If I asked you what you thought the most amazing creature was, I wonder what your responses would be. I’m sure there would be a range of answers, but I doubt the common ant would rank highly in our thinking. Ants are not something we would probably give much attention to…unless they trail along the kitchen benchtop, in which case we consider them a pest to be eliminated!
But ants are incredible creatures. Studies have discovered that some varieties of ants can carry up to 5,000 times their own bodyweight!¹ You’ve probably seen ants scurrying around with a piece of food on their back. The ants instinctively go to work, leaving the nest to gather food. The ants leave behind them a chemical scent. Some also store images of visual cues along the route. Once the ants have gathered their food, the exceptional sense of smell through odour receptors located on their antennae enables them to locate their trail and they scurry along, returning to the nest².
Now let’s keep that picture of ants frantically scurrying around in mind as we reflect on today’s Gospel reading. Jesus and his disciples entered into a village, and a woman by the name of Martha welcomed him as her guest in her home. The cultural etiquette of the day requires that Martha show hospitality. There would be a lot of preparations needed: making sure the water and basin are ready for the washing of her guests’ feet, maybe setting a place at the table, tidying up, bringing the staple daily food of bread to the table—perhaps even baking some fresh. And then there was the meal itself to prepare—peeling, washing, chopping, stirring.
I can imagine Martha like those worker ants, scurrying here, rushing there, maybe feeling like she is carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Wouldn’t an extra pair of hands be nice?! Stress is high, so when she looks across to Mary and sees her sitting down, resting at the feet of Jesus, tension and frustration creep in: “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me alone to serve without any help!?”
Answering her, the Lord said: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion which shall not be taken away from her.”
Notice that Jesus doesn’t correct Martha for her work of serving. Service and hospitality are special and required tasks of the people of God. It was the host’s responsibility to ensure appropriate hospitality. In Matthew’s Gospel (10:42) Jesus says: “…if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” Jesus isn’t saying we should sit down reading our bibles all day while neglecting household duties. But he wants us to have our priorities right—because that is good for us.
Jesus’ concern is not with Martha’s serving, but with her meditation. Mary is meditating on the teaching of Jesus. Martha isn’t. Like ants frantically scurrying about to collect food, Martha is rushing about, stressed and pressured to fulfil the necessary tasks. The pressures of her busyness draw Martha to meditate on herself—on what she lacks. In his commentary on Luke, Arthur Just notes that when any missionary visited a village, the core part of hospitality shown to them was not the host preparing the meal, but for the family to sit and listen to their message. Martha laments that her sister is not helping her with the preparations, but sitting at Jesus’ feet like Mary hasn’t even come into her equation.
Jesus’ response to Martha is gentle because he knows that Martha is trying to show her love to him. But Martha’s meditation on herself and on her problems have distracted her from what is most important: sitting at the feet of Jesus and being taught by him. So Jesus corrects Martha’s lament of her sister’s apparent idleness, by pointing out that while Martha is anxious and troubled by many things, Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her.
And so Jesus shows that he does care, by pointing Martha to see that he is the one thing she does need.
Busy, busy, busy! How might today’s text speak to us in this busy life? Everyone is so busy! Technology has meant we can fit so much more in a day, 24/7…and so we do. Perhaps to God looking down on the world he created, we humans appear to be like ants frantically scurrying around, gathering food, building our empires, while forgetting the one thing needful in this fleeting and fragile lifetime with Jesus as the priority.
What does this text have to say to the church?
You see, Luke doesn’t just present a picture of Martha’s home to us today. It is at the same time a picture of the church. Mary and Martha, in the presence of Jesus, who is speaking his word. That is the church—people gathered together, meeting Jesus through his word.
So what is this text saying to us today; God’s church in this location and time, St Paul’s Glenelg? Like Martha, we can be anxious and troubled about many things. Like ants scurrying around we can rush from one thing to the next. We might feel as though we are carrying 5,000 times our own body weight, bearing the weight of the world on our shoulders. Rosters to maintain and duties to fulfil, people to phone, cupboards to stock, coffee to set up, music practice, carpets to clean, bins to put out, people to catch up with, meetings to have, reports to prepare, grounds to maintain, clients to serve, things to fix.
Where does all that fit in with today’s text? How might we be distracted by busyness in the church?
Like Martha, we can become distracted with many things, and risk not focusing on the one thing needed: Christ and his word. It is an issue of ordering; of prioritising. Our works of service to Jesus and his church are not wrong or bad in themselves. But if they replace meeting with Jesus, then we carry them out in our own faltering strength, and they become a burdensome obligation. The focus, then, shifts from God and those we are serving, to an internal focus—to our frustrations and fatigue…something of Martha’s experience in our text. Today’s text has a parallel with what Jesus says in John 15 (verse 5): “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
There will always be busyness. There will always be tasks to perform. Always people needing our help and care. That is precisely why we need to put the first thing first, and sit with Jesus. Our most active service is to begin with our inactivity. That is why, in the church’s letter of call, the first task the pastor is called to is to preach and teach the word of God, and why one of the key points of the congregation’s covenant is to “obligate ourselves to make faithful and regular use of the Means of Grace, so that God’s enabling power may have free course among us, and that we may carry out our God-given ministry to the service and glory of God and the welfare of all.”
Did you notice the order there? Both are equally important—being served by God through the word, and serving God by serving others—but the latter cannot be before the former.
In his book Gospel handles, Francis Rossow puts it this way:
“To work actively for the Lord and to receive the Word passively are both good. But given a choice, it is better that the Christian be in the passive voice, so to speak. Normally the Christian does both: he or she works and worships, labours and listens, serves and is served. That’s the ideal; that’s the way it should be. But while doing both, the Christian, remembering the story of Mary and Martha, is ever aware that the worship is more important than the work, the listening more essential than the labouring, and the being served more blessed than the serving. And should there arise a conflict between serving the Lord and hearing his word, the Christian, like Mary, chooses the good part and sits at Jesus’ feet.
Why was Mary’s the good part? Why was it the one thing needful? You can’t really serve the Lord unless he first serves you. You can’t actually do good things unless the good Lord first comes into you through his word and manufactures those good things…In the Christian life there can be no output without input. We need to remember that God doesn’t simply want us to do good things; He is even more concerned that we let him do them—in us.”³
Today, the Lord calls his church to be like Mary. In the coming weeks, as times of dwelling with God in his word are again offered for the congregation, let us not be troubled and anxious about many things, but choose the one thing needed and sit at the feet of our Lord. For there your Lord and Saviour will be truly present, really active, sharing his holiness, his life, his blessing with you, as he did with Mary. And according to the Lord’s own word, this is the good portion, which will not be taken away from you. Amen.
1 ‘Ants Can Lift up to 5,000 Times Their own Body Weight’ Entomology Today (February 11, 2014 Entomological Society of America: Annapolis, Maryland) https://entomologytoday.org/2014/02/11/ants-can-lift-up-to-5000-times-their- own-body-weight-new-study-suggests/ last accessed 15 July 2022 8:38pm
² ‘How do ants find food?’ (2022) The Terminix International Company Limited Partnership, https://www.terminix.com/ants/behavior/how-do-ants-find-food/ last accessed 15 July 2022 8:38pm
³ Rossow, Francis (2001) Gospel handles: Finding new connections in biblical texts (Concordia Publishing House, St Louis) pp207-209
