Proper 11
Psalm 15; Genesis 18:1-10a; Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42
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Introduction: Setting the Scene with Martha and Mary’s Conflict
We’re going to continue today in Luke chapter 10, which ends the chapter with a short story of Jesus’ visit to Martha and Mary. Now, we’ve had a lot of drama in this chapter that we’ve been in for the last couple of weeks. We had the drama of the commissioning of the seventy evangelists with authority.
They were sent out with authority “to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19). We had the drama of Satan falling from the sky like lightning (Luke 10:18). And we had the “gotcha” questions of last week from the lawyer that prompt Jesus to tell the famous parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).
And so today, we arrive at this brief vignette. Jesus enters a village. Luke doesn’t tell us which village it is.
He doesn’t name it. But from John’s Gospel, we can assume it’s Bethany, where Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived. Perhaps it was one of the towns visited by the evangelists earlier in the chapter.
Perhaps Lazarus was one of the “sons of peace” mentioned in Luke chapter 10, verse 6. Perhaps two disciples stayed with Martha and Mary during their mission and enjoyed their hospitality and recommended it to Jesus. It is safe to assume from Mary’s eagerness to sit at the Lord’s feet, listening to His teaching, that she had received some prior warning of His coming.
Martha knew this too, hence her willingness to receive Jesus in her home. A conflict arises between the two sisters. Jesus settles it in Mary’s favor, but then the story ends abruptly.
The chapter ends, and Luke moves on. Like the story of the prodigal son, we’re left wondering and wanting a bit more resolution. What was really going on between Martha and Mary?
And is Mary really in the right? What about Martha? We are left to wonder what Jesus meant when He told Martha, “One thing is needful,” and that “Mary has chosen the good portion” (Luke 10:42).
Biblical Context: God’s Initiative in Receiving Humanity
Divine Visitors in Genesis and Luke
Both our Old Testament lesson from Genesis and our Gospel reading from Luke describe the experience of a visit from the Lord. In Genesis chapter 18, verse 1, we read, “And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day.” ‘Lord’ is capitalized in your Bibles because that is the Hebrew word for Jehovah being used there in the text.
This is God’s proper name. And moreover, Abraham knows that this is God. In verse 3, he addresses Him as “Adonai,” Lord, a term of great respect.
So there’s no question in Abraham’s mind that these are not just three stray visitors that normal hospitality requires one to accept. This is God Himself come down from heaven to dwell with him. In Luke chapter 10, verse 39, Mary sits at the Lord’s feet, which is the proper and subordinate position of a disciple to his—in this case, her, and that was unusual—master.
Human Hospitality vs. Divine Reception
Abraham and Martha have a lot in common in that way. Abraham and later Martha busy themselves playing the host. But Mary sits and listens.
What is not obvious, but what I think is the point of these two stories, is that while both give accounts of humans entertaining divine visitors in their homes, what’s really interesting here, or what is the irony, is that such a thing is impossible. The text is describing the impossible. A man cannot possibly receive God into his home.
It just can’t be done. God would fill it an infinite time over. A man cannot receive God into his home.
Rather, the opposite must be true. What this story must really be saying is that God is receiving man into God’s home.
Martha’s Complaint and Jesus’ Response
Luke chapter 10, verse 38 tells us that “Jesus entered a village, and a woman named Martha received him into her house.” Mary sits and listens while Martha “was distracted with much serving.” Martha complains to Jesus, saying, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to come and help me.”
Okay. Settle this score, Jesus.
Instead, Jesus vindicates Mary. “Martha, Martha,” He says, “you are anxious and troubled about many things. One thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41-42).
Mary’s Devotion to God’s Word
Mary perceives God at work in His word. And so she sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to His teaching. Think about that.
Martha’s busy doing all this work, but Jesus is actually at work too. There’s no amount of work that can be done that will match the work that is being done at this very moment by Jesus in her sister’s home.
God as the True Host
When commenting on Genesis chapter 18, the rabbis tell us that Abraham did not receive God into his tent, and rather, God received Abraham into His tent. The same thing is happening in Martha’s home, which is why Jesus doesn’t take her side against Mary. Martha’s not the one who’s doing the receiving.
Martha’s not even the one doing the preparing or the work. Jesus is the one providing the meal, not Martha. His words provide all the meat they could possibly want.
Mary understands this. Martha does not.
The Futility of Human Effort
God will always remain hidden from us. He’s a spirit, and so we can’t see Him. We can never see Him at work, unlike Abraham and Martha, who we can see, and we can see that they are very busy, working to make God feel welcome—welcome in His own creation.
And when you put it that way, you understand why Martha’s efforts are futile.
