“Martha, Martha”

“Both these women were disciples, but Mary assumed the position of a disciple, a humble place…

Martha honor Jesus as a guest, Mary honored Jesus as a teacher…

Martha was “distracted…” this gives us a hint into Martha’s heart and Jesus’ response… in the natural, this is not illegitimate… but she was missing the moment…

I think we’ve all been a Martha at times…. We can become so consumed with the practical that we missed the moment, that we miss His presence…

There is not a real tension between being and doing here… Being a disciple and doing the work of a disciple both matter… these are not opposing ideas…

You cannot be without doing…

• “God is what He does; God does what He is.”

• God is good because He does good… God is love because He loves… God is merciful because He acts in a merciful way…

“All that is good in us, is a product of what God does in us.”

We need to ask a question, is it possible to be loving without acting lovingly… We cannot be loving without doing love…

We cannot be who God wants us to be, we cannot be transformed as God has called us to be, without active obedience to His voice… God is the one who changes our hearts, but our part in that process is listening to Him…

This is not earning Salvation, or works righteousness… we are saved through faith alone, but that faith does transforms us… John’s call was too “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” … Paul speaks of the fruit of the Spirit… James calls us to be “doers of the word”…

The danger in separating our “being” and “doing” is that it can become an easy excuse for not living to the standard that got us called us to… we can be tempted to not look at our doing as part of our faith… we can settle into lives of inaction and ignore His voice…

Being and doing are codependent…

In sitting at Jesus’ feet, Mary was very much being and doing… she was present and doing the thing God wanted her to do, listening to Him…

Martha hadn’t fully embraced her calling and identity as a disciple of Jesus Christ… this was an invitation by Jesus to join Mary at His feet…

The admonishment to Martha was that; one thing in the middle of a world filled with troubles and fears is needed, actively abiding and sitting at the feet Jesus…

God’s presence isn’t just found in our quite times with God, but in our going, our doing… In physical ministry… in our ministry to “the least of these…”

If we want to live a life of being, and doing, we need to find ourselves in the posture of Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus… Vital to discipleship is presence…

We must devote ourselves to live our lives at the feet of Jesus… that is the great lesson of this moment… and in the 1st century context God chose two women to teach us this lesson…”

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