Luke 10:38-42

Consider a hypothetical roadtrip: two parents, three kids, two grandparents. Destination: Disney. They make the plan. They rent a large van. They pack their gear, and they’re off. Despite their attempts to limit the number of potty breaks, they still come too frequently for Grandpa’s liking. Nevertheless, they make pretty good time and stop in one of the Carolinas for a night in a hotel. The kids murmur about the lack of an indoor pool, so the parents try and explain, Grandpa’s paying with points, we get what we get.

Inside the hotel room the children test every available surface for springiness and start channel surfing while mom and dad crack open the room temperature beverages they stashed in the overnight bag. After a while things die down, the lights are turned off, and everyone’s drifting off to sleep. That is when hypothetical child number one sits straight up in bed and projectile vomits into the night. 

On the first night in the next hotel, it’s hypothetical child two who spews. Then there are three more surprises, one requiring a quick 3-Day trip to the hospital. In the end, Disney is cancelled and they settle for one day at Legoland. They stay at the Legoland hotel and everything. It’s a wonderful day until that night, you guessed it, hypothetical child three, all over the large Lego themed comforter while the end credits of the Lego Movie role on the hotel TV. “Everything is awesome!” 

At daybreak, this totally hypothetical family, humbled by their experience, begins their retreat back up 95. 

To this day the vacation is referred to as the “Best Vacation Ever,” because humor is a coping mechanism, and sarcasm is a fruit of the spirit. Once home, though, a few of them remark, it actually was a pretty great trip. When we, I mean they, look back on it, the reality is they spent the majority of their trip in the car, and those long hours were actually the best part. They come realize, that long road to Florida and back was probably the longest they had spent together in one place in months. It took ruined plans and five-point seatbelt harnesses for them to enjoy it, but for once they were together with nothing to do but be together on the road. 

Jesus was coming to Mary and Martha’s house. It was a pitstop on his long roadtrip to Jerusalem and he had just finished instructing his disciples on how to be a good houseguest when popping in on someone. Martha got wind they were coming and got herself pretty worked up. Somehow she heard his instructions on how to be a guest as pressure placed on her to be a good host. So, she did what Martha types do. She got busy. 

She started cooking, and cleaning, preparing multiple dishes and arranging them on the table with little labels “Contains Dates,” “Barley Free.” Jesus arrives but she’s too distracted to notice at first. In addition to all her many tasks, she’s also consumed with resentment over the fact that while she’s been slaving away all day, Mary, her roommate who happens to also be her sister, hasn’t moved from the front window, just sitting there, waiting for him to arrive. She’s been no help at all. 

Pots are clanging, the fire is too high, and the lamb Martha waited in line for that morning had yet to be delivered. Martha peeks into the dining room to try and catch Mary’s eye and she realizes he’s here. She sees Mary there too, mesmerized, sitting at Jesus’ feet like a school girl. 

Well, Martha’s had it up to here with Mary. She mutters to herself, “Oh, Jesus Christ.” 

“Yes?” says Jesus from his seat at the end of the table. 

“Oh, Jesus, hello. Welcome to our home.” The niceties don’t last long, though. “Ugh Jesus would you kindly tell my sister to get up and lend me a hand? I mean do you even care that she’s left me to do all this work?” The words just leave her lips before she can stop them.  

“Oh great,” she thinks to herself, “now you’ve done it, Martha. You’ve been rude to the Messiah. Way to go!”

“Martha, Martha” 

He says her name twice. It’s a name perfect for the story, it means Lady, like Lady of the house, the woman responsible for so much. Too much. 

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.” 

It’s funny, many of us hear this as, at best, Jesus teasing Martha, at worst, reprimanding her, but it’s just the truth. It’s a fact. She’s worried and distracted. But maybe this isn’t Jesus the Judge speaking to her, or to us. Maybe today we can hear it as Christ the healer speaking, the Great Physician on a house call, giving Martha not a verdict but a diagnosis, a diagnosis I imagine many of us share. 

You are worried. 

You are worried and distracted by many things. 

