Luke 10 38 42 Sermon

The One Thing That Will Not Be Taken Away

There is a kind of exhaustion that does not come from laziness. It comes from doing too much, caring too much, carrying too much, all while feeling that no one notices and nothing is ever quite enough. If you have ever felt that way in your service to God or to others, then the passage before us this morning speaks directly into that place.

Open your Bible to Luke chapter ten, beginning at verse thirty-eight. This is the Christian Standard Bible.

"While they were traveling, he entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who also sat at the Lord's feet and was listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, and she came up and asked, 'Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to give me a hand.' The Lord answered her, 'Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has made the right choice, and it will not be taken away from her.'"

Luke 10:38-42. This is the Word of God.

Setting The Scene

Luke places this brief episode immediately after the parable of the Good Samaritan. That placement is not accidental. In the parable, Jesus has just answered the question of what it means to love your neighbor. Now, in this home in Bethany, he addresses the question underneath that one: what does it mean to love God? The two stories together form a complete picture of the two great commandments. You cannot understand this passage about Mary and Martha apart from that context.

Jesus and his disciples have been traveling. They arrive at the home of Martha, and Luke tells us that Martha welcomed him. That word welcomed carries the sense of receiving a guest under your roof, taking responsibility for his care and comfort. Martha opened her home to Jesus. That is a generous and courageous act. Hosting a traveling rabbi and his company would have been no small undertaking. There would have been food to prepare, water to draw, arrangements to make. Martha stepped into that role willingly.

Her sister Mary, meanwhile, sat at the feet of Jesus and listened. In the culture of that day, sitting at the feet of a teacher was the posture of a disciple. It was not passive daydreaming. It was active, attentive learning. Mary had placed herself in the position of a student before her Lord.

Both sisters are in the same house. Both are in the presence of Jesus. But they are in entirely different postures.

The Problem With Martha

Verse forty tells us that Martha was distracted by her many tasks. The Greek word behind distracted carries the idea of being pulled in different directions, drawn away from a center. Martha had a center, and her many tasks were pulling her away from it without her fully realizing it.

Notice what happens next. Martha does not go to Mary. She goes to Jesus. She says, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to give me a hand. There is a great deal packed into that short sentence. She questions whether Jesus cares. She frames Mary's choice as abandonment. And she asks Jesus to redirect her sister back to the kitchen.

It is worth pausing here to say clearly: Martha was not doing something sinful. She was serving. She was working. She was providing hospitality. The problem was not the work itself. The problem was what the work had become in her heart. It had become a source of anxiety, resentment, and comparison. She was worried and upset about many things, Jesus says. The word worried carries the sense of a divided mind, a heart pulled apart by competing concerns. The word upset suggests agitation, inner turbulence. Martha was not at peace. And in her lack of peace, she had begun to measure her own faithfulness against her sister's apparent unfaithfulness.

This is one of the most honest portraits in all of Scripture. Martha is not a villain. She is a person who started well, got overwhelmed, and ended up standing before Jesus with a complaint instead of a question. She is recognizable because she is so much like us.

The Praise Of Mary

Jesus does not rebuke Martha harshly. He speaks her name twice. Martha, Martha. That repetition is tender. It is the voice of someone who sees a person clearly and loves them anyway. He is not dismissing her. He is calling her back.

And then he says something remarkable. One thing is necessary. Mary has made the right choice, and it will not be taken away from her.

What is the one thing? It is what Mary is doing. She is sitting at the feet of Jesus. She is listening to his words. She has chosen attentiveness to Christ over activity for Christ, not because activity is wrong, but because activity without attentiveness loses its anchor.

The phrase it will not be taken away from her deserves careful attention. Jesus is saying that what Mary has chosen has a permanence to it. The food Martha was preparing would be eaten and gone. The arrangements she was making would be finished and forgotten. But what Mary was receiving at the feet of Jesus, the word of God, the knowledge of Christ, the formation of a disciple, that would remain. No one could take it from her.

