Have you lost your balance in life? Perhaps you have a large and active family, and you’re dizzy from the frantic pace of life. Perhaps you’ve been deeply hurt by someone and you can’t get your composure back. It’s like trying to walk on a broken leg. Maybe you’ve lost a loved one and you just can’t get back on an even keel with half of your life missing. Perhaps your job is so demanding that even the most frenetic multi—tasking can’t get it all done and you’re spinning out of control. Or maybe you’ve just received news from the doctor that has sent you reeling and you can’t get your feet under you.
If the internet is any indication, millions of people have lost their balance. In fact, when I typed “balance in life“ into my computer, Google found 20 million articles on the subject of balance. One article about the physiology of balance helped me understand what we all need to do to regain our balance. Balance it turns out is a very complicated thing, involving our muscles, skin, joints, eyes, and ears. From all over our bodies, information races to our brain to keep us in balance. It’s hard to keep your balance if you have only one leg, or if you have a bum knee, or if you can’t see. But I want to focus on the greatest cause of losing your balance, and that’s your inner ear.
The human ear has three major parts. There’s the outer ear that begins with these flappy pieces of flesh and ends with the ear drum. That’s followed by the middle ear with those 3 little bones that Homer Simpson said look like a tiny nativity scene. Then comes the inner ear that is so essential to our balance. We often lose our balance because of a problem with our inner ear. We don’t know which direction we’re pointed, what direction we’re moving, or if we are turning or standing still because our inner ear isn’t functioning properly. That was surely the case with Martha in this little story in Luke 10:38—42.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Martha was a good woman, a prime example of Christian servanthood. It was Martha, says the story, who opened her home to Jesus and his 12 disciples. They were tired and hungry from their long trip. They had set out from Nazareth 120 miles north and were now just two miles from their destination in Jerusalem. And Martha, full of love and energy, began to prepare a meal for over a dozen people. She was a Type A personality, an ENTJ on the Meyer Briggs test, a home bound CEO—she took charge and got things done. Preparations had to be made, says the story, and Martha was going to make them. She was a good woman, the kind you want on a committee, in charge of a program, running a ministry, the captain of the team.
But she had lost her balance. The word Dr. Luke uses is “distracted“—which meant literally that she was being pulled in all directions as the same time. She didn’t know if she was coming or going. She was spinning so fast that she was coming to pieces. And the harder she worked, the more good she did, the more frustrated and angry she became. Her anger focused on her sister, Mary, who was just sitting there at Jesus feet listening to him as Martha worked herself into a lather. Martha thought that Mary had lost her balance. Yes, listening to Jesus was a good thing, but there was also work to be done. “I might be hyper, but Mary is a slacker, an irresponsible dreamer.“ When there’s work to do, you have to do it. Luke tells us that Martha had lost her balance, but Martha was sure it was Mary who had the balance problem.
There’s a sense in which the whole family had lost its balance—two sisters and a brother (by the way, where is he in the picture—out playing golf?), diametrically opposite personalities, totally different approaches to handling life’s responsibilities, more than a hint of sibling rivalry, the unspoken accusation that “you like Mary better than me.“ And where were Mom and Dad? The Bible specifically says that Martha had lost her balance, but it doesn’t take a psychologist or sociologist to see that the problem was larger than her.
Things aren’t any better in Christian families today, are they? I saw an ad the other day for a conference on “The Over—Scheduled Family,“ sponsored by 2 local mental health agencies. Between work and school and church and recreation and hobbies and friends and family we are distracted like Martha, pulled in all directions at the same time, coming to pieces, literally dis—integrating as we take care of things that simply have to be done. Nearly all of them are good things. I mean, we have to work and we have to go to school, and we have to do lots of things.
And on top of that, we want to expose our children to all the rich opportunities life has to offer, so we do music lessons, and dance rehearsals, and soccer practice, and basketball games, and enrichment classes, and boys and girls clubs like scouts, and church—and we want to savor the wonders of God’s creation, so we travel and go out to eat and attend concerts and play sports. We want to do good things for God’s kingdom so we take care of hurting people, like the Good Samaritan in the story just before this, which ended with Jesus saying, “Go and do likewise.“ Because we want to be good Christians, we do and we go and go and go. And that’s all good, unless we lose our balance in the process, and we hurt ourselves, our families, our church, our relationship with God.
A very bright and prophetic teenagers in my church pointed out to me that you can trace some of our imbalance to postmodernism, to the individualism and fragmentation that naturally result when there aren’t any meta—narratives shaping your life. Yes, she actually used that big word. She meant that according to postmodernism there is no great story that shapes history and your own life, so you have to make up your own little story by the choices you make and the activities you pursue. That’s why I said that we have lost our balance because we have an inner ear problem. Instead of listening deeply to the great story of God’s love in Jesus and finding our place in that story, we are spinning out our own stories by going in all directions at the same time. And we lose our balance.
That is surely what Jesus suggested to Martha. His words caress like a gentle touch on the brow of a fevered child. Full of grace, he says. “Martha, Martha.“ Not “Martha!“ like a slap in the face, but “Martha, Martha,“ a warm embrace after a very bad day. Not “snap out of it, woman!“ but a soothing personal invitation.
“Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things….“ It’s not that you are busy, but that you are worried and troubled, that you are anxious on the inside and agitated on the outside. It’s not bad to be busy. Jesus was very busy on his “Father’s business,“ that’s what he called it. Preaching and teaching and healing and casting out demons and training his disciples and eating with sinners and rebuking Pharisees and suffering at the hand of evil. No wonder he needed to take time off occasionally. But then he went right back to his “Father’s business“ and he invites us to join him on that business, and we should. But when we let the whirl shake our inner peace and our outward composure, we lose our balance. I’m not condemning the Martha’s of the world here. The world would be a mess without their active devotion to hard duty. But how can Martha keep from becoming a mess herself?
