8. What are you worried about?

8.         What are you worried about?

But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried  and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better  part, which will not be taken away from her."  Luke 10:41,42

            The Bible is one of those rare books where people don’t usually read it from cover to cover.  Very often they will just pick it up and start anywhere.  In general, it’s a good idea to have an understanding of the context in which a passage occurs at least to ensure that we are seeing all that the writer might be trying to say in any particular section of his writing.

In the middle of the chapter in Luke’s gospel prior to the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to pray, a lawyer, an expert in matters of religious law, who would be expected to have knowledge of the ways of God and man, asked Jesus what he would have to do to inherit eternal life.[1]  So Jesus asked him what he understood the law to say.  The man answered: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all  your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as  yourself.”  Jesus answered:  “You’re right.  Now go and do it.” 

As a good lawyer, he wanted clarification.  He wanted to be sure he knew exactly what he was getting himself in for, so he asked:  “So just who is my neighbor?”  And then Jesus told him the very familiar story of the Good Samaritan. 

A man is beaten and robbed and left for dead.  Two very religious people pass by but don’t stop to help.  Both of them could possibly claim that by helping a man so injured they might become religiously defiled through contact with blood or perhaps become late for their religious duties.  Then a Samaritan passes by, who also has places to go and things to do.  Now the man who was mugged was Jewish, and the Jews and the Samaritans were two peoples that did not have dealings with each other.  Under normal circumstances they wouldn’t even speak with each other.[2] 

This Samaritan not only stopped, he bound up the man’s wounds, put him on his own donkey, and took him to a place where the man could heal.  He even gave the attendant two days’ wages to look after him and offered to give whatever else was needed when he came back. 

So Jesus asked the lawyer which of the three was neighbor to the man who was in need.  The lawyer replied: “The man who showed mercy.”  And then Jesus told him, “Now you go and do likewise.”

So reading this, we see that God wants people to help others and do things for them.  But then immediately after this, Luke tells of what happened when Jesus came visiting the house of Mary and Martha.[3]    Mary sits in the living room with Jesus, just talking with Him, listening to Him speak mostly, while Martha is busy in the kitchen making food and setting the table by herself.  This upsets Martha.  Mary should be helping her.  So she goes in to see Jesus and asks Him: “Doesn’t it bother you that I am doing all the work myself and Mary is just sitting here?  Why don’t you tell her to give me a hand?”    Jesus must have smiled at her when he answered: ”Martha, Martha.  You are concerned and distracted with so many things.  One thing is necessary.  Mary has chosen the good part, and no one can take that away from her.”

People who want to please God are always wondering just what it is that God wants from them.  There is a passage in the Old Testament that is often quoted in this context, where it says: “What does God require of you, but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”[4]

And like the lawyer, I think most of us would like a little more detail here.  What exactly is doing justice?  Just how far do you have to go to do that?  Is it enough to be honest in your everyday doings, or do you have to involve yourself in international politics and protest the various injustices that occur throughout the world?  Is loving mercy just being open to the needs of those you come in contact with, or do you need to actively look for those in need?  And walking humbly with God?  Where does faith come in?  And love?   Just what does this mean?

In the incident prompting the story of the Good Samaritan, a man wants to know how he might please God enough to warrant going to heaven.  He is told to love God and his neighbor, but soon finds that love is not just some warm,  fuzzy feeling a person feels inside for something or someone else, but it involves a serious commitment to meeting the needs of someone in need.

But then this story is followed immediately by one about a woman who is so busy trying to take care of a guest that she fails to enjoy the company of that guest.  Not only that, but this guest is the Son of God.  And what can we do for the Son of God?  It seems the best thing is to just sit at His feet and listen to Him.  Now that doesn’t mean that there doesn’t come a time when He says, “Now get up and do the things I have told you.” 

