3. “Slowing and Attending to Jesus” (Luke 10)

We are in week 3 of our series “Habits for Love.”  A fundamental conviction of this series is that if we are going to grow in the way of love; of loving God and dwelling in God’s love, and of truly loving others, it’s not enough to just get the right ideas in our heads. We must practice in our bodies, in our schedules and habits the way of Jesus. This fall we are focusing on this important theme in the Bible of rest. As we saw two weeks ago in Genesis 1 & 2, the goal of our lives is rest and rejoicing in God who is king, enjoying and savoring him. We’ve been in this phase the last two weeks of what we’ve called “Detox”, where we’ve suggested and invited you to consider various practical ways you might slow down and obstain from certain habits of busyness, entertainment, and speed, to create some space. And I’m curious, what have you noticed? How has this gone for you? One of my goals has been seeking to live into wholeness, and so we have put some limits on things like TV time. As we’ve sought to resist the temptation to just grab the phone or seek after some kind of distraction, I have been trying to be more present toward God and toward others. This past week, at Geoff’s encouragement, I took the challenge to change my phone screen to gray scale.  Anyone else tried it? Maybe I’ll go back to color someday, but man, one of the things I love is how boring my phone is. I used to get on my phone to check and email or something and, “Oooooh, look at the color, look at that bright email advertising some car or piece of clothing”, but now it’s pretty drab and boring. As I continue to think about what we’re doing so much of this is about attention. 

We’ve seen this before and talked about it before, worship is about attention. If you’re going to worship and enjoy God, you have to focus your attention on who God is, what God has done, and what God has said.  Just like if you’re going to really get to know and go deeper in a relationship with your friend, with your child, with your spouse, you have to give your attention. You can’t be distracted. Don’t try and multitask on a date. You have to listen. You have to slow down. You have to look in the person’s eyes. You have to sit and just be with them. 

The passage we just read is very much about attention.  It is about slowing down and attending to Jesus. It’s about turning from distraction, from a busy, anxious life of feeling pulled apart and stressed and turning toward Jesus, to focus our attention on HIm. This passage is about what it means to receive Jesus and be his disciple. To learn from him, to focus your life and attention to him, to be transformed as you find the healing and fullness and wholeness of life that comes through receiving Jesus and being his disciple. This is a passage that contrasts one way of life with another way of life. The way of Martha and the way of Mary. 

There’s probably lots we could observe in this account, but I want us to consider three contrasts that I believe will be helpful to help us see what receiving and being a disciple of Jesus looks like.

These three areas of contrasts are as follows: (1) How we relate to Cultural Values; (2) How we relate to ourselves; and (3) where we give our attention.

Relating to Cultural Values

We read in Luke 10:

Luke 10:38, “Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.”

That phrase “Welcomed him into her house” is important.  It’s one word in Greek and it refers to the very important practice, both biblically and culturally of hospitality.  It shows up a few times in the New Testament, like when Zacchaeus the tax collector later in Luke 19 is offered friendship and grace by Jesus. Zacchaeus responds by “welcoming Jesus into his house.” James, in chapter two of his letter uses this term to speak of what Rahab did in the story of Joshua in the Old Testament.  Rahab was a prostitute who lived in the city of Jericho.  She showed hospitality and welcome to the Israelite spies and she and her family were saved because of it. So, this is a big deal. So far so good. But in v. 39 and 40 we see a contrast between the way of Martha and the way of Mary.

^“39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”

There are few things more important in the first century Jewish world than hospitality. What Martha is doing is completely normal and, in her culture, exactly what she should be doing. Everyone knows this. What Mary is doing is weird. In fact, it’s more than weird, it’s inappropriate. In addition to the extreme importance of hospitality there were very specific ideas about gender roles and what spaces were appropriate for whether you were a man or a woman. Martha is nailing it. 

