“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”  Do you recognize these words.  Rudyard Kipling.  Meditating about the clash of two different world cultures as his native England tries to rule far away India. 

In Jesus’ time and place, he was raised to hear and behave according to this holy advice, “Let thy house be a meeting-house for the Sages and sit amid the dust of their feet and drink in their words with thirst…but talk not much with womankind.” (The Mishnah) 

Martha and Mary keep house, and in this house Jesus talks with womankind.  Last week we studied the parable of the Good Samaritan to show Jesus’ teaching on how to love your neighbor.  The Samaritan, a despised outcast, is an unlikely person in that culture to love the unidentified victim who lay dying beside the road.  But Jesus tells us to “Go and do likewise.” 

In today’s lesson, Jesus commends Mary’s choice, even though she too behaves contrary to her culture’s strong separation of men from women.  When Jesus enters your neighborhood, enters your life, Jesus calls forth not conformity to your culture’s norms.  Jesus calls forth realization of the potential that is dormant within us as God’s people. 

Martha takes the lead.  She welcomes Jesus and his disciples into this home.  She will host them, taking on herself a man’s role.  The host, normally the man of the house, should then direct all the servants and women to rustle up food and drink, while the men gather for business, to hear this master Jesus teach about the Kingdom of God. 

But Mary does not go to the kitchen.  Mary joins the men, sits at Jesus’ feet, hearing and learning, thus becoming one of his disciples.  Martha busies herself with the household chores, probably short-handed, and soon resents how Mary has deserted such duties, and Martha probably would like to be sitting at Jesus’ feet too. 

Martha interrupts Jesus’ words.  “Lord, tell my sister to get over here and help me, so I don’t have to do this work all by myself.  Doesn’t her neglect concern you?”  Jesus does not get angry, even though Martha has crashed his teaching.  Jesus recognizes while Martha is his host.  Her attention to housekeeping duties takes priority for her over hearing and learning the word of God Jesus is teaching.  How to help Martha get a better handle on how to love and care?  How to help Martha get her priorities in better order?

“Martha, Martha,” Jesus gently questions or even rebukes her outburst.  “Martha, you are busy with many duties necessary to be a good host.  You are worried and distracted.  Because you see many needs calling you to take care of them.”  Jesus recognizes and does not dismiss or condemn her busy work.  But she is distracted.  Distracted from what?

Look how Jesus puts it: “There is need of only one thing and Mary has chosen the better activity.”  Jesus does not deny that sooner or later they will need something to eat.  But only recently Jesus has fed five thousand with five loaves and two fish.  “What Mary is doing, what she has freely chosen to do, to become my disciple, hearing and learning my words, the word of God, is clearly a higher priority than business as usual around the house.” 

As Jesus puts it elsewhere, “We humans beings do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes to us from the mouth of God.”  And knowing Mary will be censored not only by her own sister, but most likely by many others, both women and men, for her choice to become a disciple when she does not qualify as a male, knowing Mary can expect condemnation, Jesus says, “Not only has Mary chosen the better part, but let’s be very careful not to take this new choice away from her.” 

As Jesus tells Nicodemus, “You enter the Kingdom of God when you are born anew, born from above, born of water and the Spirit.”  Mary and Martha are being born anew, giving up some old rules and roles their culture enforces and struggling to become free to choose how Jesus teaches them to love God with all heart, soul, mind and strength, and their neighbors as themselves. 

This struggle to move from the old to the new, from what is flesh to the Spirit, can help us as we seek to balance our priorities, as we learn from how Mary and Martha are learning.  Thankfully, in this age we have left behind some, but not all, of the cultural laws or rigid barriers based upon gender, race, age, ethnicity, or religious or sectarian prejudice.  We are freer, like Mary, to choose to step forward, out of old straightjackets, freer to welcome our new birth from above.  But we are sometimes still too comfortable, too stuck in our deep ruts, when we stick labels on others, or stereotype someone whom we fear because we are ignorant of persons with Latino or Arab sounding names, or with African or Asian backgrounds.  When we do this we remain mired in our flesh, denying our freedom to choose the new life in the Spirit Jesus offers us and invites us to share, as Mary sits at Jesus’ feet. 

We are freer as social creatures than we are as individuals, I think.  Moses brought up every excuse he could think of when God at the burning bush called him to go to Egypt and lead God’s people out of slavery.  Moses gave up on his freedom, but God did not give up on Moses.   

