The Grace of Doing Nothing

 The Grace of Doing Nothing 

Exodus 3:1-5; Luke 10:38-42

July 16^th/17^th 2022

St. Mark Presbyterian Church

D. Mark Davis

 

So, about six weeks into my sabbatical I started wondering, “What will be the Scripture text when I return?” I had decided ahead of time to follow the Common Lectionary for Worship, so that I could know what was coming and that Ryan and Alicia could plan ahead with me having to supply them with a sermon series or something of our own creation. It just seemed simpler to say, “When I get back we’ll follow the lectionary for a while, until we decide to do something else.” So, I looked it up and “Lo and Behold!” it was a story about a woman who gets criticized for not doing anything. One sister is working furiously and the other is just sitting there soaking it all in and the busy bee complains to Jesus about the sitter and Jesus actually sides with the one who is not working. THAT WOULD BE A PERFECT TEXT WHEN COMING BACK FROM A SABBATICAL, ESPECIALLY IF THERE ARE FOLKS OUT THERE WHO HAVE BEEN COMPLAINING, “WHY DOES HE GET TO DO NOTHING; I DON’T GET TO DO NOTHING!” The problem is nobody around here has been making that complaint – at least not out loud. On the contrary, you all have been incredibly supportive and encouraging to me throughout this time of being away, even if my absence did put some more work on some of your shoulders. So, we have this story and we do not need to use it as a bludgeon against those who are suspect of people who aren’t working hard enough. 

 

In fact, I want to begin by being sympathetic to Martha, the busy bee sister in this story, whose complaint to Jesus seems to get shot down in the end. It is true that Martha’s complaint about Mary is not sustained in this story – I’ve always felt that if we don’t like the way a story goes then we need to go find ourselves another story. But even so, that doesn’t mean that Martha is an awful person or being totally unreasonable. In fact, we can make the case that Martha is being exactly the kind of disciple that Jesus is calling, one who sets aside their own self-interest and looks to the needs of others. Look at the way that Martha welcomes Jesus into her home. The word that Luke uses here for “welcome” is used 3 other times in the New Testament, each one as an example of someone doing the right thing. And, frankly, Jesus needs to eat at some point. He may be the son of God but he’s the son of God in human flesh and humans need food to keep living. And Jesus has an entourage, so it’s not just a matter of adding a bit of water to the soup. Hospitality is a very important and central value in the Scriptures, so to the extent that Martha is offering hospitality to Jesus and his crew, she is doing the right and just thing. So, let’s start there. It’s not that “doing” is a problem or that having a servant’s heart is wrong. 

So, then, what is the problem? Luke uses a word that our version of the bible translates as “distracted.” That’s a fine translation, but the root of the word, “spao” is the word from which we get our words “spasm” and “spastic.” So, the issue here is not that Martha is doing something, that she’s serving, that she’s ensuring that the food gets from the pot to the bowls, that the drinks get from the pitcher into the cup, that everyone has what they need. The problem is that it’s all one big, giant tangled ball of need and frenzy and it causes Martha not only to serve but to lash out at the one whom she feels isn’t pulling her weight. We recognize that this is all set within a patriarchal setting and Martha doesn’t ask Jesus to tell Simon or Bartholomew to get up and shake a leg. But she does lash out at her sister and tries to get Jesus to join her, to make it a righteous indignation, not a matter of spastic frenzy. And that is not the kind of service that Jesus is willing to defend.  

 

Back in 1934, when Japan invaded Manchuria, there were a lot of folks in Europe and in the US, remembering the awful events of the First World War who began rattling their sabers and demanding military intervention to stop the aggression. And that is when Richard Niebuhr, an excellent theologian and ethicist, published an article in The Christian Century entitled, “The Grace of Doing Nothing.” Niebuhr was not arguing for quietism generally or passivity in times of trouble. He was addressing a specific moment that he put this way, “We are chafing at the bit, we are eager to do something constructive; but there is nothing constructive, it seems, that we can do.” Niebuhr said that I moments like this, “The problem we face is often that of choice between various kinds of inactivity rather than of choice between action and inaction.” 

 

There are different ways of “doing nothing.” There is laziness; there is fear; there is apathy; there is a lack of intervention because it doesn’t serve our own self-interest; there is a jaded way of hoping that the system will destroy itself in order to start anew. What Niebuhr was arguing for, in a situation where there was nothing constructive that could be done, was a kind of inactivity that “appears to be highly impracticable because it rests on the well-nigh-obsolete faith that there is a God—a real God.” For all of the language that we cultivate in church there is still a very deep skepticism even among Christian people that, when it comes to serious events of justice in the world, there is a God – a real God – who is active in history. This kind of faithful “doing nothing” is grounded in the self-awareness of our own faults, that whenever we intervene and act we are just as likely to make matters worse as to make matters right. So, this kind of “doing nothing” is grounded in repentance. Perhaps what is driving Niebuhr at this point is the observation that John Calvin made that the more we see God’s glory the more we can see human frailty. This kind of inactivity is not about being superior to others, but being aware of the God in the midst of it all.

 

In our story, Martha is serving and serving others is a manifestly Christian activity. But, spastic frenzy is a different matter. It is possible to be so attentive to getting the food from the pot to the bowls, the drinks from the pitcher into the cup, to stopping human trafficking, to curbing climate change, to enacting gun control, to giving women their right over what happens inside of their own bodies, to housing those who are without a home, to justice for the oppressed, to reversing the history of racism, to fixing all that is broken that we can overlook the presence of Christ, right here in our midst. That may be one reason why many people of faith – especially those of us who consider ourselves progressives, fighting for justice in the world – are often impatient with worship. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, to God be the glory, now let’s get moving!” 

 

Mary shows us another means of being faithful, which Jesus says is her way of choosing the good part. She is sitting at Jesus’ feet – not the place of someone in charge of things. And unlike Martha, whom Jesus says is anxious and perturbed about many things, she is focused on one thing –hearing Jesus’ word. And there are times that even in the midst of many things that need doing, even in the moment when we know that something must be done, even when the injustices of the world seem to be piling up one on top of the other bring us to a frenzied state of trying to fix everything all at once – there are times when grace lies in doing nothing, just sitting and listening to the word of the Lord. 

 

I am being very careful to say “there are times.” I cannot imagine that Mary’s inactivity is the only way of being faithful and we will hear another story next week that makes that very clear. In fact, one month after Richard Niebuhr published his essay entitled, “The Grace of Doing Nothing,” his brother Reinhold Niebuhr published a furious rebuttal entitled, “Must We Do Nothing?” We will hear Reinhold’s approach to the matter – much in line with Martha in our story – next week. But, today, I invite you to give Mary her moment and consider that even when, perhaps especially when, we feel the need to fix everything everywhere all at once, there is a peculiar grace of doing nothing that is grounded in trusting the God in our midst.