368 How to Live Again

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “How to Live Again”, originally shared on July 16, 2025. It was the 368^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   It’s been said that what we do is how we make a living but who we are is how we make a life. Today, we’re going to find out about which is more necessary.

   A rabbi was once approached by a student who asked him, “Rabbi, how can I live without making mistakes?” The Rabbi answered, “Gain experience”.

   The student replied, “How can I gain experience?” The Rabbi answered, “Make mistakes”.

   We can learn a lot things in a classroom, but many of the things we learn about how to live come through experiences, and sometimes it’s through bad experiences. We learn things the hard way.

   I studied in high school, but I was also heavily involved in music, drama, leadership, athletics, and many other things. I was active in most aspects of our church.

   One day, I had not finished a paper that was due for my “College Prep” English class and I went to the teacher’s office after school, where he was grading that day’s papers. I told him that I was sorry that I hadn’t turned in the paper on time, but that I was very busy and would turn it in as soon as I had time.

   I thought that he’d be appreciative and sympathetic. He wasn’t.

   He rocked back in his chair, looked over his reading glasses at me, and said, “David, we do the things we love. If we don’t have time, we make time.”

   After years of college and seminary and life-long learning, I still consider him to be one of my five best teachers, not necessarily among my five favorite teachers, 😊, but he was among the best.

   Martha learned a lesson like that from a pretty good teacher (😊) in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority churches this coming Sunday, Luke 10:38-42.

   Like Martha, we are all surrounded with many claims on our time and on our lives. Voices all around us tell us what we should think, what we should do, what we should look like, how we should vote, and what we should need. What is the one thing that is needed?

   In our Gospel reading, Jesus and his twelve hungry disciples show up at Martha’s family’s home in Bethany, near Jerusalem, where she lived with her two siblings, Mary and Lazarus, and she was busy.

   I was the first-born in my parents’ family. I tell my three younger siblings that they should be grateful that I was such a good baby because our parents said, “We want three more of those!” 😊

   My mother had four babies in five years. I was actually four years old when her fourth child was born; two weeks later though I would be five, and she was busy!

   The oldest sibling in birth order is usually “the responsible one,” because they grow up taking care of the younger siblings.

   We were so close together in age, though, that we somewhat grew up together. I don’t recall being consciously aware of being responsible for my siblings, just the slightly oldest.

   When you read or hear the story of Jesus and Mary and Martha, though, don’t you get a clear picture of their birth order?

   The Bible doesn’t say it, but don’t you just picture Martha as the older responsible sister, and Mary as the younger one craving attention? Parenting sometimes contributes to this.

   I read about a comedian who came from a large family saying that her mother had once told her that when her oldest sister coughed, she called the ambulance, but when her youngest brother swallowed a dime her mother said, “That’s coming out of your allowance.” 😊

   I once heard Garrison Keillor, humorist, author, and host of the public radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion”, observe that with the first child you're panicky, with the second one your nervous, with the third you're skittish, and after that it's just pure entertainment.

   I asked my dad what he thought about that, and he said that he wouldn’t say it was pure entertainment, but it did get easier.

   Here’s what happened when Jesus encounters the sisters Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38,

³⁸Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 

   Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. He and his disciples stopped at Bethany, about two miles east of Jerusalem over the Mount of Olives, at the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, his best friends in the world, at his home away from home. It was Lazarus who Jesus later raised from the dead but who doesn’t appear in this story.

   Luke tells us that Martha welcomed Jesus and the disciples into “her” home. It was very unusual for a woman to be the head of the house. Scholars think that Martha may have been a widow. One of my favorite preachers, King Duncan, points out that name Martha means “lady” or “mistress of the house”. Maybe her name changed to fit her new self at some point.

   We also can picture a rather large house for the time, stocked with enough food to care for thirteen hungry men at a moment’s notice.

   We also know that she was brave, as the authorities were looking for a way to kill Jesus, so it was dangerous for anyone to be known to befriend and care for him.

   Then, Luke reveals something more, in verse 39,

³⁹She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 

   To say that she “sat at the Lord’s feet” was an expression meaning that she was receiving formal training from Jesus. In Acts 22:3 St. Paul declares that,

3 “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today.

   St. Paul sat at the feet of Rabbi Gamaliel one of the most respected rabbis in the history of Judaism. Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus.

   Some of us remember a time when there were very clear expectations for what was considered “men’s work” and “women’s work”.

   Mary was doing what would have been considered “man’s work.” A woman being taught by a respected teacher like Jesus would have been actively discouraged and almost nonexistent. A husband would not even teach his wife in Mary’s time. Men’s and women’s worlds didn’t mix.

   Martha took on the more traditional role, and was not happy that Mary didn’t, as we see in verse 40,

⁴⁰But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.”

   We see how much things have changed when we hear this story and wonder, “Well what about the disciples? Why didn’t they offer to get up and help?”  

   Theirs was a different culture It wouldn’t even have occurred to them.