What’s the solution? How do we regain our balance? Does Jesus tell Martha to get a grip on the whirl, to manage her time better, to simplify her life by cutting something out of it? Forget about the linen table cloth and the 5 course meal, Martha. Just throw some burgers on the grill and get out the paper plates. In my internet research, I found a very helpful article for post—modern Martha’s who are trying to balance a personal and family life with the demands of the corporate world. It contained these six pieces of advice: 1)find a flexible employer, 2) ask for flexible hours, 3) form a work/life balance committee, 4) schedule “me“ time, 5) realize that a temporary lack of balance is acceptable, 6) recognize burn out. I suspect that we’ve all tried such adjustments to our lives in an effort to regain our balance, and found them helpful to varying degrees.
But Jesus points Martha in a different direction. “Only one thing is needed“ he said. “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken from her.“ What had Mary chosen? She was sitting at Jesus feet listening to what he said. That is what you need to do, Martha, to regain your balance in the midst of life’s busyness. You will not stop your spinning, you will not find your direction, and you will not regain your balance, until you sit down at Jesus feet, become still inside and outside, and listen with your inner ear to the words of Jesus.
That’s not so easy to do if you’re a Type A, an ENTJ, a heavily committed CEO chained to a Blackberry, whether that’s at home or in an office. So how do we begin? Not with a quick schedule adjustment. I’m sure not going to tell you where to cut things out of your schedule, how to reshuffle your priorities, how many hours to spend at work, which extra—curricular pursuits to drop. I mean, who of us knows the intricacies of another person’s life well enough to tell him or her how to change the details of their own story. No, we have to start where Martha did.
When she lost her balance, Martha did exactly the right thing. She came directly to Jesus with her complaints and her anger. In fact, the wording there indicates that she didn’t calmly walk up to Jesus. That’s what the English translation suggests, but the original Greek of that verse says that she jumped at him, sprang upon him, or fell on him. Of course! She had lost her balance, so she fell on Jesus with all her problems. I can see her flushed face beaded with perspiration, her hair a bit disheveled from the whirl, her hands shaking with outrage. Her voice is quivering with frustration and exhaustion when she says, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!“
As we lose our balance and fall on Jesus, he catches us in his grace. Softly and tenderly, Jesus calls our name and says, “Of course, I care. I care enough to help you regain your balance, which is more important than fixing the problem right in from of you. If you regain your balance, you can live amidst a tornado with peace and joy. If you don’t, it won’t matter how much that lazy co—worker does, or how much time off the boss gives you, or how you readjust the details of your life. You’ll still be anxious and troubled.“ And in his grace, Jesus shows us a better way to live, a better way to cope with the demands and difficulties that make our lives so frantic and frightening. He tells us the one thing we need to regain our balance.
“Mary has chosen what is better.“ And by the grace of Jesus, we can too. Jesus invites us to take back control of our own lives by choosing a better way to live. No, it’s not a choice about which activity we’ll stop, but about which story we will listen to and live—the little ones we are making up or the great one Jesus lived, the stories of our own success or the story of Jesus’ saving work for us. I’m convinced that’s what Jesus was talking to Mary about as she sat at his feet. Our Scripture reading ties us into that story when it says, “as Jesus and his disciples were on their way.“ In Luke 9:51 we are told that Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem and his imminent death, resurrection and eventual return to heaven. Now he is on his way, just two miles away from his eternal destiny. That’s what Jesus was talking about—his own story, the story of Almighty God who became the suffering Messiah to bring the Kingdom of God in which the Mary’s and Martha’s of the world will find exciting and peaceful life as they follow Jesus.
Across the years, Jesus calls us by name, softly and tenderly, and invites us to make a choice for a better way of living, living that is at once busy and balanced, both productive and deeply peaceful. Is your personal life unbalanced? Is your family life unbalanced? Before you do anything else, Jesus invites you to listen to him. Of course, you won’t usually hear him as Mary did, directly and with your physical ear. So you’ll have to listen to him as he speaks in the Bible. Listen to sermons. Listen in church. Listen to the Spirit. Listen with your inner ear to the great story of Jesus and his love, in which you are as important and beloved a character as Mary or Martha. Do the one thing that is needed to regain your balance. Sit down by yourself. Sit down with your family. Do it daily if you can. Do it weekly at least. Do it especially when you don’t have the time to listen because you are so busy. Sit down and listen to Jesus.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, we’re grateful for the Mary’s and the Martha’s of the world—the doers, the thinkers, those who get lathered up, and those who listen. And we’re grateful for your love for both. We pray that you’ll help us to become balanced, whether we’re a doer or a thinker, so that we may find life right on center with you. We pray that you’ll help us to hear your still small voice as we read scripture, or listen to sermons, or go to church, or listen to our friends or family. Lord, help us to listen carefully with the inner ear of our heart and find that our life is more balanced, we’re happier and you are more pleased with us. In the name of Jesus we pray this, Amen.
Stan Mast
Stan Mast has been the Minister of Preaching at the LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church in downtown Grand Rapids, MI for the last 18 years. He graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1971 and has served four churches in the West and Midwest regions of the United States. He also served a 3 year stint as Coordinator of Field Education at Calvin Seminary. He has earned a BA degree from Calvin College and a Bachelor of Divinity and a Master of Theology from Calvin and a Doctor of Ministry from Denver Seminary. He is happily married to Sharon, a special education teacher, and they have two sons and four grandchildren. Stan is a voracious reader and works out regularly. He also calls himself a car nut and an “avid, but average” golfer.
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