20th July 2025

20th July 2025: 5th Sunday after Trinity  -  David Matthews

Readings: Luke 10.38-42; Colossians 1.15-23

In his relationship with Martha and Mary, I think we see Jesus at his most natural, most intimate. There is a familiarity here which allows these sisters to be both relaxed and outspoken in Jesus’ company. And, when we encounter the women again, in St John’s Gospel on hearing of the death and resurrection of the women’s brother Lazarus, the same closeness is evident.

Luke presents this episode as just one of several which occur while Jesus is travelling around Judaea. It is a brief domestic interlude, taking place in ‘a certain village’ amongst a string of parables, exhortations and exorcisms. But I think it’s very ordinariness marks it out as significant and what could be more ordinary than a couple of sisters at odds with each other over how to cope with a house full of guests? The description of the sisters’ interaction with Jesus can, if we are not careful, reduce them to stereotypes: Martha the bustling practical one; Mary the contemplative passive one. In fact, comparing the two gives us something far more nuanced. Martha clearly has initiative. Evidently, she also has authority. It would seem that she is unmarried but she is not on the margins of society. It is she welcomes Jesus into her home – presumably the home she shares with her siblings in Bethany, a couple of miles from Jerusalem. She has no doubt heard something of Jesus’ ministry and she wants to hear more. There is no doubting Martha’s recognition of Jesus’ significance. She addresses him as Lord and she would dearly love to have the time to hear what he has to say. But there are things to do, particularly if Jesus is accompanied by a number of disciples who also have to be looked after, and she has  prioritised these practical tasks. If she doesn’t see to them, there probably won’t be enough for her guests to eat or anywhere for them to sleep. She has put her guests’ welfare above her own needs. But she is also acutely aware that an extra pair of hands would help. She is put out by her sister’s insensitivity perhaps seeing it as a selfish self-indulgence compared to her own sacrifice.

But it is clear that Martha’s perspective, however we might sympathise with it, is wrong.

However, I don’t think there is any sense of rebuke when Jesus speaks to Martha. He addresses her by name (a rare thing) and gently explains that she is distracted; better to do what Mary is doing, he says, simply putting Martha straight.

And what is it that Mary is doing? She is sitting at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he is saying. It is gratifying to realise that Martha appears to follows Jesus’ advice because when we meet her again in John’s Gospel she has no hesitation in declaring that he is the Son of God, the Messiah, the one coming into the world with power over life and death. Her understanding has grown.

To get to that point, Martha has had to recognise that the only agenda she should follow is Jesus’s. She must recognise the danger that her own list of things to do, however generous and selfless, may be a distraction. More significantly, she needs to see the danger of allowing seeds of resentment to creep into her relationship with her sister. Anything other than heeding Jesus’s agenda is likely to lead to problems. We can heed the lesson that Martha learns but putting this into practice can present a massive challenge for us in our complex fallen world. All around us we see problems that need fixing: there are wars threatening global security; there are politicians engaged in the pursuit of personal power rather than social justice; there are chronic problems of dislocation and displacement, as economic inequalities and a changing climate prompt mass migration; there is extreme poverty both abroad and at home; there are plenty of people we cross paths with who are homeless or close to destitution or addled by drugs or drink; there are many, many more who have little joy in their lives, who have ceased to thrive. However comfortable our own lives, we cannot relax knowing that millions exist with no security, no support, and little hope.

Grasping this, we may want to throw ourselves or our comparative wealth into projects or movements which address at least one area of grave concern. We may decide to devote more and more time, energy and commitment into supporting local causes or assisting neighbours in need as we zealously, desperately stive to make a difference.

Or, confronted by the sheer scale of what needs to be done, we may step back from this bleak picture, turn off the news, recognise our powerlessness and concentrate on living a quiet life doing no harm. For to do no harm in a broken world is perhaps all we can aspire to.

There is merit in both approaches. Which we tend towards is probably down to a question of temperament as much as anything. We follow the course of action or inaction which best suits us. But if there is merit in both approaches, there is also danger in both if neither are the ‘better part’ : sitting at the feet of Jesus, with Mary of Bethany, listening to him.

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Listening is not an end in itself. We listen to learn more, to understand, to receive instruction or guidance, to prepare to respond. To listen is to engage. To engage is to participate.

What that participation means will vary from person to person dependent upon their nature, ability and circumstances. As Christians we are not called to be uniform. But, before we participate, we must first ensure that we are serving Jesus’s agenda rather than our own. Our time, energy and commitment must be focused on what he wants from us. This is not necessarily the same as what we think is best for God.

 I have to say that I find facing this issue extremely challenging. I am, by nature, a do-er. I am restless and, while I tell myself that I channel that restlessness into ‘good works’, filling my time with stuff that others would probably label laudable, I cannot state categorically that my busy-ness is what God wants from me. I have decided what I think God approves of. I expect him to agree with me. I am put out if things go awry.

