Sermon: To Serve and To Listen

Sermon preached by Rev. Emily Tanis-Likkel, Eagle Harbor Church, UCC        

July 22, 2007

Luke 10:38-42

              University professor Azar Nafisi  hand-picked a group of seven young women to study literature in her living room in Tehran.  It was 1995 and she had resigned from her position after years of getting flak for wearing the veil improperly and teaching books that were forbidden. Her memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, gives a glimpse into the lives of Islamic women in Iran.  The new class in her home was held in secret.  Every Thursday morning the women would pause at the doorway of their teacher's home and remove their veils, letting the color of their clothing splash out from underneath all that black fabric.  They would gather together and explore one of several classics of Western literature, and let the discussion help them give voice to their experiences, gaining insights into life. 

Many of us have been part of book groups.  Some of you are part of the book group at church.   Imagine that your participation in a book group was seen as subversive, unlawful, and shameful.  For Azar Nafisi and her small class of young women, many of the social customs and requirements of Iran could have distracted them from their core focus. They wanted to learn from great authors in order to understand the world around them a bit better.  They listened to their teacher with rapt attention.  Their class became vitally important to them, as it was the only place where they could truly be themselves, where they could explore what really mattered.  These students and this teacher accepted one another, cared for one another, and listened to one another.

              The story in Luke of sisters Martha and Mary welcoming Jesus into their home reminds us that discipleship requires listening.  We are to nurture our relationship with Jesus by listening to his teaching, even when that goes against what our society expects.  In Luke 10 we read, “a woman named Martha welcomed Jesus into her home.” It was Martha who welcomed Jesus, not her brother Lazarus or another male relative.  She stepped outside the traditional role of a woman of the day.  She had a sister named Mary, “who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.”   This was not the ordinary custom for a woman.  Between the lines of the story, we see how unusual, how unlawful, how downright shameful it would have looked for these women to be hosting Jesus in the first place.  It would be reading Lolita in Tehran, because women were not in the place of welcoming an itinerant rabbi in their home.  What would people think? Women had no rights, it was required for them to have a husband or male relative keeping watch, making sure they kept their place of subservience. But that was not all.  Just as the Iranian students did not simply gather in secret for the fun of it, there was something more seemingly subversive going on: teaching and learning. Mary is compelled to sit at Jesus' feet, the place for a male disciple.  This was a very bold move.  The backdrop of Jesus’ lesson is a scene with women taking great risk in order to welcome and listen.

              Martha, though, is frustrated that she is left with the meal and the dishes.  Martha asked Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” She sought to put Jesus on the defensive, much like the lawyer did in the story of the Good Samaritan that we heard last Sunday.  The lawyer hoped to be vindicated, asking Jesus, Who is my neighbor?  He wanted to be told, “you have done enough loving, thank you ever so much.”  That story that Jesus told in response exemplifies the second part of the greatest commandment: to love our neighbor as ourselves.  In today's story, we have the illustration of the first part of the commandment: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.”  We are commanded to service in conjunction with listening.  Juxtaposition of both stories is needed in order to get the whole picture of discipleship.  Jesus responded to the lawyer with a story.  Jesus responded to his friend Martha by holding up a mirror.  “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.”  She was bustling around the kitchen, her stomach fluttering with excitement about hosting an honored guest.   There was so much to do, not nearly enough time.  She was trying to prioritize her tasks within her whirlwind of activity, with dishes clanking, aromas rising, and  wine pouring.  She was getting a little bit anxious.  There was too much for one person to do.  Where was Mary?  Mary felt the sense of urgency of Jesus' arrival as well.  Yet she chose, as Jesus described, the better part, and knelt at his feet to receive his teaching.

              Martha was distracted by what society told her she needed to do. As soon as a guest arrived, serving and providing hospitality became the number one priority. But she was so busy doing things for Jesus that she didn’t take the time to be with Jesus.  Have you ever put on an event and found yourself needing to spend so much time in the kitchen that you hardly have one conversation with the guest of honor or the out-of-town relative you really wanted to see?  Attending to the details of a party, although necessary, can also distract us from being present with people.  What seeks our attention today in this culture? We are told to make more money, drive a flashier car, be smarter, be more beautiful, have more friends.  Being distracted by so many details can keep our attention off of fulfilling the love commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.  Nurturing our relationship with God is the number one priority for Christians that is the foundation for all else.  This is not the way of our society.  It is counter-cultural to stop and read the Bible, at least in this part of the country.  Is your head whirling with information, advertisements, ideas, conversations, to-do lists, schedules, I should do this, I wish I hadn't said that, I would like to read this, watch that, have them over for dinner?  Or maybe I shouldn't have bought that.  Martha was distracted.  Housework is not the problem here; the problem is that Martha has moved listening to Jesus onto the back-burner.  Like a woman putting on mascara in the rear-view mirror on the way to work, Martha did not taken the pause she needed.  She did not stop and think about the fact that perhaps the meal is not what is so vitally important here.  The relationship is.  I understand Martha.  I want my guests to be comfortable.  I cooked dinner for my in-laws last Sunday and burned the fish and cooked the vegetables to mush.  What a bummer.  But they didn't care a whit. They just wanted to be with us.  My anxiety meter had started to rise a bit, but then I pushed it back down, realizing, they didn't come here for the food. Jesus didn't go to Mary and Martha's house for the food, either.  He came to teach and to listen, to be present with, and to serve.  He came to meet their needs, and not his own.  Jesus again seeks to demonstrate the counter-cultural nature of the Gospel.

