July 20, 2025 · Rev. Derek van Gulden · Genesis 18:1-10a; Luke 10:38-42
Martha and Mary are often pitted against each other, but Rev. Derek van Gulden remembers a woman named Sylvia at the Floating Bridge Church in Vermont, coaxed out of the kitchen by a four-year-old, who turned out to be both at once. Hospitality matters, and so does sitting down to listen: true hospitality is being present with the guest you've invited in.
Transcript
People of God, would you join me in a moment of prayer? Gracious and loving God, this morning, I ask you to move the words of my mouth and the meditation of all your hearts by your love, and help each of us this day not to be the instrument of our own or anyone else's oppression, but an instrument of peace in every step, in every breath, in every moment of every day. Amen.
So if you've been paying attention over the last four weeks, and then today we've been weaving through these biblical stories from Luke about call. Believe it or not, about discernment, about what God is calling us to do. And now we come to Martha and Mary, which I've heard preached so many different ways. The first time I heard it. They were pitted against each other. And I got totally lost.
But within this, I want to quote you something you've probably heard before, and I wrote it down because I want to make sure I get it right. Francis of Assisi said, preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.
I share that with you because when you look or listen to the story of Martha and Mary. You can kind of see both of those things going on. Martha who? They assumed it's her house. Mary lived with her. She. Martha's the oldest sister. They've invited Jesus to come and dine with them. Now, throughout Scripture in the New Testament, the Gospels, you hear of Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus. Jesus knows them. And they know him.
And in that culture, because it's always important that we remember what culture we are hearing these stories from. Hospitality is one of the most important things. That's why we added today that story of Abraham and Sarah. It's the most beautiful piece. Where Abraham. I wouldn't say go overboard, but he offers these three strangers. He kills a calf for them, gets milk and water, finds them a nice, quiet and cool place to eat. Not knowing that one of them is God. And what is the outcome? Has they leave. One of them says, we will surely remember this. And where is your wife, Sarah? She's over there working and he says the next time I come by, she will be pregnant. Now you have to understand that Abraham and Martha were. If Sarah were very old. Sometimes in the Bible you hear how old they were, sometimes not. She was well past. Childbearing age. well past. And if you read beyond in the Scripture, she hears what the guy is saying and she laughs. Really? Come on. But the beauty of it is she does get pregnant. I'm not saying that was from the hospitality, but the blessing came through that.
And now we have the stories we've heard recently the story of the Good Samaritan. Reaching out to somebody he doesn't know and caring for that person, not just in the immediate moment, but for the long term. We hear of Jesus sending out the seventy and giving them guidelines when they go, this is what you'll carry. This is what you'll say when you get there. And if they don't want you there, this is what you'll say and walk on. And now here's the story at the top or the very beginning. It's a story of great hospitality. Martha's running all over the place. I can only imagine it. Getting everything ready. Making everything perfect. And Mary is seated at the foot of Jesus, listening to them. Those words in itself tell us she's acting as a disciple, a student of Jesus.
Now, as always, I have to take these things to some place that I have experienced so that it makes sense to me. The first church I served was in Vermont. Small little church. It was known as the Floating Bridge Church because it was right across from the last floating bridge in Vermont. There are about sixteen members. When I got there and we started to grow and mainly with families, young families.
And so. We developed a Sunday school program, and some of the people, members of the church who had been there a long time. Were trying to figure out how to help in the Sunday school because they hadn't won one in ages and not stop doing what they do best, which was the work in their kitchen. Because when I went there to work or interview, they said, the sanctuary is beautiful, very old building. After Christmas Eve. We're not up there until late May when it gets warmer because it's freezing cold up there and there is no heat. But they said downstairs we have a beautiful new kitchen where we hosts all kinds of dinners and meals. We do hunters breakfasts every day during deer hunting season. For two weeks every month they had a potato dinner. The youngest man in the congregation was forty four. He was a farmer and he grew potatoes, huge ones, and they would have the whole potato bar. Remember in the seventies, 80s when that was big? And they would have that.
And I can remember one Sunday when we were downstairs, because it was probably in February or March, and the kids were leaving to go to the part of their fellowship hall where the kitchen was over into the corner that we had, sectioned off for Sunday school. And there was still one couple that were in the kitchen still doing their thing, still doing their thing, Making it hard for any of us to hear Scripture, whatever, even the songs. And no one got up to say anything to them except this four year old little girl. She walked into the kitchen and she took their hands and said, come be with us and listen. It's a good story. Today we're going to learn about Noah's Ark and walk them out of the kitchen and behind the partition. And when it came time for me to preach, we just were all silent and listened to the kids. And the first thing we notice is, oh, it wasn't the young person who was leading our youth programs. It was the mother, the wife that had been in the kitchen. She was reading the story of Noah's Ark, and I went over and peeked in because a few other people did, and they were sitting at her feet, was this forty year old and her siblings and kids from three other families.
And afterwards. I said, you were like Martha and Mary in one. And she goes, what do you mean? My name's Sylvia. And that week in Bible study, it wasn't what we were doing, but I picked this story. And she says, I get it. And of course I'm going. Oh, please explain it to me.
What is happening there is Jesus. Martha's running all over doing what that culture called for. For the women to do all the hospitality in the house, have everything clean, have everything ready, have a meal to lay down and be there to serve. And of course, there's her sister Mary, just sitting at Jesus feet, listening. And Martha goes over and actually chides Jesus, if you pay attention, don't you care that I'm in here doing all the work? And yet Mary's just sitting there. What are you going to do? And that's when Jesus said, Martha, Martha, he doesn't chide her. He just says, Mary is doing the one thing that needs to be done now.
And we don't hear the rest of the story. We don't hear. If Martha sat down next to Mary and listened to Jesus. It's a great story, especially when we don't pit two women together. One of the first things I understood about this story is just having Martha sitting at Jesus's feet. At that time in that culture was one of Jesus's way of saying ministry. Serving God is not just for men, it's for women. It's for everybody.
It's probably one we don't think about that simple thing of her sitting there listening to the word. It makes me think that people ask when I say during coffee House and do a prayer of peace beforehand. I just lost my train of thought. Why did I go there? They asked me why I, I always say we pray before everything we do. And I said, because that's who we are. We pray. We listen to Scripture. We listen to the word. When we stop doing that, we lose our direction. We lose what holds us together and what is our beliefs.
And I know that sometimes committees have so much to do. They lose that. And I'm included right in there with that. But when we take the time to sit and hear a piece of scripture or hear the word. It helps me calm down and remember why I am doing or why what we are doing. And if we don't know why and we forget that, then what we're doing is just taking up space and we're never going to achieve anything. I've been to plenty of meetings. I've been to meetings with clergy where halfway through we are totally lost and someone will always say not, let's take a break. They will just start reading a prayer, or they'll start sharing a piece of scripture and the rest of us go, yes, this is why we're here. And then the rest of the meeting went fine. Took a couple hours, but no. And it went fine.
So as we move forward, there's so many things you can take from this. But remember, sometimes as Jesus says, there's only one thing you need to be doing the best thing listening. That's a whole nother sermon. But I'll two times you hear Mary, Jesus's mother, at the wedding in Canaan when they were running out of wine, said, this is my son. Listen to him. God. Says to those around. This is my son, the beloved. Listen to him.
We don't have to sit on the floor, although it's a great place to listen. May we be blessed with the ability to continue to listen. May we find meaning in both Martha and Mary and how they have changed the way we do things. Hospitality isn't always just about food. True hospitality, I believe, from this piece of scripture, is being about present with the person who you invited in. Amen.