At any given moment, three percent of American drivers are holding the steering wheel with one hand and a cell phone with the other.  Three percent may not sound like much.  But, that translates into one-half million people driving and talking at the same time.  And, it’s reaping havoc.  People are wrecking and dying in such increasing numbers.  It’s not that these people are not otherwise good drivers.  It’s that they are just a little distracted.  And, when you’re pushing a couple of tons of steel down the road at seventy miles per hour, the last thing you need to be is distracted. 

That was Martha’s problem.  Jesus had come to visit in her home.  She was busy because, as the scripture acknowledges, “preparations . . . had to be made.”  It was just that, considering the fact that Jesus himself was there, the one thing that mattered most was lost to lesser matters that were, by comparison, just distractions.

Most of us can relate to Martha, this sister who had to stay busy, so busy she didn’t even have time to listen to Jesus.  But, why is it that we feel such a driving need to keep so busy?  Martha was probably the older of the two sisters because it was her house.  And, she obviously felt responsible, like older siblings tend to do.  To Martha, taking care of details was her way of taking care of people.  And, feeling responsible and taking care were a big part of what drove and pushed her to keep moving, even when Jesus had come to visit. 

Can you relate to that?  The need to get everything in order and keep it that way?  The need to take care of others who haven’t even actually indicated that they need you to take care of them?  Years ago I was visiting in the home of older relatives for Thanksgiving.  The woman of the home was a real take-charge kind of person.  In fact, she had planned the whole weekend out, hour by hour, for the entire family, typed it and posted it on the kitchen wall.  There was not one unplanned hour from Wednesday until Sunday.  Everything, from when we’d eat to when we’d play, was given a specific slot of time.  It was as if she was petrified at the thought that someone might actually have one hour of unscheduled time to do nothing.  And, there was no question about who was in charge or control.

Maybe that is what was bothering Martha when she asked Jesus, “‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?’”  Maybe it wasn’t so much that the work was so burdensome as it was that Martha couldn’t make Mary do what she wanted.  She couldn’t control Mary. 

The most significant victory I achieved on our family vacation this summer was that I actually went on vacation without taking my laptop computer along.  After one too many trips out of town where I couldn’t relax for checking my email, Nancy all but banned it from the trip.  I’d left emergency contact information.  So, though I suffered some cyber-withdrawal symptoms, for one whole week, I didn’t log on.  And, the most amazing thing happened.  The world went on and the church went on quite well without me.  I was actually able to focus on what mattered most that week.

And, it was a good thing.  My prayer life has felt all but worthless lately.  It’s not that I don’t want to pray.  It’s just that are so many things to do.  Calls to make.  Hospitals to visit.  Budgets to plan.  Committee work.  People sick and dying.  Staff work to do.  Calendars to plan.  And, of course, sermons to write, some of them about, of all things, the importance of prayer.  All good work.  It’s just that it never ends.  It keeps coming and coming and coming and pushing and pushing until, one day, I awakened to realize that I had allowed all of that to all but push my prayer life right out of the picture.

For sure, there is praying you can do on the run.  And, it’s a good thing.  Most of us wouldn’t get any praying done if it weren’t for our chance conversations with God waiting at a stop light or in a grocery store line.  Any prayer is good prayer.  But, there is some praying you cannot do until you stop running, even walking.  The most significant thing I learned while on vacation this year is that there is some praying you cannot do until you stop everything, even talking.  That’s something Mary had learned, too, and that her sister Martha was yet to learn.  That one of the greatest of all spiritual disciplines is learning to listen.  One of the least obeyed commands of God on the part of most people is that little one tucked away in the Old Testament to “‘be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10).’”  Most of us would rather have our toenails pulled out with a pair of pliers than be still.  When we’re still we can’t be in control.  And, worse, we have to listen instead of talk.  Some really good things happen when we listen. 

This year we went to the beach.  First time in years for me.  I’m not really much of a beach person.  But, when it’s this hot, you may as well take off as much clothing as you can (preferably where no one who sees you will ever see you again), and get wet if at all possible.  So, we went to the beach.  At the end of the week, when Nancy and I were taking one of our last strolls, it finally hit.  The waves crashing gently on the beach delivered the message.  They’ve been doing that now for many thousands and thousands of years.  Washing up and reshaping and cleansing the beach for millennia.  Like the grace of God.  It just keeps rolling up onto and over us – washing and reshaping and cleansing us. 

Even those who built sandcastles found their work reclaimed by the ocean.  Every day they’d dig and build.  Every night the waves from reclaimed the beach for its own purposes.  As the tide rose, the water did it’s own creative reshaping.  So it is with the tides of God’s grace.  You don’t learn that when you’re talking, even preaching.  You learn that only when you take the time just to listen.  I did some of the best praying I’ve done in a long time over my vacation, and I didn’t say a word.  I just listened.