Heart Condition: Distraction and Excess as Barriers
Martha’s Missteps
But what kept Martha from seeing this truth? It wasn’t, as I think many people think when they hear this story, this isn’t a criticism of Martha for showing hospitality. This is not a criticism of her housekeeping or of her cooking.
That’s not what this is. It’s not saying that she was wrong to feed Jesus and show hospitality. And by extension, the same was true for Abraham.
It wasn’t wrong what he was doing. Look closely at Luke chapter 10, verse 40. It says, “But Martha was distracted with much serving.”
Distraction and Excess
‘Distracted.’ ‘Much.’ Those are the two words that you need to pay attention to.
Luke tells us what Martha is doing wrong. It’s in those two words. She’s made two mistakes.
She’s distracted. And she is excessive. Excessive.
We might say, what is it, obsessive-compulsive these days? I don’t know if that’s fair, but we might say that. It’s not wrong of Martha to feed her guests.
It is wrong for her to become distracted while doing so because she is serving too much. Martha does another thing wrong, too. She fails to perceive that what her sister is doing is just as important, if not more so.
The Priority of Learning
Jesus is in her home teaching. Jesus. It’s Jesus who’s there doing the teaching.
God Himself, although they may not quite have understood that yet. Now, when Jesus shows up to teach you, what is the most important thing to do? Learn, right?
That’s the one thing you need to do at that point. Food can wait. Jesus says in John chapter 4, verse 34, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.”
The Church’s Calling
Paul says something similar in today’s reading from Colossians. In Colossians chapter 1, verses 24 and 25, he writes, “In my flesh, I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the divine office, which was given to me for you to make the word of God fully known.” That’s the job description of a minister right there.
And Paul’s just written it in two sentences. It’s a divine office. It’s given by God.
And the one point, the one job of the minister, is to make the word of God fully known. That word still needs to be made known in our day, which means it falls to us, today’s church, just like it fell to Paul in the church of his day, to make it known. But to make it known, we have to learn it first, which is what Mary was busy doing, right?
We can’t just go off half-cocked, unprepared. We need to sit at the Master’s feet. “Mary has chosen the good portion,” Jesus says.
The Enduring Word
Notice here that Jesus is using the language of food and serving. “Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42). The prophet Isaiah tells us in chapter 40, verse 8, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”
That word can make Abraham’s barren 99-year-old wife a mother in a year’s time. It can make the Virgin Mary conceive without a man. The incarnate word Himself is perfectly comfortable in Martha’s home without her extra efforts.
Gospel Message: Christ’s Sacrifice as the Solution
The Challenge of Sin and Death
Now we have to ask a harder question, though, because all of these stories lead up to one thing in the gospel. They lead up to the cross. They lead up to the crucifixion.
To that great and mighty work Jesus Himself performs. And of all the works that God does, whether it’s making Sarah conceive in her old age or the Virgin Mary conceive without a man or even the creation of the world in six days, all of that seems like a trifle, like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t even take much effort for God. So why does defeating sin and death take such effort?
That’s the big question. Why does it require us, as Paul says, “to complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” in order to build up the church? Why?
Why can’t God just snap His fingers and be done with sin and make an end of it? Why the bloody death? Why the propitiation of God’s wrath?
Sin’s Alien Nature
I suspect it’s because sin and death are profoundly unspiritual and ungodlike. There couldn’t be anything more unlike God than sin, which is why it’s so difficult for God to deal with it. Sin and death are not the “good portion.”
For God to deal with sin and death, He has to know sin and death, something completely alien to Him. God can create whole universes with just a thought. Sin and death is alien, unknown to Him.
He has to work at wondering what that is. He has to become a man to know it. He has to experience sin and misery.
He has to go to excessive lengths. And we’re talking about God here, remember. God has to go to excessive lengths.
He has to become distracted from His creation, not unlike Martha, so that we, sinners, can receive the “good portion.”
Vicarious Substitution
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, “For our sake He made Him, Jesus, to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” You see, righteousness is as alien to us as sin is from God. We were talking about this in the catechism class on Wednesday.
We’ll continue it this Wednesday when we talk about total depravity, that hated Calvinist doctrine. But it’s true. Righteousness, goodness, is as far away from you and me as sin and death is from God.
And so we have to switch places. God, more importantly speaking, has to take our place. If you don’t understand that perfectly, I don’t blame you.
I don’t either. I don’t understand the mystery of God’s providence such that He is able to take my sin upon Him. I can’t fully understand that.
I cannot fully grasp that. But I do know that I need to sit at Jesus’ feet. If that’s what He was explaining to Mary, then I would stop serving food to listen too.