Mary is not only not nailing it… she is “sitting at the Lord’s feet.” Sitting at the feet is the posture of a disciple, a distinctly male role in first century culture. In Acts 22, Paul talks about how previously in his life he was a disciple of Gamaliel, a famous Rabbi, and he speaks that he was educated “at his feet.”  You can see this theme of the “Lordship” of Jesus in this passage, where three times in three verses starting in v. 39, Jesus is referred to as “Lord.”  And one of the contrasts we see between the way of Martha and the way of Mary is that with Mary the values of her culture have been relativized and transformed by the Lordship of Jesus. Hospitality is good.  Service is Good.  But there is a greater good – practicing discipleship.  Slowing down and attending to Jesus. 

If we were to think of our own culture, there are many things we could list. Certainly, in the Western Suburbs we value career advancement, getting ahead, achieving. That can be a good thing, but it must be relativized and put in proper place under the Lordship of Jesus. In the Western Suburbs we value things that help our kids grow and experience achievement and success. That too can be great.  But what happens when the career and the activities so fill up our life that we don’t have time for Jesus.? What happens when the games are scheduled on Sunday or when the ACT/SAT study sessions are scheduled on Sunday morning? What happens when life becomes so busy we don’t have time for community and relationship with the church?  What happens when we don’t have time to sit at Jesus’ feet and learn from him?  What happens when our lives are crowded out of giving our attention to Jesus? 

In our culture, like the first century, there will be patterns to the life of someone attending to Jesus that will be flat out weird and perhaps even offensive. Being busy is a cultural value.  We feel good about being busy. We probably feel a bit of shame if our life is simple and slow. No one brags about how they got 10 hours of sleep last night. But how many times, like a badge of honor have you said or heard someone else say some version of, “Oh man, life is crazy busy, I’m going on like 5 hours sleep.”  It feels like we’re doing something important. But what happens if we lose the ability to slow down and give our attention to Jesus? Is there anything you could gain by being busy that would be worth losing your ability to give your attention to Jesus? Yes Martha, serving others is important, hospitality is important. In fact, it’s a significant theme in the gospel of Luke. But even this is relativized by the supreme importance of sitting at the feet of Jesus, giving your attention to him. 

How We Relate to Ourselves

Martha is pre-occupied with herself. This is the somewhat comical part of this episode  because if Martha was really being a good host, seeking to be hospitable, everything would be about the guest.  And yet, if you look at what she says to Jesus, everything is still very much about Martha.  Three times we hear “me” language: ^“40And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” While she calls Jesus “Lord” she’s not really treated him much like her Lord, but really wanting him to do what she wants.  Martha is very caught up in Martha.  Mary is very caught up in Jesus. It is easy to put ourselves at the center of our stories.  And in our modern world filled with digital devices this is only reinforced tenfold.  When our experience digitally is all about me; news feeds curated to my preferences and affirming what I already think, selfies I post after taking fifty-seven and picking the one where my smile is just right, the algorithms and adds generated by my clicking, search history, and likes that keeps putting just what I want in front of me… The constant ability to distract or entertain myself with whatever I want. How will I not basically think that I’m at the center? 

One of the challenges of all this is its pre-cognitive. It’s not even much of an intellectual argument we must wrestle with. Before I even think about it, the way life is just feels like I’m the most important person, and what I believe, think, and feel is just obviously right. This is one reason why what we are doing right now is incredibly important.  Each week when we gather together for worship, we have the opportunity to practice together. By giving our attention to Jesus, focusing our lives, seeing and interpreting our stories through who Jesus is, what he has done. By listening to him together. Each week when we come together, as one writer puts it so well, we are “graciously displaced”[1] from being the center of our story.  The Holy Spirit lifts our eyes off ourselves to look to Jesus as we are incorporated into the story of God. 

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like going to church makes much difference. This could be true for all sorts of people in all sorts of situations. There are always other things you could be doing on a Sunday morning.  If you’re a parent, not only is there the temptation of things competing with Sunday, but then there’s the actual church experience. There’s no way I’m as entertaining right now as a million other things you could be doing. There’s no way this is as exciting and immediately gratifying as so many activities one could do. And at times I’m sure parents, you feel (and kids, you may feel too), “Am I even getting anything out of this?” 