This is not a statement against service. It is a statement about the order of things. Jesus is not saying that hospitality is worthless. He is saying that hearing his word is the necessary foundation without which all other service loses its meaning and its staying power.

The Central Claim Of This Passage

Here is what this text is teaching us: attentive discipleship is not a luxury for those who have extra time. It is the one necessary thing from which all faithful service must flow.

The Christian life is not a choice between sitting and serving. It is a question of which one gives life to the other. When we serve without sitting, we become what Martha became: worried, upset, resentful, and measuring ourselves against others. When we sit before Christ and receive his word, our service becomes an overflow of love rather than a performance of duty.

This is a word the church needs in every generation, but it may be especially needed now. We live in a culture that prizes productivity, busyness, and visible output. That pressure finds its way into the church. We can begin to measure our spiritual health by how much we are doing rather than by how deeply we are listening. We can fill our calendars with ministry activities while slowly starving our souls of the very word that gives ministry its power.

Jesus is not calling us to do less. He is calling us to do everything from a different place, from the place of having sat at his feet and heard his voice.

Application For The Congregation

For those of you who recognize yourselves in Martha this morning, hear the tenderness in Jesus's voice when he speaks her name. He is not condemning her. He is inviting her. The invitation is still open. It is not too late to set down the worry and the comparison and the frantic doing, and simply come and listen.

What does sitting at the feet of Jesus look like in practical terms? It looks like opening the Scripture not to check a box but to hear a voice. It looks like prayer that is more listening than listing. It looks like slowing down long enough to ask, before I do this work, have I received anything from Christ that will make this work an act of love rather than an act of anxiety?

For those of you who are in seasons of heavy service, whether in your home, your workplace, your church, or your community, this passage is not a criticism of your labor. It is an invitation to examine the source of it. Is your service flowing from a full heart that has been with Jesus, or is it running on fumes and obligation? There is no shame in admitting the difference. Martha herself stood before Jesus and told him the truth about where she was. That honesty was the beginning of something better.

For those of you who are seekers or guests this morning, perhaps unfamiliar with the Christian faith, notice what Jesus says about Mary. She made the right choice. The right choice was not a program, not a performance, not a list of religious duties. It was simply coming to Jesus and listening. That is where the Christian life begins. Not in doing more, but in receiving from Christ the word that changes everything.

The Gospel Underneath The Story

There is a gospel reality underneath this passage that we should not miss. Jesus says that what Mary has chosen will not be taken away from her. In the larger story of Luke's Gospel, we know what Jesus is moving toward. He is moving toward Jerusalem, toward the cross, toward death and resurrection. The word Mary is receiving at his feet is the word of a Savior who will give his life so that his people might live.

The one thing necessary is not merely a spiritual discipline. It is a person. It is Jesus himself. To sit at his feet is to be near the one who bore our sin, who rose from the dead, who is alive and present with his people through his Spirit and his word. When we gather to hear Scripture read and preached, we are doing what Mary did. We are placing ourselves before the living Christ and saying, speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.

That is not a passive act. It is the most important act of the Christian life. Everything else we do in his name flows from this.

A Charge To Carry With You

As you leave this place today, carry this question with you: am I serving from a full heart that has been with Jesus, or am I serving from a depleted heart that has forgotten to sit at his feet?

The invitation of this passage is not to do less. It is to be anchored more deeply in the one thing that will not be taken away. Come to Christ. Hear his word. Let that be the source from which your service, your love, your patience, and your hope all flow.

Martha, Martha. He says your name with tenderness. He is not done with you. He is calling you back to the one necessary thing.

May we have ears to hear.

Sources Consulted

Bock, Darrell L. Luke. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1994.

Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.

Marshall, I. Howard. The Gospel of Luke. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.

Ryken, Leland, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III, eds. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998.

Stein, Robert H. Luke. New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1992.