Christ in the Old Testament
I said that we can never see God or see Him working. It’s true. He’s a spirit, so we cannot see Him.
We can only observe His works. That said, in some rare moments recorded in scripture, we get to observe God working. Jehovah appears to Abraham in visible bodily form.
What else could that be but a pre-incarnate manifestation of Jesus Christ? Who else would it be? When people say that Jesus is not part of the Old Testament, they haven’t read the Old Testament.
How do you miss this? You say it’s “anthropomorphization.” You come up with a fancy multisyllabic word to explain it away.
It’s Jesus. He’s right there in the pages of Genesis. This is why so many Jews of Jesus’ day recognized Jesus.
We forget about that. Many Jews converted. Many, many converted and became Christians.
They recognized Jesus from the pages of their own Bibles. They knew what to look for.
Pharisaical Excess
Many, however, did not, especially those who made more work of the law than God required. Jesus says in John chapter 5, verse 45, “Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; it is Moses who accuses you, on whom you set your hope.” Jesus is not criticizing Moses.
He’s not criticizing the law. Jesus inspired Moses to write the law. What He’s criticizing is Pharisaical excess, Pharisaical distraction.
Even Eve did this. When the serpent asks her what the law of God says, she replies, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden.” So far, so good.
But then Eve adds, “Neither shall you touch it, lest you die.” God never said those words. God never said, “Neither shall you touch it.”
He only said not to eat its fruit. Eve, like Martha, was given to excess.
Knowing Jesus Through His Works
In John chapter 14, verse 11, Jesus says, “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me.” That’s another one of those mysteries.
If you fully understand it, good luck. Come to the front of the class, get in the pulpit, start preaching. “Believe Me, I am in the Father and the Father in Me,” which is why the next thing that Jesus says is, “Or else, believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.”
Jesus is saying, “Do not try to understand more than you can concerning the relationship I have with My Father.” That’s a mystery for all eternity. You probably will never fully understand it, even on the other side of the grave.
Instead, just get to know Me through My works. That’s what Jesus is saying. We can’t see the Father at work, but we can see His works at work in us.
The greatest and most difficult of those works is the cross. That’s how Jesus won the “good portion” for us. It was difficult for Jesus to accomplish.
And it’s hard for us to understand what happened there. It’s hard for us to understand, which is why we have to experience it.
Salvation and Action: Living Out the Good Portion
Experiencing the Good Portion
How do we gain this “good portion”? How do we experience it? Well, one of the ways is that we eat and drink the “good portion” in the sacrament of His body and blood, Holy Communion.
We’re about to do that in a few moments. We experience a likeness of His death and resurrection in baptism. And once we partake of them, they cannot be taken from us.
Once you’re baptized, it can’t be undone. You take communion, you join the body of Christ, which is why if you take it in an unworthy condition, you defile yourself to your own condemnation. So be careful when you eat and drink the communion.
Once we partake of them, they cannot be taken from us. They will add to our condemnation if we take them improperly. Which is why the sins of believing Christians are different from the sins of the unbelieving world.
The Nature of Sin
Are Christians perfect? No, we are not. Am I perfect?
No, I am not. But we remain sinners in the midst of a world of sinners. But we are fundamentally different.
And when we sin, it is fundamentally different than the way the unbeliever sins. The reason is this. When the unbelievers sin, they do what is in their nature to do.
They are perverse and have gone astray from birth. They’re like dogs returning to their own vomit. But when Christians sin, they act contrary to their new nature in Christ.
When we sin as Christians, we do everything exactly the opposite of what our new nature tells us to do. We spit in God’s eye when Christians sin themselves. The unbelieving world out there, like I said, doesn’t even know God.
When unbelievers sin, they do so as outlaws, as bandits, whom the law is after to collar and convict them. They are not received by God in their homes. The unbelievers refuse to sit at God’s feet.
Refusing the Good Portion
But when Christians sin, it is as if Mary were to get up to help her sister, Martha, to join her in her distraction and excess, to forget her holy visitor, to despise His teaching, to refuse the “good portion.” If Mary were to get up in this scenario, if she were to heed her sister’s complaint, it would be like saying, “I’ll see you later, Jesus. I’m going to turn my back on you for now.
I’ve got more important things to do than to be with you.” No, when the Lord dwells with you, you do not turn your back on Him. This is where the story of Martha and Mary fits with last week’s parable of the Good Samaritan and even today’s psalm.
Ethical Living and the Word
Psalm 15 asks, “Who, O Lord, with Thee abiding in Thy house shall be Thy guest?” And the answer is, “He that slanders not his brother, does no evil to a friend, to reproaches of another he refuses to attend.” In other words, the needful thing.
