was so simple when it came to me that I was like, I bet there's someone in the congregation that, when I say all week I was wondering what's the thing, there's someone who already has that answer in their mind. So if that is you, please don't say it, because it'll make me look kind of dumb.

But I'm curious, if for you, there was a word or a phrase or an idea that popped into your head when you hear Jesus say, "There's only one thing that's necessary." And like lots of things, that when we study the Bible there's room for your answer there, too, but I'm going to get to what mine is.

But first I just want to back up and look at this story together. First of all, I was struck by the difference between how Abraham's household runs and how Martha's household runs. It's very interesting that Martha is a woman who invites Jesus into her house. That was not something that would've been very typical, for the woman to be the householder and to run the house. And yet we see maybe some of the difficulty of being a woman who's running the house in this time period that Jesus was walking the earth, because unlike Abraham, Abraham has some guests, he has some important guests ,and he says, "Hey, you, go do this. Hey, you, go do that. Sarah, make bread," and everyone's running around to do his bidding.

Now, Martha has a very important guest, but I noticed that she doesn't seem to have anybody else that she can ask for help, or perhaps she doesn't feel that she has the authority to ask for help. For whatever reason, instead of talking directly to her sister, she ends up going to Jesus and saying, "Well, can you tell her what to do?" Because she doesn't seem to run her house in the same way.

And I noticed I really can't help but identify ... I'd love to feel like I was more like Mary, peacefully sitting at Jesus' feet, but most of the time I feel more like Martha. I'm like, "I got all this stuff to do. Who's going to help me do it?" And I think we're a small church, so we probably feel that way, too. Even if you don't feel that way all the time, you can probably identify with Martha, and especially if you grew up with a sibling, you can identify with that desire: you can see what your sibling is not doing right, and you can identify with that desire to go to an authority and get that sibling set straight so that they can do what it is you know that they are supposed to be doing.

So the story, we can all identify. And Martha, oh, she's distracted by her many tasks, and this is what Jesus notices. He notices her distraction, and that's where he says, "There's need of only one thing." 

Now, some of the history of the interpretation of this text will take Mary and Martha as exemplifying two paths of Christian life and taking Jesus' words to mean that one is better than the other. So you might think of Martha's path of Christian life as the path of action in the world, or maybe service. And some traditional forms of interpreting this story will counterpose action and service against what Mary does, which is contemplation or prayer, and will read Jesus as putting those two in a hierarchy where action and service is fine if that's what you do, but where you really want to be is in this ecstatic, prayerful, contemplative state. Does that sound familiar at all? That sense of prayer over action.

But then there's other times in Christian churches, I said this to a friend of mine, a colleague in ministry. I said, "You know what I don't really love? I don't love when churches end their service by saying at the end of the service, 'And now our real service begins.'" Because I'm like, "This was a real service. Church is a real service. Worship is true service." And he was like, "But I always say that in my church." And I was like, "Well, no, I still love you." But there is another way we look at it is to say the prayer's fine, but it's action that we really need to be about. It's service that we really need to be about.

So all I'm doing here is drawing your attention to the fact that these two sisters end up being used as symbols of these two paths of Christian life. And as human beings, we tend to want to say this one's more important or that one's more important. You'll see this when people criticize, and maybe rightly so in some cases, but when people say, "We don't want your thoughts and prayers. Do something," right? That's an action over contemplation hierarchy. Or in another sense, if you've ever struggled, if you've ever sat down to pray and connect with God, and all you can think of is how many dirty dishes there are and the weeds in the garden and that you should call your mother. We struggle with that, too.

Now, I'm still going to get to the one thing. But what I think is interesting is that these two sisters are sisters, and what is a sibling? What is a sister except one who comes from the same source, one who comes from the same place, a family. And I think the more I thought about it, the more I thought action and contemplation or prayer and service. We make a mistake when we separate them and say one's better and one's less meaningful. They're sisters. The household can't function without both. Or to use another thought, and here we're getting closer to the one thing. It's like a rope. You don't make a rope out of one strand. You braid them. So the action and the contemplation, our prayer and our service, are part of one rope, and it's the braiding of the two that makes that rope strong. It's the relationship between the sisters that makes that household strong.

And what's happening in this passage is that they seem to have lost that sense of how valuable both are. The resentment has cropped up in that place where Martha thinks that there's no point in Mary sitting around and praying. And who knows what Mary thinks? She doesn't say anything in this, but maybe she's thinking, "Why is Martha running around like a chicken with her head cut off when we have Jesus here?"

So here's the one thing. I was driving along and I said, "What is that one thing? What is it?" And I was driving along 173, and all of a sudden, I said to myself, "It's love." And then I turned onto Route 31 from 173, I've been praying. So when I said it's love, I don't think that came out of my brain. I think that was a nice gift. God is very kind to me. So I turned onto 31 from 173 and another car, an old little beat up pickup truck, turned in front of me and it was going like 25 miles an hour. And I was like, "The speed limit is 55, sir, so you should be going at least like 63." I don't know.

So I'm behind this pickup truck and I'm itching a little bit as the pickup truck makes its way down Route 31 toward the church. And then I see in the cab, I see this shape of a little dog head with his little ears. I can only see the silhouette. And I see the driver go scratching, patting. And that distraction of being annoyed by the speed of the driver fell away. And I said, "Oh, right. The one thing is just love. It's tenderness and love." And so the rest of the way I drove along at 25 miles an hour, and I was like, "Look at this beautiful countryside, and what a blessing it is to get to drive to this church." And the resentment that I was feeling and the many tasks, it fell away just for a minute. I'll pick them back up. I'll worry about them in a little while, for sure.

That one thing is love, and I think that's what the twining of our action and our contemplation let us do. It's the prayer that lets us connect to God to let that love overflow out of us. And as it's overflowing, we can't help but want to be of service. We can't help but want to act. And it's our action that connects us to one another, which just makes us want to give thanks and say to God, "Thank you for this gift. Thank you for the gift of life. I didn't make this life. I didn't make myself be here, and yet here I am." And it's like two cups that are just pouring into each other and keeping us going. And that's the one thing. It's love from one to another. Amen.