Colossians 1.15-28, Luke 10.38-42
The Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 20 July 2025
Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth
Martha was one for holding on. She found it hard to let things go.
Even when Jesus came to visit, rather than sit with him, Martha kept on doing ‘her many tasks’. We can imagine her dusting away around Jesus’ feet where Mary sat talking with him, or interrupting their conversation by loudly bashing pots and pans in the kitchen.
Luke says that Martha was ‘distracted’ by the tasks she set herself.
Was she holding on to the idea that Jesus would praise her for her hard work?
Was she possessed by the Protestant work ethic centuries before it was invented? You know, the belief that inspired the joke that “Hard work never killed anyone, but why take the chance?”
Or was Martha caught up in some sort of rivalry with her sister, anxious to prove herself as the more virtuous of the two, by being the more practical? [2]
Jesus wanted to help her let go of this burden of work she put on herself, to rest awhile, and find her sense of self-worth in simply being with him.
The work ethic, with its focus on activity, is a strong theme in Christianity. It has its place, of course: things do have to be done, and often we are the ones to do them.
But Christianity says something else as well: namely, that your real value and ultimate sense of worth do not depend on what you do, but on who you are. You are a child of God. Your value does not depend on your being good by keeping busy. You are valued, full stop. You are loved, just as you are.
Jesus asked Martha, in the middle of her everyday routine, to recognise what she was holding onto, so that she could let go of those parts of it which were harmful.
Jesus did this repeatedly with people he encountered:
- like the disciples he invited to ‘follow him’; in other words, to let go of their work and their family responsibilities, the security of their income and social status, to be new people in his service;
- and like the Scribes and the Pharisees who he challenged time and again to let go of those aspects of the old Law of Moses which crushed the spirit and exploited the poor, to embrace the Good News of the Kingdom.
It is everywhere in Jesus’ teachings. Remember when he asked a man he met on the road to follow him, and the man replied, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’
Or the other man who told him, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’ [3]
These are hard sayings of Jesus, because we instinctively think that the two men had good reasons to delay before they came along with him – family reasons: burying the father, saying goodbye to the family. Why would Jesus criticise them for that?
Maybe because he had seen that behind their actions were things they needed to let go of.
It could have been that the man who wanted to bury his father was holding on to the need to be the one person in the family who could make the funeral arrangements. Could he not leave it to his other brothers to take the lead in this family funeral? Was he distracted by a sibling rivalry which he needed to let go of?
And maybe the man who wanted to say goodbye to those at home was holding on to a desire for attention from his family. Was he distracted by needing the affirmation he’d receive from them if they gave him a good send-off?
Jesus said, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’
What did he mean by ‘the better part’? Perhaps the better part is simply the art of letting go and letting be – or to use that old devotional expression, ‘letting go and letting God’.
When we let go of our obsessions and urges and needy desires, then there are no more distractions: we become able to give God permission to enter the space that letting go creates in our hearts, to open our spirit to the freedom which is ours in Christ, as we accept ourselves as being loved and valued just as we are.
For Martha, stepping away from her cleaning and sitting down with Jesus and her sister might create the space for her to see herself, and Mary, and their relationship, differently and better. That period of ‘creative suspension’ of normal life could help the women break the tired old habits that had formed between them, and let something new be born. [4]
Have you ever watched children making sandcastles: how happy they are spending lots of time working on creating something lovely, but how they are just as content when the tide comes in to wash that thing away and let them start again. That’s what we feel like when we let go and let God.
Letting go of the urge to try to control everything that is happening in our world, we find growing within our spirit the expectation that God who holds all things together, will make all things new, including ourselves, with each and every tide of life.
One of the most active of 20th Century Christian activists, Dorthy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, wrote of the importance of letting-go. She said, “We must contain ourselves in patience, remembering each morning that our main job is to love God, and to serve Him, and if we don’t get things done due to interruptions, well, it cannot be helped, and God will take care of what we leave undone. But a tranquil spirit is important. St. Teresa says that God cannot rest in an unquiet heart. I have to remember that many times during the day.” [5]
You may recall the words spoken over you at confirmation: ‘God has called you by name and made you his own’. What could possibly be more valuable than that?
Notes
[1] This sermon is a rewrite of Luke 10 – On Martha and letting go, St Gabriel’s, Toxteth, 2010, which was based on Luke 10 – On Letting Go, Good Shepherd, Croxteth, 2007, and Galatians 5, Luke 9: Family misfortunes – the difficulties of desire, Good Shepherd, Croxteth, 2010. Including content drawn from Rev Dr Alan Billings, Thought for the Day, 14 May 2007 (not accessible online in July 2025), and Sylvia Clare, The Art of Letting Go, Positive Health Online, issue 59, December 2000.
[2] See my Illuminating what makes Martha mad, preached in Somerset, 2013, Austwick and Clapham, 2022.
[3] Luke 9.57-62.
[4] Pari Center, Gentle Action.
[5] Dorothy Day, widely quoted, from a letter to Joe Zarrella, March 5, 1940. See eg., Jim Forest, Extracts from the writings of Dorothy Day, selected by Jim Forest. NancyAndJimForest.com.