I should not be surprised. Look closely and we realise there is another element to Martha’s distraction. However commendable her work, however selfless her labours, is there not, at the heart of what she’s doing, a driving ego? What she articulates is a sense that her rights have been compromised by Mary’s inactivity. Mary, says Martha, should be told to stop blocking her sister’s ambitions. Martha even goes so far as to reprimand Jesus for not intervening to order things as she, Martha, believes they ought to be. In reply, Jesus, points to Mary, sitting at his feet listening to him. There is no driving ego. Instead we see humility, even surrender. It does not take long to realise that it is ego, the selfish gene, that is the cause of nearly all human woe, contributing so much that is disastrously wrong with our world in the 21st century. Ego insinuates itself into every aspect of life, including Church life.

When I was running a Church of England comprehensive school, it was not unusual to hear parents and teachers saying to children ‘you can be whatever you want to be’ ‘go for it’ and even – on more than one occasion – ‘pray hard and it will come to you’. The gratification of personal ambition, and even co-opting God as an agent to achieve it, was then – and still is – a dominant force. Today, we even live in a world where people talk of ‘their truth’ where one’s personal perspective trumps everything else. We refuse to allow ourselves to be challenged by uncomfortable situations. We only associate with others who share identical ideas. We hound those who think differently, even going so far as to pursue them across social media with a campaign of hatred and abuse.

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We forget that there is nothing wrong with holding strong opinions provided we genuinely allow them to be challenged by alternatives. There is nothing wrong with ambition in itself – it can be a powerful motivator – but it needs to be balanced by an awareness that personal ambition should not be the main thing that drives us. Ego, and the personal agenda that expresses it, are dangerous. They warp us.

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More controversially, I have to admit to concerns about intercessionary prayer. I am comfortable laying before God the things which are on my mind, including another person’s sickness or situation, because these can become over-riding concerns – ‘distractions’ for want of a better word. But I know that what I really should be praying, surely the only valid prayer, is ‘not my will but thine be done’ followed up by ‘and please give me the strength and grace to accept whatever your will is’.

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Paul, in his letter to the Colossians reminds us how brilliantly, awesomely extraordinary our situation is. We are presented with nothing less than the possibility of a reconciliation with Jesus: Jesus in whom all things in heaven and on earth were made – for whom and through whom all things were created. Paul’s description of Jesus, as the incarnation of God’s supreme awesomeness, is enough to literally take our breath away. In the face of it, we may well feel ourselves to be nothing more significant than an insect, scurrying about in the detritus of the planet, reduced to a brief pointless existence of mere survival. But we are lifted up with the promise of reconciliation. God became human so he could enter into and engage with his creation and, by experiencing mortality – that crucial, time-bound attribute of all created things – he, the creator, identified with his creatures. A two- way bridge has been constructed so that God can truly relate to humankind and humankind now has the opportunity to become holy, blameless and irreproachable. It is an extraordinary claim and one that Paul tells us he has devoted his life to conveying.

It was exposure to this profound truth that had Mary sitting transfixed at Jesus’s feet and, some time later, had her spending a small fortune on ointment with which to bathe those same feet.

I think Mary possessed an amazing ability to slip beyond the here and now. The ointment she used to bathe Jesus’ feet was, we are told (John 12.3), pure nard. That meant it had been imported from Northern India and, at 300 denarii, cost about a year’s wages. More significantly, it was the sort of thing that Mary would have saved for her own burial. Her action, therefore carries an added symbolism. Similarly to the way that Jesus brought her brother Lazarus back from death, Mary is offering Jesus the trappings of her own death. My death and burial, she is saying, have no significance unless given over to Jesus. On this later occasion, when Mary anoints Jesus’s feet, it is Judas Iscariot, not Martha, who objects to her impractical behaviour. He, as we know, had his own far more malevolent agenda. Martha’s was nowhere near as sinister but her focus too was rooted in this world, limited and parochial; she was oblivious to the profound out-of-this-world hope that Jesus personified.

How was it that Mary was able to see Jesus as he really was? What was it that enabled her to grasp Jesus’s true nature and see how he was the actual embodiment of God? And how can we, blessed with these accounts of Jesus’ s interaction with his disciples but with two thousand years separating us from them…how can we clear away Martha’s distractions and place ourselves at Jesus’ feet?

I am sure it is no coincidence that the account of Jesus’s meeting with Martha and Mary in Luke’s Gospel is followed by guidance on prayer. Prayer is how we get closer to God. What that means, what that takes is something I have been grappling with, with added intensity, in recent weeks and it is my thoughts on prayer – if you will allow me – that I would like to share with you next week.

Amen.