“KEEPING THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING”
LUKE 10:38-42
TREY HARRIS
T-Boy and Marie had a farm. Mule died. T-Boy said, “Hitch me up.” Marie got behind the plow. Got to end of the row the man kept going.
Marie yelled, “Stop!”
T-Boy kept going until he was so caught up he couldn’t get out.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Can’t you say whoa?”
Sometimes we get so caught with getting this thing called life done, that we forget where we are and whom we are and we need to hear God say to us, “Whoa! Let’s get back on track.”
I) THE MARTHA THING (V 40)
But Martha was worrying over the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.”
We’ve all done it from time to time. We’ve all been Martha. Just remember back a few months to the Holiday season. Thanksgiving or Christmas, take your pick. It’s your year to hold the family get together; and everyone’s coming, all twenty-three of them.
You know the routine. The house needs to be cleaned, the yard needs to be raked, there’s shopping to be done and food to prepare. As you being to assemble the items required for your holiday meal you think of ten other things that need to be done. As you’re doing those ten things you remember that your favorite casserole dish is still up at the church from the last covered dish supper. And it’s on the way to church to get your casserole dish that you remember you aren’t going to have room for all those people unless you put up card tables and folding chairs.
Once the big day comes you spend all day running between the kitchen and the dining room making sure there are enough dinner rolls and that the water and tea glasses stay full. The whole affair seems to have come off like a charm. The family has been fed, fellowship has taken place and it’s time for dessert. As you clear away the dinner dishes, you notice something. Your spouse has been quietly absent all day. While you worked and slaved for all the relatives, the other half has sat in front of the T.V. and entertained the company. “The nerve,” you think. “What’s the big idea sitting on your duff while I do all the work?”
And then it hits you. You haven’t visited with a single person all day long and now you’re too tired to enjoy their presence.
From the way the Luke records this account, we get the impression that Martha was the head of this household. It was primarily her responsibility to make sure that guests were properly entertained. And on this day, they were having a very special guest indeed. Jesus was coming to dinner. Right in the middle of all Martha’s fussing about she has one of those, “Hey wait a minute” moments and realizes that her sister Mary has done nothing to help all day.
Going straight to the honored guest, Martha pleads her case. Her line translates literally, “Jesus, tell Mary to grab her end of this thing!” In other words, Mary isn’t holding up her end of the responsibility.
Have you felt that way? Have you been in a situation where you fell like you’re the only one doing any work? It happens all the time, even in the church. There’s an old adage that says, “Twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work and eighty percent of the people do twenty percent of the work.” I believe that it’s more like ninety and ten and ten and ninety percent. If you’re feeling that way, it might be that you need to take some time to smell the roses.
II) THE MARY THING (V 39)
Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught.
Have you known people like Mary? You know the type. They always have their heads in the clouds and their feet ten feet off the ground. Never a practical thought in their pea-picking little heads. You know the type.
I knew a girl in seminary like Mary. Her name was Rachel. Rachel was always ten minutes late for class. She dressed very retro and had long, bushy hair. She lived in another world. But Rachel had the sweetest spirit. She was so at peace with herself and the world and she had a precious relationship with Jesus. You could see it in her face. Everywhere she went she spoke kindly to people, she offered to pray for folks, she was just a great Christian girl who loved the Lord.
The Mary in this account was the same Mary who had sat at Jesus’ feet once before. That time she had anointed Jesus with a flask of expensive perfume. The Mary in this account had seen Jesus raise her dead brother Lazarus from the grave. Mary obviously loved Jesus and treasured her relationship with him. And this day, as her sister Martha scurried around the house worrying over all the little details, Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and listened.
In his book Stress Fractures, Charles Swindoll writes:
I vividly remember some time back being caught in the undertow of too many commitments in too few days. It wasn’t long before I was snapping at my wife and our children, choking down my food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected interruptions through the day. Before long, things around our home started reflecting the pattern of my hurry-up style. It was becoming unbearable.
I distinctly recall after supper one evening the words of our younger daughter, Colleen. She wanted to tell me about something important that had happened to her at school that day. She hurriedly began, "Daddy-I-wanna-tell-you-somethin’-and-I’ll-tell-you-really-fast."
Suddenly realizing her frustration, I answered, "Honey, you can tell me ... and you don’t have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly."
I’ll never forget her answer: "Then listen slowly."
III) THE HUMAN THING (V 38)
There’s a passage of Scripture in the Book of Isaiah that reads: All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. (Isaiah 53:6)
Have you ever had the opportunity to watch sheep graze? They’re rather peculiar animals. O.K., not just peculiar, stupid. They eat with their heads down, eyes fixed upon the next little clump of grass, no worries about where their dining habits are taking them. If left to their own natural inclination, sheep will eat their way right out of the flock, out of the pasture and away from the herd. When they finally look up from their preoccupation with gaining sustenance, they find themselves far away from the care of the shepherd’s watchful eye and the safety of the flock.