And the needful thing has always been, as James says in chapter 1, verse 22, “to be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” That describes the state of Christians who sin. Hearers and not doers, those who are deceived.
Eve was deceived. Martha was too busy to listen. How could they be doers of the word when they either hadn’t heard it correctly or not at all?
Humility and Devotion
The first thing, the needful thing, is to know God in the only way He can be known, which is through His revealed word. That is to say, the scriptures, the Bible. And what does that require?
That requires the humility and devotion of a Mary, not the distracted excess of a Martha. But let’s cut Martha a break here. Christ won the “good portion” for her as well.
He really did. Martha’s is the sin, if we could even call it that, of a Christian, of a converted heart, of a believer.
She’s not far from the Lord. He’s right there. She’s already taken Him into her home.
He’s come to dwell with her. She just needs to remember where she is.
Shaping Society Through Faith
The “good portion” shapes not just our hearts, but our society. This is the application for us today. How can we make sure we are sitting at the feet of Jesus, claiming the “good portion,” and engaging in the one needful thing?
Medieval and Roman Catholic theologians often take Mary as the exemplar of the contemplative life, the religious life, the monastic life, and argue that a lifetime spent contemplating God in the cloister is superior to the active life as represented by Martha. That’s an allegorical reading of that passage. Our Protestant Reformed theologians take issue with that.
For them, the active life is the Christian life. For the magisterial Reformers, men like Luther and Calvin and their heirs down to the 19th century, this meant Protestant Christians were expected to participate actively in civic, family, and religious life. In other words, no sitting on the political sidelines, no pious-sounding “rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” as an excuse to avoid one’s civic duties.
The Call to Radicalism
The spiritual descendants of our Puritan forefathers are not today’s evangelicals, the ones we think of, the ones in churches like big auditoriums with smoke and mirrors and all that stuff. I saw one with a roller coaster on the stage and the pastor came out and rode a roller coaster because he said he wanted to get the kids involved or something like that, okay? Those are not the descendants of the Puritans.
Give me a break. The descendants of the Puritans are today’s democratic socialists. That’s because socialists, along with Marxists of every stripe, have traded supernaturalism for materialism as the basis for their faith.
But unlike many Christians today, they’ve never forgotten their civic duty. They’ve inherited that Puritan understanding of the common weal, the commonwealth. They know it’s their civic duty to be participants in government.
Indeed, the entire apparatus, their whole political regime lives to engage politically. If you notice, there’s always a small group that gathers Sunday afternoons to protest down here where Route 6 intersects with I-84. You might drive by them and hardly notice them, or maybe you notice them and you chuckle.
I’ve always chuckled. I was a freshman in college once and some kid knocked on the door and was trying to sell me the Workers’ Daily World newspaper. I laughed at him and closed the door in his face, but I should have paid more attention because he and his kind are within an inch of taking things over.
That was a mistake on my part. Zechariah warns us not to despise the day of small things. Why?
Because it only takes a few radicals to change things radically. And so I think the lesson from today’s reading, far from being a call to the monastic life and to retreat from the world and to think pious thoughts, read your scripture quietly by yourself or finger your rosary beads, I think that’s not at all what today’s reading is telling us. What I think today’s reading is telling us is that we as Christians need to recover our radicalism, which is to say our roots.
The English word radical comes from the Latin word “radix,” which means root. You see, the godless, anti-Christian world is organized. They are highly organized.
And we need to be too. Christians need to be organized. The needful thing for us in coming years will be to become just as organized.
Not so much so that we can tell people how to live. I have no interest in that. But so that we can protect the freedom to live in and worship as we are called by God to do.
This isn’t about forced conversions. I’m not trying to force anyone to believe. I can’t do that.
That’s the work of the Holy Spirit. I can preach, and if the words that you hear from me convict your heart so that you repent and you come to Jesus, amen. That’s not my point.
That’s not me doing it. That’s the Spirit. So I can’t force conversions.
I’m not trying to do that. I’m not trying to impose religion and a way of life on others. What this is about for Christians is about maintaining our freedoms, the freedoms our ancestors lived and died for us to inherit.
The lamp of freedom burns very low in our day. The needful thing now is to restock it with the oil of righteousness, the application of God’s law to the civil government, to trim its wick with faithful gospel preaching, and to spread its flame until all the lamps of Christendom are relit.
Redeeming Martha and Mary
The “good portion” belongs both to Mary and Martha. It was Martha, after all, who received Jesus into her home. It is devotion to God, Mary’s example, that drives our civic action.
If we do this, then we will make the most of both Martha and Mary’s examples to us as sisters in Christ.
Preached on July 20, 2025, at the First Congregational Church, Woodbury, Connecticut.
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