When I told Mark (Wingfield), Doug (Haney) and George (Mason) that I would be preaching about Mary and Martha this morning, Mark sighed and in his sardonic way (feigning a Southern drawl) said, “There are two kinds of people in this world, DJ; there are the Marys and there are the Marthas.” 

We chuckled about this because we know this is the usual treatment of this text. Some of us are busybodies like Martha, and some of us are demure, studious and attentive like Mary. 

Ultimately, those who empathize with Martha feel misunderstood and compelled to defend themselves. And the rest of us, who do our daily quiet times, attend church on a weekly basis and sing in the choir, feel very pleased about ourselves. 

“There are two kinds of people in this world,” Mark said, “the Marys and the Marthas.”

To which George responded, “Of course the counter to this statement is, there are two kinds of people in this world, those who say there are two kinds of people and those who don’t.”

Bingo. The world is too complex to say there are only Marys and Marthas in this world. Life, and this text, are far more complex than you think they are.

Jesus doesn’t have it out for busybodies and the pious ones aren’t his favorite pets. We see this when we read the story that comes right before this one: the story of the Good Samaritan, the subject of last week’s sermon.

A man is beaten up on the road and two pious religious men, on their way to the temple, pass by on the other side of the road, refusing to help the dying man. But a hated Samaritan passes by, and he stops and helps the man.

Now compare the message of that story to the message of the account of Mary and Martha. It’s pretty much the opposite. Do what Martha did— serve those who are broken, burdened and hurting. And don’t do what Mary did. Don’t be like the priest and the lawyer who were on their way to the temple, to pray and listen to the words of God.   

What happened? Is this an inconsistency in Jesus’ teaching, or is he changing his mind? Is it better to be the kind of disciple who stops and listens or the kind of Christian who actively serves?

Well, what if I said, “There are two kinds of cars in this world—cars that stop and cars that go.” Well, that’s as silly as Mark’s statement. 

If we had cars that only go—cars with only an accelerator—the results would be catastrophic. Horrendous accidents, dangerous streets, not to mention exiting and entering the vehicles—it would be like The Dukes of Hazzard!

And if we only had cars that stopped —well, that would be like sitting in a junkyard. There’d be no purpose for these pieces of junk.

Cars are made to stop and go. Not one or the other. We need two pedals when we drive—an accelerator and a brake pedal. Ignoring one in favor of the other would be boring at best and dangerous at worst. 

The reason these two stories—the story of the Good Samaritan and Mary and Martha—are placed so close together in the Gospel of Luke is to demonstrate the fact that followers of Jesus aren’t defined exclusively by their attentive posture and their studious demeanor like Mary. The priest and the lawyer in the story of the Good Samaritan prove this is true. 

Nor can they be defined exclusively by their faithful service, as proved by Martha when she was distracted and worried by the many responsibilities and duties she had.

The followers of Jesus are supposed to do both—they are to be followers who stop, and they are to be followers who go. They are to be disciplined believers who faithfully stop what they are doing to listen to and hear the words of God in prayer, worship and study, but they are also supposed to be attentive to opportunities for service around them—opportunities to help, heal and restore.

Twitter, as many of you know, is a wildly popular social networking tool on the Internet these days. The basic concept is this: you sign up for this free service on the Internet and choose to follow or be followed. Using only 140 characters or letters, people can write about what they’re doing at this moment—this is called a “tweet.” And I can choose to “follow” what you’re doing by subscribing to your tweets. By doing this I am getting a play-by-play account of your life or at least what you want me to know about your life. 

But perhaps you didn’t know this— Twitter is a tool being utilized by churches during their worship services. It’s a trend that’s being embraced by churches from Michigan to North Carolina.

There is a variety of ways this takes place, but one of the ways Twitter is being used is that during the worship service, people in the congregation are encouraged to tweet. And these tweets are projected on the screen behind the pastor as a kind of running dialogue or discussion while the sermon is going on. 

So if we were allowing this to take place in our service, you might see a tweet pop up on the screen that says, “Does stopping mean church attendance?” “I have always related more to Martha.” “I pray for the discipline to stop more often in my life.” “I’ve never heard more insightful preaching than I’m hearing right now.” “Wow, DJ’s head is really shiny this morning.”

And some people really like this. But I have a bit of a problem with it because I think we need to have spaces to stop, and we let our technology stop as well. There’s value in turning off our cell phones once in a while and shutting off the radio, mp3 player or computer. There’s value in taking one day to stop working, leave our house and enter a building, a sanctuary, leaving our coffee cups outside, sitting in awkward seats called pews to sing songs unlike anything we hear during the week. There’s value in stopping, silencing and listening.

