We are a society riddled with worries and distractions. Stress is escalating over the economy, job-related issues, housing, relationships, the environment, violence and the constant threat of terrorist acts, wars and the unchecked poverty and disease that dominate in large portions of the world. And that’s only a few of the things that create an undertow of worry and distraction that threatens to drag many of us under. Couple any of those factors with the reality that we live in a culture that places heavy demands on us to be constantly busy, productive and in control of everything and no wonder the medical community is seeing a rapid rise of stress and anxiety related disorders. We live in a world that constantly pushes and pulls us to meet cultural expectations for success and achievement, while bombarding us with a constant flow of bad news and threatening events. And we’ve become stunningly good at practicing avoidance behaviors to try and manage the craziness of it all – even becoming more and more busy so we’re distracted from everything we find overwhelming and too difficult to face. And in the process, we take our eyes off of what is really important, what is really life-giving. We’re left feeling anxious, irritable, angry and overwhelmed.

Jesus, in his encounter with Martha and Mary this morning, has something to say to us in the middle of all those worries and distractions. Jesus is having dinner at Martha’s house. Meeting cultural expectations, Martha welcomes this itinerant, poor, and controversial carpenter into her home with great hospitality. She pulls out all the stops to make him comfortable, and she gets busy in the kitchen to put together a meal that is worthy of her guest. She is doing hospitality, practicing neighborliness -- the very practice Jesus commended in last week’s story of the Good Samaritan.

But as the story develops, we get a closer look at Martha and find that she is not only busy, she’s worried and distracted – really stressed out. She’s worried about how everything is going to turn out, about the impression she will make, about meeting everyone’s expectations of a good hostess. She’s made elaborate plans and she can’t be everywhere at once to control all of the details and make sure it’s done right. And she’s just downright angry that her sister Mary, who should be co-hosting with her, is sitting in the living room listening to Jesus. Now, Martha’s upset with Mary for a couple of reasons: first for not helping her in the kitchen and second for violating every social code there is. Mary is in the living room – a space reserved for males. And she is sitting at Jesus’ feet, which means she has taken up the posture of those who are students of a rabbi, being trained to pass on that teaching – also a vocation reserved for males. So now, not only does Martha have to worry about a dinner that meets expectations, with the distractions of all the preparation and serving, but on top of that, she’s worried about what everyone will say about Mary’s behavior. Martha responds to her internal anxiety by asking Jesus to reprimand Mary and tell her to get back into her expected place. And Jesus, gently but firmly, tells her no. He goes on to tell Martha that she’s so worried and distracted by many things, that she’s lost sight of what’s important. In this instance, Mary has chosen the better part, she has seen the most important thing – God in the flesh is in her living room and she’s going to spend time with him, regardless of what everyone else thinks, regardless of the apparent urgency of the tasks waiting for her.

Now it’s a bit unfair and simplistic to see this as a story that neatly pits Mary, the contemplative one against Martha, the busy one. It’s not Martha’s busyness per se that is the issue. It’s not her attempt to practice hospitality or neighborliness that’s the problem. The problem is her focus. She’s so caught up in her worries and distractions that she forgets why she is busy, she forgets who she is working for. And when she forgets that, she becomes overwhelmed by everything going on around her. The more she tries to control it, the more overwhelmed she feels and the more angry and worried she becomes.

Jesus brings her up short. He brings her face to face with her distraction, her lack of perspective and priority, her anxiety, anger, lack of joy and judgmentalism. Jesus tells Martha: look, you need to reverse the order of your thinking – what’s really the most important thing in this moment? Jesus – that is, God in the flesh -- is in Martha’s living room. In all of Martha’s crazed busyness and worrying, she has become distracted from the one thing that she should be paying attention to – Jesus. It’s not that Jesus is telling her that a contemplative life is to be preferred over a life of serving, but rather that the two are inextricably woven together. Loving God and loving neighbor require that we receive the love God has given us in Jesus Christ – we love because God first loved us. If we don’t take time to receive that love, to be in Jesus’ presence, then we don’t have anything to give. Now once we’ve received that love we dare not hoard it – it must be shared in service to our neighbors. But the point Jesus is making here is that, if we try to serve God and love our neighbors, and deal with the demands and enticements of the world around us without first taking time to be filled by God, then we end up like Martha – worried and distracted and burned out, feeling overwhelmed and perpetually anxious about all that we can’t control, everything we can’t seem to achieve.

It’s really an issue of discernment and balance. We must both sit and listen and stand up and serve, but there are clearly times when sitting and listening are the first priority. And one of our clues can be that when we find ourselves feeling and responding like Martha to situations around us, we can be pretty sure we need some time to just sit by Jesus and listen – to be still and receive, to be reminded of who and whose we really are, to hear once again God’s promises and God’s purposes and to be reassured that Jesus’ redemptive work and presence in our lives and in the world is going on even when we feel like everything is out of control.

Preacher Tom Long tells the story of serving as part of an advisory group to the chaplains at a major university. One year, after hearing reports from the chaplains, a member of the council asked the chaplains, "What are the university students like morally these days?" The chaplains looked at each other and 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 in South Africa....." But as she talked, the Jewish chaplain who was listening to her began to grin and the more she talked, the bigger he grinned, until finally it became distracting. "Am I saying something funny?" she asked. "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." Everyone just stared at him. "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."¹

When we don’t take time to sit and listen to Jesus, we become worried, distracted, beaten down and burned out. We lose a sense of God’s vision for our lives and our world. We need some time at Jesus’ feet to be reminded that God’s love and care for us and the whole creation is actively at work in the world. We need to be reminded that Jesus has already saved us from sin and the power of evil and death – that our present and future are held securely in his hands – that no circumstances in the world portrayed on the nightly news can ultimately defeat God’s loving purpose for us. And when we do sit and listen to Jesus we’re reminded that when we get up from Jesus’ feet and follow him into the world that he is the one who works through us as we reach out to those who are hurting and lost. Our service participates in his ongoing ministry – it doesn’t stand apart from it – and if what we do in service participates in what Jesus is doing in the world then it really and truly is effective, it really and truly does make a difference – even if it doesn’t always seem so at the time. We participate in what God is doing eternally. What a gift. A gift that can transform how we live and serve in the world. A gift we can receive only at the feet of Jesus.

What keeps you from stopping to sit by Jesus? What keeps you fretting and fuming, overwhelmed and distracted? What worries feed your distractions from the life God intends for you? Jesus invites us to stop and to sit for awhile. The world will keep spinning – God has that in hand. Stop and sit awhile with Jesus. Allow him to reorder your perspective and to remind you of his love and purpose for you and his call on your life. There just isn’t anything we have to do that’s more important than that. Thanks be to God. Amen.

¹ Mary and Martha, Luke 10:38-42, Proper 11 - Year C, July 22, 2007, Tom Long on Day1.org