A new term has emerged in sociology to describe our times, our age, the ever accelerating, ever demanding pace of our modern life. It’s called dynamic stabilization. The sociologists observe that we, our families, our communities, our economy require constant motion, activity, in order to just be stable – dynamic stabilization. It’s like a plate spinner. Ever seen one? I remember one on a late night talk show as a child, the kind of show with silly acts I only got to watch on hotel room cable.

The act goes like this, there are a series of tall dowels, sticks, weighted at the base, topped with porcelain plates. The plate spinner would spin them so they’d balance in place at the top. The challenge is that once it’s spinning it must keep spinning or else it will wobble. If the wobble is not corrected by the spinner, then, you guessed it, the plates crash to the ground into pieces. 

This, say the sociologists, is how we are living every day these days. Worried, and distracted by many things. 

“Martha, Martha” 

He says her name twice and you can almost hear her plates crash to the ground; but, at least then the spinning stops. Maybe now she can hear him.

“Martha, there are so many lovely things here, thank you, but I am only here for one thing, one thing needful, and your sister Mary has chosen that one thing, the best portion, and it will not be taken away from her.” 

That’s all he says, but in my mind, after he says it, he gestures, as if to say, “Come sit, won’t you? The road is long, sit with me for a while. What I have will not be taken from you either.” 

You know the feeling, when your roadtrip goes sideways, your week gets a wrench thrown into it, your plans or your playbook get thrown out the window. Sometimes it’s kind of nice, like when thunder cancels swim practice, or snow shuts down the schools; but in our modern era, it can never all stop. Dynamic stabilization means you have to keep going. So, you work from home, meetings go onto zoom. We can’t slow down. These plates need spinning! 

And then, there are the other times, times when something shows up, some uninvited guests, and unceremoniously knocks every plate out of orbit and they crash to the floor. 

For two of you this week it is cancer. For someone I love it was a DUI. For others it’s an injury, a job loss, a broken relationship, a broken trust. The plates fall with a crash. Our lives break open. 

I can’t help but think back to that hypothetical roadtrip from hell. Again, it wasn’t all bad. One of you said it this week too. “I would never choose to have cancer, but man does it put a whole lot of things into right perspective. It means the little things that normally go unnoticed, they’re sacred. They’re like my daily bread.” 

I offer this all to say to you that whether it’s the daily worry and distraction of modern life, the breakneck pace and pressure of Dynamic Stabilization, or a life-altering change of plans, our lives wobble, and at times they break like spinning plates. But in the silence that follows, that’s where Jesus says “Martha, Martha, Roger, Roger, Sam, Sam, you there, the one still spinning plates with shards piled up at your feet, you are worried, and distracted by many things. There is a lot on the table, I know, but there is one thing which I have brought to the table for you, one thing needful, and it will not be taken away from you.” 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Don’t just stand there. Do something.’ Well, I say to you, don’t just do something. Sit. There. Let me feed you.” 

Look, I know that this is the same Jesus that just last week said of the Good Samaritan “Go and do likewise.” I know that this Jesus calls us by name and when he calls he calls us to action, “Follow me. Go! Do!” And there is time for that and plenty to do, Lord knows, and bountiful reasons to do them in Jesus’ name. And yet, you must understand, when Martha meets Jesus he is on a roadtrip to Jerusalem. It is not Disney. It’s a roadtrip into Death. In a very real sense with each step he takes closer, he is dying, and it is this dying man’s wish today that you would sit with him a while, and let him feed you. 

He says to you, and to me, “I have come not primarily to be served, but to serve. Not because you deserve it, and not only once you’ve finished your to do list. Here. Now. With broken plates on the floor, Death on the horizon, and Sin crouching at your door, while you are worried and distracted by many things, I have come to your house with one thing needful. So sit. Take. Eat. This is my body. I am dying to give it to you. In fact, I died, and behold I am here, alive, forevermore, for you. 

Mary, bless her, she chose the best portion and it will not be taken away from her. But hear the good news. It shall never be taken away from you either. 

Thanks be to God.