Some would disagree with me. Some would say that we need to stop acting like there are holy spaces and holy moments and instead acknowledge that everything is sacred. Some would say we should pray as we go, praying in the car and on the run—this, after all, is how we pray without ceasing. Some would say that what plagues Christians these days is the fact that we put on their Sunday best, our spiritual façade, and then act like hell when we leave this “sacred space.”

And they have a point. I agree that we all need to be aware of God’s presence around us, and we need to do better at recognizing God beyond our church walls. But the church’s failure in this area wasn’t caused by treating our spaces as too holy. It’s because we as Christians aren’t getting the message that we are to take time to stop in reverence and prayer, in spaces like these, but we are also called and compelled to go and put energy and action behind the guidance we receive in these moments. 

In a culture which looks like a highway of never-ending traffic, we are like buses and delivery trucks. We make frequent stops. We pull to the curb to serve and assist people. We pull back into traffic to go to our next stop. We stop and we go.

At the beginning of the common era, the Roman day was structured around bells. At the beginning of each day, a bell would ring at 6 a.m. to wake people up. The bell at 9 a.m. would remind people of the day’s progress and open the markets. Noon’s bell would pronounce the lunch break, the 3 p.m. bell would tell the citizens to go back to work, and the bell at 6 p.m. would indicate the end of the workday. 

Every part of daily life for Romans was controlled by the bells. Each bell told citizens what to do—wake up, work, eat, work, go home. 

But the Jews and early Christians baptized these bells, so to speak. Instead of blindly following the flow of a culture hypnotized by the bidding of a bell, these early Christians and early Jews would stop. … And instead of working or eating, they would put everything on hold to pray. They wouldn’t splash cold water on their faces or open their businesses, eat their lunch, head on home, or go to sleep. They would pray. They used the culture to remind themselves to stop. 

But the problem was that this constant stopping would put them out of step with the culture. It drew attention to them, and it made people upset with their inconvenient stops and starts.

This is what is so significant about Mary’s activity and why it is deemed to be the “better part.” She defies expectations. She is clearly expected to be assisting her sister Martha with whatever she was doing. But she shuns cultural and familial expectations to stop and listen to her rabbi. 

And in the story that had been told right before this one, the one about the Good Samaritan, we see the Samaritan’s compassion to be countercultural as well. Others are far too concerned with stopping and engaging in religious activity, but the Samaritan pushes the societal expectations to the side in order to help his neighbor.

Jesus’ primary point in critiquing Martha might be less about pitting service against piety and more about the need for every follower to fight the flow of society, to refuse the expectations and live counter to the culture. Society will keep us moving, but we are called to stop and help. Society will tell us to keep moving, keep doing, keep busy, and yet we are called sometimes to take a load off and sit quietly while our work schedule is postponed.

Jay Griffiths, the author of A Sideways Look at Time, points out that in the world’s history there have been leaders who have not only sought dominion over people and land but over time as well—kings and dictators who have tried to control people by altering the calendar and the hours to suit their own pleasure. They have created “empires of time” (Pol Pot). 

Griffiths points out that when we engage in prayer, meditation, art and love (i.e., compassion) time stands still, and the tyranny of the ticking clock becomes irrelevant—we actually engage in civil disobedience. We rebel against the expectations of earthly rulers and expectations to instead participate in something transcendent and eternal—a moment that, Jesus said, “will not be taken from us.”

This is what happens when we stop and go. We step out of the traffic, the flow of time, and we give our allegiance to the one who exists above, beyond, and inside of time.

Forgive me for telling you a story if I’ve told it before, but its effect on me has been too profound. I have several landmark moments in my journey of faith, but one of my earliest landmarks came at my lunch table during my freshman year of high school.

My best friend at the time, Mike Towner, who was well-respected in our school and well-liked by everyone, had invited me to come and sit next to him during lunch. I sat down with a paper sack, and Mike sat next to me with his Styrofoam tray of frozen pizza, and greasy fries. The other guys who sat around us immediately tore into their lunches, biting into sandwiches and chewing mouthfuls of sloppy joes. I did the same. 

But Mike folded his hands, put them under the table, bowed his head and prayed. And this was no quick bob of the head; no, Mike was down for a long time. And everyone else continued eating, acting as if this was a regular occurrence. 

Finally, Mike raised his head and ate his lunch. And I knew at that moment that I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be faithful, yes, and I wanted to stand up against the flow and patterns of culture. But I also wanted to be the kind of Christian who knows when to stop and when to go.

There are two kinds of people presented in Luke 10:38-42: Mary and Martha. May we learn to live like Mike, who lived like both.