At times the American church has erred greatly by responding to this sort of thing by trying to be more entertaining: pastor as stand-up comedian, more excitement, make the worship experience flashy. But what if what we really need wasn’t entertainment, or excitement, or anything like that, but we needed to learn to slow down and focus on Jesus.  What if church being a bit more boring than other things you could do was actually a feature and not a bug?  That it was actually part of the point to slow us down and turn us away from ourselves? What if learning how to slow down and listen and participate in worship on Sunday: singing, praying together, learning how to hear sermons, coming forward and receiving the bread and wine; what if these practices, sometimes boring, sort of repetitive, and rather ordinary things were exactly what we needed to learn to give our attention to Jesus? Wouldn’t we expect this to be hard? Wouldn’t we expect this to be contested?

This week I asked my kids, “is it sometimes hard to pay attention in church? What helps?”

The response I got was really helpful. “It helps if we’ve looked at the sermon text before Sunday when we’re trying to listen.” Great! We can do that. You can do that. Go on Trinity’s website and click on the “worship with us” link. You’ll find a PDF of the service. What if you, or if you have kids, you and your kids, started the practice of reading and briefly discussing the text on Friday or Saturday night that was to be preached on Sunday? What if you looked at the songs and made a little playlist for your drive to church? What if on Sunday afternoon or evening you decided to adopt the practice of talking to someone else about the service? If you’re a parent you might have a time as a family where everyone shares one thing they remembered from the service or the sermon: one verse, one idea, one application for our lives…  Everyone shared one thing. Then pray together about those things. In a world of “me, me, me” we need to be “graciously displaced” from the center of our stories to be caught up in the wonder of Jesus. 

As we turn to this last area of contrast, this is really the most important because this is the difference that makes all the difference.  It’s why Mary relates differently to her culture, what they valued.  It’s why Mary relates differently to herself. 

The Focus of Your Attention

 While Mary was listening to Jesus’ teaching, we read in v. 40 “But Martha was distracted with much serving….” The word “distracted” is a word that means “to be pulled away or dragged away.”  Jesus when he speaks to Martha in v. 41 tells us more of what’s going on. He says, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.”   As one writer on this passage puts it, “Martha is engaged in anxious, agitated practices, behavior that contrasts sharply with the [way of life] of a disciple.”[2] It’s an interesting question to ask – why?  Why do we choose busyness and distraction? 

I was listening recently to a fascinating conversation about Blaise Pascale – the 17^th century French Philosopher who was also a scientist, and a mathematician.  Just a brilliant man. In his famous work, the Pensées, he writes, “The only thing that consoles us from our misery is diversion, and yet it is the greatest of our miseries.”

“The only thing that consoles us from our misery is diversion.” What I understand him to mean is that the hard things of life, the complex and difficult questions of life, of death, who is God, what am I here for, does my life have meaning or purpose, who am I, these questions that intrude into our lives. We struggle to want to deal with these.  We struggle to want to deal with hard things in our lives, the things that make us feel anxious, the things that make us feel sad or that trouble us, the broken parts of our lives. These hard realities and intruding questions feel like too much, and so we choose diversion, which is to say distraction. We choose to be distracted so we don’t have to deal with the hard things that eat away at us. And yet, the sad reality is that because we won’t deal with them, distracting ourselves is our greatest misery. Because, in the end, it only contributes to ongoing misery and lack of real depth and experiencing true rest and true joy. 

Martha is anxious and troubled by many things. She is busy and she is distracted. This is fascinating, because if you dig more into Luke’s gospel, what we see in Martha and Mary has already been spoken of.  In Luke 8, Jesus tells the parable of the Sower. You remember that one? There’s a farmer who goes out to sow seeds and the seed falls on different soils. Jesus tells us the whole thing is about hearing the word, and whether someone is hearing Jesus’ word or not really hearing it.  And that’s the exact phrase that describes what Mary is doing. In verse 39, she is sitting at Jesus’ feet and literally it says, “she was hearing his word.” And Martha is an example of that third soil: the one who hears Jesus’ word, but the anxieties of life (same word in Luke 8:14 as describing what Jesus diagnoses of Martha in v. 41), the cares and troubles and anxieties of life keep her from really hearing… Which is to say, keep her from the fruitfulness, and fullness, and wholeness, and healing that comes from taking in the message of the kingdom, of who Jesus is, and what he’s come to do.  Martha is anxious and troubled and so she is distracted, pulled away from attending to the one who, if she would just sit at his feet, could heal her, help her, and transform her. This is what Mary has found in Jesus. Mary is focused on Jesus, on receiving him, listening to him, taking in the message of the kingdom.