Can you imagine the young maiden Mary saying to the angel Gabriel, “Not only is it totally impossible for me to conceive and bear a son as you call me to do, but I’ve got another agenda, thank you, call me later, in a few years.” 

Can you imagine the young man Jesus saying to John the Baptist, “No, I won’t go to the Jordan River for baptism because as my father Joseph’s oldest son, I cannot abandon his carpenter’s shop but I must earn my living and support my dear mother and my sisters and brothers.  Thanks, John, but no thanks.” 

Can you imagine Simon and Andrew, James and John rejecting Jesus’ call to discipleship, saying, “We cannot abandon our fathers’ fishing business; we have a contract and this is a lucrative business; we cannot leave everything and follow you to become fishers for people!” 

Can you imagine Saul of Tarsus saying to Jesus on the Damascus Road, “Alright Jesus, whoever you are, I hear you calling me to become the apostle to the gentiles, but I’m first of all a business man, and I’ve got a huge stack of orders for new tents to deliver and my staff depends upon me to supervise this small but prosperous business.  Call me when I’m near retirement and maybe I can listen to your proposal, maybe moonlight for you a little bit among the gentiles?” 

What excuse can any of us throw up at Jesus, when Jesus invites us to choose to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves?  In my judgment, we enjoy so much freedom today, and yet we hold back ourselves, choosing safety, fearing freedom, when we do not open ourselves up and choose to listen to Jesus and to become his disciple.  We forget how Jesus says, “If you continue in my word, you will discover yourself becoming my disciple, and in your new experience of being born anew from above, you will come to know the truth and this truth, love for God and for neighbor, this truth will liberate you, will set you free, will become for you the life abundant I promise, your life in which you come to know God and to enjoy God forever.” (John 8)

And Jesus speaks not only to the cultural laws and rules of his and every time.  Jesus speaks to his church, his church then and his church now.  How often like Martha we step forward to host Jesus’ disciples, but also like Martha we go to Jesus and try to use him to force our will upon others to give us control over them.  We do this when we argue that Jesus wants you to vote our way, when we try to twist economics or politics or pleasure to make us comfortable or safe or prosperous or happy.  Jesus never invites Martha or us to use him as a tool to coerce someone away from freedom and into our control.   

Or, like Martha, we get so wrapped up in the nuts and bolts of running Jesus’ own church, we miss what Jesus calls the better part Mary has chosen.  We measure success by whether the kitchen serves on time, by how many mouths are fed.   

We raise money but may easily forget that Christ’s church does not mean buildings with heating and air conditioning.  Christ’s church is the fellowship of disciples who meet to worship and learn at Jesus’ feet.  And this fellowship may meet anywhere, anytime.  Martha is right that bills have to be paid, and only we Christians can and should pay our bills.  But Jesus does not allow Martha to demand that Mary leave his teaching and join the kitchen brigade.  Mary has chosen the better part.  Mary has made the one choice that alone is the highest priority for Christ’s church.  

God calls us as Christ’s church away from comfort in our flesh; Christ calls us to discipleship—listening, hearing, learning, and doing his will for us.  And yet it is true, our bills have to be paid.  And so it’s not a question of one or the other, but a challenge to get our priorities in healthy balance, as Christ Jesus defines this balance. 

We raise money to restore our buildings not to give us comfort, but to equip us so that we and our offspring and future generations can continue like Mary to sit at Jesus’ feet.  Let me report how well you who meet in these buildings have been doing that for many, many years.  During these three and one-half years I have been serving as Interim Associate Pastor, I have had several opportunities to meet with middle age men and women, families who grew up in this church and who return to share in the time of memorial service for beloved parents.  With almost no exceptions, these folks tell me with sparkle in their eyes of their memories here many years before, of how this congregation loved them, taught them, guided them after baptism through confirmation class, through summer camps, through basketball games and boy scouts, through all the skinned knees and cookouts as they grew up.  And so Martha is right.  Someone, hopefully all of us together, has to raise the money and pay the bills.  During this past year we completely renovated and redecorated our youth lounge.  Why?  Not as an end in itself, but as a means to the greater end, so that Mary may sit at Jesus’ feet and learn, becoming a disciple of Jesus, coming to know God and to enjoy God forever.   

You will never know the full extent of how this dedicated congregation has influenced the lives of so many young people over so many years.  But they know, and God knows and God loves each one whose life is molded and nurtured to know and to accept and to express freedom, the liberation that Jesus gives us to become whom God creates us to become.   

Back to Rudyard Kipling.  “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of earth!”