Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42
We have a glut of information. Much of it is worth knowing, but much of it isn’t. A lot of it is true, but a lot of it isn’t. A lot of it is helpful, but a lot of it isn’t.
Lots of people want to tell us how to think and what to believe. We all have to be discerning.
Sometimes we find someone who speaks such truth to us that we listen to or read every word they say. Frederick Buechner is such a person to me. Whenever I read his words, I find myself thinking either “That’s true” or “Oh I hope that’s true.” It’s great to have someone like that in your life.
Think about the opportunity Mary and Martha have. Jesus is in their house. They know that Jesus is a great teacher. They may suspect—or they may not—that he is more than that.
(I wonder—if you were in his presence, and if your heart were really open, did you just know there was something about him?)
Mary and Martha knew Jesus personally. They knew him in the flesh.
We don’t have that privilege.
We know more about Jesus than Mary and Martha knew when Jesus came to their house. The knew he was a great teacher. They knew there was something special about him.
But they didn’t know what Paul tells us about Jesus in Colossians. We know that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). We know that “in [Jesus] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:19).
We know that Jesus reveals God to us. We know that in God’s grace, God sent God’s Son so we could look at Jesus and know what God is like. We know that in God’s grace, God sent God’s Son so we could listen to Jesus and know what God says.
Paul also said what he wanted for the Colossians, and we want those same things for ourselves and for each other. We want to be “holy and blameless and irreproachable before [Christ]” (Col 1:22). We want to become “mature in Christ” (Col 1:28). We want to become all that Christ died to enable us to become.
How do we do that? We do it by doing what Mary did—by listening to Jesus.
Mary was able to literally sit in front of Jesus and listen to him. We can’t do that.
But we can sit with our Gospels in front of us. We can sit (or stand or kneel) in prayer. We can listen to the Spirit of God that is with us to help us understand what Jesus wants us to know and to do. We can pay attention to our sisters and brothers in Christ who bear faithful witness to who Jesus is.
We can do those things, and we should. It is a shame and a waste not to take advantage of the opportunities we have to listen to and learn from Jesus.
But we don’t listen and learn for the sake of listening and learning. We listen to and learn from Jesus so we can live as Jesus wants us to live.
Jesus said that Mary had, by listening to him, chosen the one thing that was necessary, while Martha let herself be distracted by the busyness of making dinner for Jesus.
This doesn’t mean that we should all just sit around listening to and learning from Jesus and not give any attention to service. Indeed, right before this episode, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, which is all about offering loving service to someone in need.
When someone needs help, we help. When someone needs a hand, we offer one. When someone is hurting, we comfort them.
Listening to and learning from Jesus will lead us to serve. We will also grow more and more into people who serve for service’s sake and who love for love’s sake. Loving service will come less out of an effort to be who we should be and more and more out of who are becoming as we listen to and learn from Jesus.
As we grow in our knowledge of Jesus, we will become more merciful, more gracious, and more service oriented. We will become more loving, and our ever-growing love will lead us to give ourselves away for others’ sake, for love’s sake, and for Christ’s sake.
When we are trying to decide what to think, what to say, or what to do, we should think about what Jesus would think, say, and do about it.
When a legislative body is debating a law, an important question is, “Does it pass constitutional muster?” Will it hold up in light of the Constitution?
When we are trying to decide if we should think, talk, or act in a certain way, we should ask, “Does it pass Jesus muster?” Will it hold up in the light of Jesus?
We should ask, “Does it pass the test of leading us to love, to show mercy, to offer grace, and—to serve?” Yes, listening to Jesus and learning from Jesus leads us to live a life of service. Listening as Mary did leads us to serve as Martha did—but without the pressure and worry.
The Gospel writers and editors arranged their material on purpose. Notice that Luke tells the story of the Good Samaritan, then the story of Mary and Martha, and then Jesus’ teachings on prayer. This literary structure offers us a good discipleship structure. We help as the Samaritan did. We pray as Jesus taught us to. But the Mary and Martha story is in the middle. Listening to and learning from Jesus is the centerpiece of discipleship.
How do we listen to Jesus? We read the Gospels. We pay close attention to what he did and said. We read the entire Bible in light of Jesus. We deal with issues and draw conclusions in light of Jesus. We deal with people in light of Jesus. We approach life in light of Jesus.
We listen to what Jesus says.
We learn from who Jesus is.
We live as Jesus wants us to live, always growing in mercy, grace, and service—always growing in love.
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