But it draws a sharp contrast to what we have just seen.  Human beings like things to be simple, and if not simple, at least clear.  Ambiguity can be very unsettling.  So when we hear a command to “Go and do likewise,” like the lawyer heard from Jesus, we like to think we have a handle on this and we go involve ourselves in tasks that do good for other people.  Even becoming a servant.  And there are certainly enough passages in the Gospels about doing that.[5]

So Martha, the task-oriented, goal-oriented type, finds herself shutting herself off from Jesus through her busyness and failing to nurture her relationship with God.

Now we can say that Luke tells the story of the disciples asking Jesus how to pray next because that is what happened next.  But when you realize all that happened in the life of Jesus and what Luke selected, you realize there is probably some connection here.  And the connection would be with the question of just what it is that God wants from people.  So, yes, they want to know how to pray to see God’s help on their behalf, but they also want to know how it is that their prayers might be pleasing to God.  How should they/we approach God?  Just where do they/we stand with Him?   Aren’t daily prayers part of the religious duties of those who follow and worship God?

Martha was concerned about serving Jesus.  We probably wouldn’t write that down as a problem with anxiety, but the word used merimna/w  (mer-im-nah’-oh) is the common Biblical word for anxiety, and worry, and concern, the things that preoccupy our minds that are more a source of irritation than of, say, productive work.  Once we start down the path of anxiety and concern, we don’t just stop because everything is okay now.  Everything is never okay.  There is always something new or something more that gnaws at our inner peace. 

When Jesus chided Martha for being concerned and troubled about so many things, it seems clear that it was a lot more than just the preparation of the meal for Jesus.  This wasn’t the first time that Martha complained about Mary.  Hopefully it would have been the last, but people don’t usually change that quickly, even when the Son of God draws something to their attention.

This subject of anxiety occurs again in the very next chapter of Luke.  It’s almost like bookends or the bread of the sandwich, with this prayer in the middle offering another way to deal with life.  Martha is worried about preparations for the Son of God, showing love to her neighbor and misses the most important thing. 

The disciples want to know how to pray, so they can increase their intimacy with and knowledge of God.  They want to be on their best terms with Him. 

Then in chapter 12 Jesus speaks extensively about merimna/w  (mer-im-nah’-oh) like He is trying to kill this thing off once and for all.  The problem that He addressed here is not too different from that of Martha’s. 

We have a visible world and an invisible world.  In the visible world we are able to measure and count and compare things.  We can tell when we are gaining or when we are losing, when we have more than before or less.  And we can count how many unfortunate people we helped and how much we gave to them.  We can count how many good things we did and see how much change we were able to make in the world. 

The problem, of course, is that the more we look at the visible world, the more that is all we see.  How do you measure your spiritual growth?  How do you know if you are becoming more loving or more patient or just a better person all around?  When you spend time with God, there is no visible, tangible chart where you can measure your progress. 

            The Lord’s Prayer stands in contrast to the anxiety and concerns that so easily consume us.  We have needs, we have wants.  We need assurance, we need reassurance.  Life can be scary; life can be very scary..  Sometimes things can come that can totally throw you for a loss.  If, like Martha (and I don’t want to be too hard on her), we are too preoccupied with the “things” of life, the things we do, the things we have, the things we are supposed to do, we can lose sight of the things that are invisible, the things that are eternal, the things that really are real, in a way that we can’t appreciate right now, but one day we will.

            People worry about things that they regard as important and that they think they might easily lose.  They want and need to know what God thinks about these things and what God will do about them.  If these are really unimportant, we need to be convinced of that.  And if they are important, we will spend a lot of our waking time and energy trying to take care of those things, unless . . . .

            Unless God will somehow meet those needs.  The Lord’s Prayer gives us insight into what God thinks, about us and about the things of this life.  It tells us what we can expect from God.  If we don’t know what to expect from God, then we are on our own.  And anxiety will reign 

            So we learn how to pray.  We pray first for God to be glorified and His will to be done on the earth.  And we ask God to meet our needs and protect us from evil.  And what else is there?  And the primary way these things seem to be done is through prayer.  It is our connection with God that is the most important part of all this.

            Yes, we go to work to get the things we need, but it is our prayer to our Father in heaven that secures the results that we want.  We are concerned about the bad things that can happen to us, but it is our prayer to our Father in heaven that gives us the protection that we need, hence the freedom from anxiety and care.

