Distracted Christians

Luke 10:38-42 (Verse 42) Matthew 6:32-33; Matthew 6:19-21, 24 (Treasures in Heaven)

This brief text underlines two main points: first, that Jesus looks to both men and women to be dedicated disciples; Second, that in our physical, societal lives our goals and priorities are more easily earthly, the heavenly goals are more difficult and ethereal. This is part of our fallen human nature and it’s focus that’s why the Gospels present such episodes our text where earthly practiced good duties are considered important but we should also include and make room for the spiritual and as difficult as it may be for us fallen humans, Christ’s Kingdom and calling should be prioritized not only by full-time ministers, but for every believer and as I emphasized many times before, God promises to provide needed help( Matthew 6:32-33; Luke 11:3) This brief episode in Mary and Martha’s (Lazarus sisters), lives demonstrates that what can distract us from our expected devotion to Christ, His calling and Kingdom are good, practical earthly things, in this case a cultural expectations for honorable women to prepare a feast for an honored rabbi; what would be wrong with this? But, this text interprets this good thing being done as a distraction(verse 40) in contrast to Mary’s adoration of Jesus “... (sitting at the Lord’s feet listening to what He said(His word)? While Martha was covering all the basis of societal, cultural expectations for such an event Mary seemed to not be doing her part for the honored guest and this bothered Martha. And she demanded that He command Martha to “help me”. Jesus' response to Martha is culturally counter intuitive in that society. Martha Martha… you are worried about many good things but compared to them there are more important things, summarized as only “a few or even one.” Mary has come up short for the expected societal demand, but has chosen what is better and even if the soup prepared gets cold, her taking time to worship Jesus will be accepted. This does not mean that Martha, Mary don’t also have good earthly duties beyond hospitality and even more important societal responsibilities to family, careers, comfort, upward mobility, but these come also because they are not easily detectable distractions as to our calling from Christ. While we strive to not commit clear heinous sins that are obvious to all, there exist other demons behind the so-called respectable actions that take up too much of our time and energies and they then become a distraction to our relationship with God and our service to Him. Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4, Luke 4) included some good practical earthly suggestions for a fasting, starving Jesus: “Jesus turn the stones to bread, for you are physically hungry, this would be a good thing, even a good thing to do, but Jesus said No! (“It is written, humans and even Jesus, shall not live on bread alone (Luke 4:4).” It would have been a good thing but Jesus taking this road would have led to a distraction from His mission. Other stories of women ministry to Jesus make similar points: first, a sinful woman anoints Jesus feet with tears, even pouring expensive perfume on them in the supper at the Pharisee’s house. Jesus becomes a display of repentance but for the Pharisee, this was a distraction from holiness and proof that Jesus may not be a true prophet. After all and possibly a waste of something very expensive. Second, possibly the same event in Mark 14:3-9 Jesus becomes was rebuked by those present as a waste of a years wages that could have been sold and given to the poor; but to Jesus it was a “beautiful thing she did to prepare for His burial,” as out of worship, their seeming reasonableness in this situation became a distraction. Judas Iscariot was one of the critics who shortly after the betrayal of Jesus (verses 10-11). Third, a similar strong reprisal in Matthew 26:6-13 Jesus' indignant audience spiritually could not see beyond their legalistic no