Mary and Martha called Jesus Lord.  The word Lord was a title of respect. Martha deeply respected Jesus, and went to great lengths to give him the best hospitality.  Her way of serving, though, was an obstacle to her really listening to him.  She didn't realize that it was Jesus who wanted to serve her.  Jesus wanted her to rest in his presence.  Jesus wanted her to be the guest and to receive.

              Azar Nafisi was willing to risk breaking the law to teach the fiction she wanted to teach, how she wanted to teach it.  She was willing to take that risk because she knew the transformative nature of the stories.  Her students lied to their families to attend Azar's class not simply because they loved fiction, but because they wanted the world to be different.  Jesus demonstrated to Martha and Mary that being his disciple meant casting aside their expected roles in society.  They were to figuratively remove their veils, and come to his unusual class.  The teaching was not the everyday Torah that the other rabbis taught.  It was the Torah turned on its head; it was a transformative story of the last being first, of enemies being loved, and a Messiah coming to die.  It was a story that left them forever changed and challenged them to live differently than they had before.  

Is Jesus holding up a mirror to you?  Is he saying, “you are worried and distracted by many things?”  Are you distracted by choices?  Addictions?  Financial stress?  Illness? Life in general?  Distractions abound.  Sometimes we become so busy doing things for Jesus that we forget to be with Jesus.  Luke's telling of Martha and Mary receiving Jesus in their home reminds us to break out of the many distractions that tempt our attention, and focus on Christ.  In this story we learn that in God's realm, we may need to take a risk and break out of the roles that we are expected to play. We can set aside the distractions and really listen.  When we nurture a relationship with Christ, our lives are enriched.

We can learn from Jesus by ingesting the stories of the bible.  Episcopal Priest, Barbara Brown Taylor wrote about how she has learned the benefit of regular Bible study.  She wrote, “My relationship with the Bible is not a romance but a marriage, and one I am willing to work on in all the usual ways: by living with the text day in and day out, by listening to it and talking back to it, by making sure I know what is behind the words it speaks to me and being certain I have heard it properly, by refusing to distance myself from the parts of it I do not like or understand, by letting my love for it show up in the everyday acts of my life.”    When we are committed to nurturing our relationship with Jesus, it is more like a marriage than a courtship.  In a healthy marriage, partners listen to one another. They acknowledge the other, respect the other, and love the other.  They don’t simply swap information, but join their hearts together. Mary joined her heart with the heart of Jesus.  Mary listened to Jesus not simply to gain some information, but to be formed as a disciple, to be transformed into all that God had intended. 

Immersing ourselves in the teaching of Jesus may make us unusual, when what Jesus asks of us is different than what our society requires.  We may be stirred to act when others expect silence, or are still when the world wants us to race.  Mary sat at the feet of Jesus to learn from him, to be challenged, and to be changed. We are invited to delve into the words of Scripture in order to make the stories our stories, its wisdom our wisdom.  We encounter God by coming to church, and worshiping not in isolation but with neighbors.  We are asked to listen, to hear what Jesus is saying to us right here, today. Barbara Brown Taylor wrote, “The living words of God . . . show us the way to the Word beyond all our words, in whose presence we shall be made eloquent at last.” God wants us to sit at the feet of Jesus, absorbing his teaching, resting in his presence. 

The lawyer reminded us last week of the great commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”  We are commanded to serve and listen.  Both stories are necessary, to do for Jesus and to be with Jesus.  Azar Nafisi and her students were willing to take a risk because in listening to the texts and learning from one another, their lives would never be the same.  Nurturing our relationship with God, listening to Scripture, and being provoked by its images offers us a rich, grace-filled life, offers us lives that will never be the same.

      The Preaching Life, p. 56.