            The lawyer wanted clarification about what it is that God wants from us.  He got some as regarding what loving his neighbor meant, but what about loving God, the first commandment of the law?  Martha was trying hard to please Jesus, but she missed the most important part of the relationship with Him.

            The lawyer, Martha, and the crowd of people that Jesus addressed in chapter 12 all experienced some degree of anxiety, about life and about how God and they were connected.   The prayer here addresses much of their concerns. 

            The lawyer’s original question was literally, “Teacher, what thing having done I will inherit eternal life?”[6]   His question may have been asked sincerely or merely academically.  But the focus was on eternal life rather than on God.  It could be that his duty to God was entirely out of self-interest, as in, “If this is what I must do to get to heaven, alright, I can do that..”  Or it could be asking just what is it that God wants from us.

            The answer was not entirely encouraging or satisfactory, because it was so open-ended.  He wanted something that he could do and finish.   Loving God can be a bit difficult to measure in itself.  How do you know how much you love God?  Is it a feeling?

            But loving your neighbor, as in showing mercy to him, gives the requirement something tangible, but there are millions of people out there, and they all have needs.  I can imagine the lawyer thinking, “Okay, the man in the parable gave the innkeeper two days wages.  If I give that, will that be enough?  The parable didn’t say how the Samaritan followed up after that.   Is my obligation over then?”

            Martha was also concerned about what she can do for others.  But it also shows how activity, even good activity, can consume us and actually keep us from our larger responsibilities.  The command that the lawyer was thinking about said to love God and our neighbor.  The lawyer’s concern was to get eternal life.  I can imagine him doing all kinds of things in imitation of that good Samaritan, but the question still remains: is he loving his neighbor, or is he just trying to earn eternal life?  Is he loving God, or is he trying to get to heaven? 

            So Martha was consumed with her activities.  I am sure she loved Jesus.  This isn’t the only time that Jesus came to their house.[7]  But she was letting her chores get in the way of showing her love for Him.  She probably thought her work was an expression of that love, but Jesus’ response showed that her motives were far more complex.   She wanted to have the best dinner, the best dessert.  She wanted the table set just right, the best dishes.  Mary, on the other hand, was too engrossed in just enjoying Jesus’ presence.  She just wanted to be with Him and to listen to Him. 

            Mary saw her relationship as of loving dependence.  Just what is that we can do for God anyway?  What can He possibly need from us?  I think that what can confuse us as human beings is that we were children and now we are adults.  Our relationship with our parents, our fathers, has changed.  We are no longer little children who need our parents to make decisions for us and to provide for our every need.  We like to see ourselves as independent, resourceful, and capable. 

            We are always children of our parents, but the relationship has changed when we reached adulthood.   We no longer are always looking for things from them.  We ask for fewer and fewer things from them.  And we can do things of more value than children.  Or at least we would think so. 

            We come to this Lord’s Prayer, and we call God our Father.  We are not trying to earn eternal life and God’s favor.  We already have it.  Instead of addressing all the things that we are supposed to do for God, Jesus’ prayer shows that the relationship is pretty one-sided in many ways. 

We are dependent on God for all our needs and His protection.  God’s work seems to be done more by our prayers than by our actions.  We are praying for His Kingdom to come and for His will to be done on earth, as it is in  heaven.  I am sure we can help in the process, but it is not our efforts that will make the difference so much as our prayers.

            Our anxieties and worries all show us the deficiencies of our relationship with God.  The lawyer wanted eternal life, but can he love God?  Will he keep thinking of whatever he thinks about God as a means to an end rather than the end itself?  If he loves God to get something from God, is it really love in the first place?

            Martha no doubt thought that, if she didn’t put all this great effort into being a good hostess, Jesus would have somehow thought less of her.  What was she so afraid of?  What was driving her to such frenetic activity that she couldn’t sit at Jesus’ feet like her sister?

            What are you worried about?  Everything we have is from the hand of God.  We must just receive it with thanksgiving.  Lord, teach us to pray.