   Martha speaks directly to Jesus as one used to having authority in her home, also a surprising attitude for a woman in Jesus’ day.

   Jesus knows something that the others don’t, however. Jesus speaks as one who knows that his time on this earth is short.

   Jesus sees that Martha is distracted by what she sees in front of her.

   We’ve been concerned lately about the seemingly indiscriminate raids on places that may or may not contain people who are not in our country legally. We could not be blamed for looking over our shoulders when we go out to carry out our responsibilities.

   Martha was no doubt worried about carrying out her responsibilities, knowing that Jesus had attracted negative talk among the religious, political and military authorities.

   She was the responsible one, though, and we couldn’t function, in the Church and anywhere else, without people like Martha. I mean, as a Bible study I once read on this passage asked, “Who would you rather work for, Mary or Martha?” And, “Who would you rather have working for you, Mary or Martha?”

   For Martha, though, her worries had become a distraction. We see it in verse 41,

⁴¹But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 

   I read a little book on time management once called “The Tyranny of the Urgent”. Its point is to learn to separate the urgent daily demands from what is enduringly important.

   Like the guy I read about who said, “I live every day as if it were my last. That’s why I never do laundry. Because who wants to do laundry on the last day of their life?” 😊 Urgent or important?

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, was reportedly digging a hole to plant an apple tree when a member of his church stopped by to talk about the member’s belief that they were living in the end times. He asked, “Dr. Luther, what would you do if you knew that the world was going to end tomorrow?” Luther replied, “I’d plant my apple tree.” Urgent or important?

   Martha wanted to know who was going to feed all those hungry men? Who was going to fulfill the cultural demands of hospitality? Who was going to set out the dishes and set-up the chairs. All urgent, but Jesus encouraged her to consider what was of enduring importance in that moment.

   Providing hospitality in your home is encouraged throughout the Bible. Some people consider it a spiritual gift.

   I took a continuing education class at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena by Dr. Peter Wagner, who had written books on the subject.

   He said that, as a former missionary family, they were often asked to house and feed visiting missionaries in their home. When such an event was about to take place, everyone in his family knew their jobs. They planned every minute, cleaned the house, stocked the refrigerator, treated their guests like royalty and when the visit was over, they collapsed in a heap, exhausted.

   They did not, he said, have the gift of hospitality.

   People with the gift of hospitality open their homes in such a way that you feel like you belong there, without any need to impress. They give themselves to their guests.

   What was needed? What was more important than what was urgent? Jesus says it in verse 42,

⁴²there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

   Food and drink are urgent needs but satisfying them is temporary.

   There’s a diner near our home, Mr. D’s Diner, that is known for its large portions. A page in its old menu referenced this with the observation, “The trouble with our portions is that four or five days after eating here, you’re hungry again.” 😊

   What endures? What is the better part, what some translations call “the better portion”?

   In the 1991 movie “City Slickers” with Billy Crystal and Jack Palance, a group of friends from the city sign-up to go to a dude ranch for an adventure in the midst of their mid-life crises. They are charged with moving the ranch’s herd of cattle to a lower valley, which becomes more and more difficult as they go.

   Everyone admires the foreman, Curly (played by Jack Palance), because he seems to have his life together while theirs are falling apart. At one point the character played by Billy Crystal asks Curly about the secret of life.

   Curly holds up one index finger and rides away. One thing. It’s keeping your focus on one thing.

   What is the one thing that is needed? What endures?

   A living relationship with the one true living God, the one thing for which we were created.

   It’s been said that human beings have a God shaped hole, and that we cannot experience the wholeness for which we were created until it is filled.

   That is the one thing for which the Church exists, and for which we exist. To bring people to that wholeness of body, mind and spirit through a living relationship with the one true living God that has been God’s desire for us from the beginning of our creation. The one thing that God finally gave his life for on the cross.

   What defines our lives? What shapes everything about us?

   Only one thing is needed, everything else is merely urgent.

   We’ve been thinking a lot about those who have lost their lives in the floods throughout our country in the past weeks, particularly in the hill country of Texas, particularly the children swept away from a Christian camp. A Christians camp. How can that happen?

   Some might look at that news and say that no God would allow that to happen. There must not be a God.

   Others will go through that experience of losing a child, an unimaginable horror, and say that they don’t know how they would get through it without their faith in God.

   The fact is that the world is not the way it’s supposed to be. It was broken by people who believed the lie that they could be like God, and that that, frankly, they would do a much better job. That’s how evil enters the world every time, and it breaks us. And we are cut off from God, dead in our sin.

   God does not reject us, though. Instead, in the most important verse in the Bible, in what Martin Luther called the Gospel in miniature, in what, if you had only memorized one verse from the Bible, that would be it, we see God’s disposition toward us, in John 3:16,

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

   Our saving relationship with God is restored at the cross for all who believe and are baptized.

   There it is that we learn to live again. It is the one thing that is needful.