The pictures we saw as children of flocks of sheep tended by Little Bo Peep are hardly an accurate rendering of real life for a shepherd. Cattle ranchers in the American West hated sheep because they ate pastureland down to nothing and because sheep stink to high heaven.
And, in case you haven’t noticed, sheep are covered with a thick layer of fur called wool. Do you have any wool sweaters? Warm and fuzzy aren’t they? But, they are also lint magnets. Sheep are the same way. What ever they lie down in sticks to them. They’re like walking Velcro. They gather little bits and pieces of grass and twigs and debris that sticks to them and becomes part of who they are until the shepherd finds them, takes them back to the sheepfold and cleans them up.
You see, far from being the snowy white, caricatures in children’s nursery rhymes, sheep are dirty, smelly, stupid animals, that left to their own design will wander away from what protects and guides and cares for them and wind up in trouble.
Do you think there is a reason Jesus referred to himself as the “Good Shepherd”? Do you think that perhaps Jesus knows our propensity to get so caught up in making a living and caring for our families and doing church work and just being human that if we don’t look up we find ourselves having wandered away from the very one who loves us and cares for us and desires only the best for us?
The Psalmist writes: I have wandered away like a lost sheep;
come and find me. (Psalm 119:176)
Although God has a right to own us because he created us, he gave us the option of freedom, and we all left. We chose sin and did not love him as he wanted to be loved. In response, he chose to send out his own son to look for us, to hunt us down, to find and redeem us at a terrible cost--the cost of his own life.
A shepherd notches the ear of a lamb born to his flock and has rightful ownership. That lamb deliberately walks away. The shepherd searches near and far to get that lamb back. A long time later, he finds not a baby lamb but a grown sheep for sale at an animal auction. The shepherd recognizes his mark on that sheep’s ear. He goes to the auctioneer and says, "I can see the mark. That sheep is mine."
The auctioneer says, "Listen, you must bid and pay just like anybody else."
The shepherd bids and pays an outrageous price, far above any reasonable market value in order to get his lamb. He now has a double right to own this sheep: from birth, from redemption.
God has a right to own us as creator and because he has paid the blood of his own Son--an outrageous price far above our market value--in order to redeem us back again.
As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a village where a woman named Martha welcomed them into her home.
You know, Jesus comes by the place where you live too. In fact he’s there now, he’s here now, waiting for you to open the door and let him in.
Which brings us to the Jesus Thing…
IV) THE JESUS THING (V 42)
“There is really only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it—and I won’t take it away from her.”
Each time you find Mary in the Gospels, she is in the same place: at the feet of Jesus. Most Jewish rabbis would not accept a woman for a student, but Jesus delighted in teaching Mary. It was not wrong for Martha to prepare a meal, because people have to eat if they are to live; but it was wrong for her to be so preoccupied with work and her own “burdens” that she ignored her guest and was rude to her sister. She was “anxious and troubled” as she tried to serve the Lord, and yet she was missing the greatest and the most lasting blessing. Mary was occupied with Jesus; Martha was preoccupied with herself. What we do with Christ is far more important than what we do for Christ.
I think Jesus would say, “Thank goodness for all the Marthas out there. Thank goodness there are people who take their work for the Kingdom seriously. How would anything get done if there weren’t some hard workers in the church?
But at the same time, can’t you hear him say, “My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.” (John 10:10)
CONCLUSION
I once heard a story of a couple in a church, a mother and her son. The father had died when the boy was young. The mother and son had a very unique relationship. This was back before television, and folks would spend evenings listening to the radio or reading to one another. They both enjoyed listening to good music. Theirs was a special relationship.
In his early twenties, he met a young woman at the church, fell in love with her, and they decided to be married. Back then, during World War II, housing in our large cities was very difficult to get. The mother, knowing they wanted to be married, said, "We have a two-story house. I can make an apartment for myself in the second story. You and your bride can live in the first story. The only thing I ask is that we get a chance to spend some time together because I’m going to miss the reading and the music."
Her son said, "Mother, you can be sure of that. It’s too important to me."
The couple married. For a while, life continued with the son stopping by a couple of times a week to spend some time. He was busy, and eventually days and actually weeks went by with only a call from downstairs or a brief glimpse. The relationship was not what it had been.
On the mother’s birthday, the young man bought his mother a lovely dress, brought it to her, and said, "Happy birthday, Mother."
She opened the package and looked at the dress. "Oh, Son, thank you. I appreciate so much what you’ve done."
He said, "Mother, you don’t like it."
She said, "Oh, yes, I do. It’s my color. Thank you."
He said, "Mother, I have the sales slip. They tell me I can take it back."
She said, "No, it is a lovely dress."
He said, "Mother, you don’t fool me. We’ve been together too long. What’s wrong?"
The woman turned and opened her closet. She said, "Son, I have enough dresses there to last me for the rest of my life. I guess all I want to say is that I don’t want your dress. I want you."
Out of this quaint story of long ago, I hear God saying that to me. With all of our busyness, we better simplify our lives because, ultimately, God doesn’t want your life as much as he wants you.
