To the Table Where the Bread Is Served

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

July 21, 2013

Luke 10:38-42

To the Table Where the Bread Is Served

In the name of Jesus.

Last Sunday I ended the sermon with Jesus saying, “Well done, My good and faithful servants.”

For I was hungry

and you gave Me something to eat;

I was thirsty

and you gave Me something to drink;

I was a stranger and you took Me in

(Matthew 25:35)

Feeding Jesus is a good thing. You are glad to do it, in your case by feeding your family. But if Jesus came to your door, you would feed Him. You'd have some option on how to do this. Your dining room or do you go out to eat? If a restaurant, Burger King or the Bix Bistro at the Blackhawk Hotel? If your dining room, frozen pizza or pot roast?

But that's all hypothetical. But it wasn't for Martha.

Martha invited Jesus into her home and by doing so, took on the responsibility of attending to the needs of the most important Person ever to walk the earth. So there He was, reclining in her house, waiting for dinner. What would you expect Martha to do?

You'd expect her to make dinner. And she did. Was that what was wrong? No. She was feeding Jesus!

Preparing to care for the needs of others as though they were Jesus is a fruit of repentance, not a fruit of our sinfulness. It is being a Good Samaritan. Martha was going and doing what He did. So what's the problem?

When Jesus rebuked Martha, He was responding to her judgmental anger at her—she felt—“lazy” sister. Professor John Kleinig explains why Jesus said what He said.

He does not criticise her, as some maintain, for busying herself with the preparation of the meal or for failing to sit at his feet like Mary; he chides her for yielding to anxiety and for concentrating in annoyance on her sister Mary as she prepared the meal for him.

(“Meditation," Logia, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2001.)

He wasn't upset that she wasn't attending His Bible class; He was concerned about her anguish over food that wouldn't last. Jesus had gone 40 days without food, and had fought off the attacks of the Devil, refusing to forsake the one thing that is needed: Jesus Himself, the Word of God. This is true even though the Devil suggested something wise—eat!

“If You are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Make some bread, Jesus. Don't die before You can finish Your mission, Jesus! Get Your priorities right, Jesus!

But He answered, “It is written:

Man must not live on bread alone

but on every word that comes

from the mouth of God.”

(Matthew 4:3-4)

He could have said these words to Martha. Even though we need daily bread—Jesus shows us how to pray for it as we'll see next Sunday—there is more to life than daily bread. As Luther would say, there is more to life than

food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, homestead, field, cattle, money, goods, a pious spouse and children … good government, good weather, peace, health, discipline, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors

(Small Catechism, Lord's Prayer, Daily Bread)

Our life is about listening to Him, about listening to every word that comes from the mouth of God. These words are easy to find, but we make ourselves so busy with work and fun that we can't sit still and listen. This makes us worse than Martha—it's reasonable and Christian to assume that Martha wanted to finish her preparations so that she, too, could sit at Jesus' feet. Do our preparations for our needed daily bread for ourselves and our family have as their goal to find rest in the sacred promises and Sacraments of Christ?

You are thirsty and He quenches your thirst. You are hungry and He feeds you. Drink in the promises of the Water of Life in our Baptisms and eat the true Body of Christ at His table.

Let Him serve you.

The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.

(Mark 10:45)

In the name of the Father

and of the † Son and

of the Holy Spirit. Amen.