In his book, “Stolen Focus,” author Johan Hari tells the story of a man named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian American Psychologist. Mihaly grew up during World War Two in Europe. He experienced how few people were able to cope with the tragedies from their experiences during the war, and all of this made him very interested in understanding “what makes for a life worth living?” He eventually comes to the US to study psychology and he made a discovery of this thing he called “Flow States.” You know what this is if you’ve ever had that experience where you’re so deeply enmeshed in a project, or some activity you’re doing, or some book or thing you’re studying, that you lose track of time and you might forget to eat. All your attention is all caught up in the beauty and joy of this thing you’re doing or focusing on…

Mihaly had an older brother named Moritz, and the end of WW2 Moritz was take into a Stalinist concentration camp in Russia, the sort of place where people are never heard from again.  But after many years of silence, he reappeared. Late in life, when Moritz was in his 80’s he was reunited with his brother. Hari writes in the book about this saying,“Moritz’s ability to find flow, had been cut off in the most brutal ways, but Mihaly discovered that very late in his life his brother had been able for the first time to pursue something he always loved.  He was fascinated by crystals.  He began to collect these sparkling rocks and he gathered examples from every continent.  He went to meet dealers, he attended conventions, he read magazines about them. When Mihaly went to his home it looked like a museum of crystals running from the ceiling to the floor.  Moritz handed Mihaly a crystal the size of a child’s fist and said, I was looking at this just yesterday.  It was 9 in the morning when I put it under the microscope, outside it was sunny, I kept turning the rock round, looking at all the different parts, the intrusions, the dozen or so crystal formations inside and around then I looked up and thought that a storm must be coming because it had gotten so dark.  Then I realized it was not overcast but the sun had been setting it was 7 in the evening.”

For 10 hours, the beauty of this crystal had captivated him, it drew him out of himself, out of his experiences of pain and suffering, it gave him joy. Friends, we have something better than crystal to gaze at, to fix our attention on.  We have a person. We have Jesus. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, who came into this world, for us and for our salvation. The one who created you.  The one whose image you were made in, made to look to him, to find rest in him, to reflect him, to become like him. What if there was someone you could be still before, someone you could just be with, in your naked, unimpressive just you self, someone who’s grace and love, who’s gentleness and kindness, someone who’s righteous strength and goodness, who’s beauty could mend and bring healing to the broken parts of your life and your story?  

I think that’s what Mary found.  And that’s what we’re meant to find in Jesus.

This leads into the next phase of our shared community project of “Habits for Love” this semester. Having spent some time where we’ve invited you to detox, where you’ve tried things to help you abstain, cut out, slow down, we’re now turning to a time for a few weeks where we’d like to invite you to “Attend to Grace.” Starting today in adult Sunday school and then in an email that will go out Tuesday morning, we are inviting you to try engaging in practices that will help you focus your attention on Jesus. This week that will be through a particular practice of prayer. The whole point of this way of prayer is to help us process our days in light of God’s presence, goodness, and faithfulness in our lives. 

If you’re anything like me and you find yourself at times rushing through life, or just trying to get through a day or week, but not actually receiving each day as a gift from God. I’m inviting you to try practicing this way of prayer. If you would like to grow in being more present with your whole self in the moments of your day and with the people in your life, if you would like to be more aware of God’s grace and presence, more alive and attentive to God throughout ordinary days and routine life, more aware that I go into the day as one loved by God, united to Jesus, indwelt by the Spirit, – if even the possibility of this becoming more real to you is something you desire, let me invite you to join with us in this journey and try this practice of prayer this next week. 

[1] Kent Dunnington, Addiction and Virtue, 178

[2] Joel Green, The Gospel of Luke, 437.