That’s what Mary was doing.  While Martha rushed around to keeping her agenda, Mary “sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.”  How long has it been since you did that?  Just listened?  To all the sounds of grace that surround you no matter where you are?  Mary seemed to hear it best while sitting at Jesus’ feet.  I wonder why?

This was the same Mary who was the brother of Lazarus.  The same Lazarus Jesus raised from the dead.  And, according to John’s gospel (John 11), the same Mary who once poured a bottle of perfume on Jesus’ feet and washed them with her hair.  Mary seemed to have a thing for Jesus’ feet.  Do you think it was because, when she sat at his feet and listened she learned something you only learn when you stop running and walking and talking and just listen?  Like something about grace?  Of a grace that, like the ocean waves, keeps washing up onto and over our lives to cleanse and purify and reshape what is so broken. 

When Jesus’ feet walked up to Lazarus’ tomb, when Lazarus couldn’t say any words any more, Jesus did all the talking and Lazarus lived again.  Mary saw it all.  And, when Mary had been at Jesus’ feet, having lived the life of a prostitute, she heard him say then, “‘Your sins are forgiven (Luke 7:48).’”  She was so overwhelmed by her first taste of grace that all she could do was weep; there is no record that she said so much as one word in Jesus’ presence.  She let him do all the talking.  All she did was listen.  And, what she heard changed her life.

Upon coming back from vacation, I had encounters with two other women who didn’t say one word but taught me, as I listened, about the grace of God.  Actually, one is a woman in the making.  Catherine Elizabeth Leftwich.  Born just two weeks ago.  And, the other, a woman in eternal making, Pearl Price, born 101 years ago and now with the Lord.  How many opportunities do you get to kiss a twelve-day-old baby on the head and memorialize a 101 year-old woman in the same week?  Well, when I stepped back and listened to what the lives of both of these women were saying, I thought I heard the waves crashing up on the beach again.  The waves of God’s grace on the shores of this church and my life, too.  The grace of God escorting new life in and old life out.  Washing up, like waves that never end, bringing new life to Catherine and, for that matter, new life to Pearl, and our church, too.

A young guppy once asked an old fish, “Sir, I have heard something about the ocean and would like to see it.  Can you tell me where I can find the ocean?”  The old fish shook his gills and swam on.  “You don’t find the ocean, lad; the ocean finds you.  You are swimming in it.”  (George Mason, “A Community of Christ for the World,” The Wilshire Pulpit, Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, TX, July 22, 2001) Grace is not something we go to church to find.  It’s not something the preacher possesses and doles out.  It’s not even just between the covers of the Bible.  We don’t have to go anywhere to find the grace of God.  In Jesus, it has found us.  Like the air we breathe, it’s all around us, it covers us, washes us, sustains us, refreshes and reshapes us.  We’re swimming in it, even now. 

Martha was busy at good things; Jesus said Mary had “chosen what is better.”  Grace is always better.  Grace that says you don’t have to be in control and get your life in order for Jesus to find you lovable.  All you have to do is sit and listen.  The food had probably never been better that day in Martha’s house.  But, the best meal wasn’t on the table.  It was served at Jesus’ feet. 

Fred Craddock, one of the most respected preachers of our day, says that his mother took him and his siblings to church every Sunday when he was growing up.  Dad stayed home.  Occasionally, the preacher would come to visit or would bring a visiting evangelist to see Mr. Craddock hoping to convert him.  Mr. Craddock always shook them off by saying that all they wanted was just another member, another pledge.  The church, he said, didn’t care about him.  Craddock says he must have heard his dad say that a thousand times while growing up.

The years went by, Mr. Craddock grew gravely ill.  It must have been cancer; they had to take out his throat and put in a metal tube.  For the first time in his life, he couldn’t say a word.  Fred flew home to be at his dad’s side.  When he walked in the room, he found it covered with flowers and “a stack of cards twenty inches deep beside his bed.”  Every flower, every card, was from the church.  His dad took a Kleenex box and scribbled a line from Shakespeare on it.  “In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.”  “What is your story, Daddy?” Fred asked.  And, his father wrote, “I was wrong.”  (Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, Chalice Press, p. 14)  It was something he learned too late.  That there is grace, even for those who resent it.  And, he only learned it when he couldn’t say another word, when all he could do was listen.

It’s amazing, as in grace, amazing grace, what you learn when you stop running and talking and you just listen.  Even now, can you hear the waves of his grace washing over you to cleanse you and reshape you and reclaim you for his greater purposes?  You can, if you’ll just listen.  Can you hear it?  Listen!