This morning’s sermon looked at Luke 10:38-42, the famous passage where Jesus is visiting Martha and Mary. Far from being simply a commentary on two different personality types (Martha, the type A personality driven to activity; Mary, the more contemplative dreamer and visionary), this passage talks about the priorities we must have, with Jesus unequivocally endorsing Mary’s choices: ‘only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’ (Luke 10:42)
Clearly, faith and works need to go hand in hand (James 2:26, 1 John 3:18), but we are wrong if we suppose contemplation and adoration exclude action: ‘a contemplative life is not an alternative to the active life, but its root and foundation.’ (Eugene Peterson, ‘Under the Unpredictable Plant; P 114) Activity needs to be grown from adoration. Mary’s better choice was to spend time with Jesus and to sit at His feet, learning from Him. She craved intimacy with Him more than anything else.
Intimacy (a close fellowship or friendship or familiarity with someone, ‘closeness, togetherness, affinity, rapport, attachment, close friendship, companionship, mutual affection and warmth’) is much misunderstood nowadays, often being taken simply to mean a sexual relationship. Marriage, God’s ideal for sexual relationship, is also, however, a pointer to God’s relationship with His church. (Eph 5:31-32) Intimacy is the yearning in our hearts to know and to be known and this can only be fulfilled by God. In the beginning, everything God created was good and the relationship between man and God knew no barriers, an intimacy symbolised by nakedness. (Gen 2:25) When sin entered the world, that intimacy was lost and nakedness became something to be feared. (Gen 2, 27, 3:10) We long to be known and loved and accepted by other people for who we are, but we are afraid that if people really knew us, if people really knew our innermost thoughts and feelings and saw us in our nakedness, they would no longer want to know us or love us.
Thanks to God’s redeeming love, however, the barriers posed by sin can be removed and we can stand before the throne of God above with no fear or shame, covered in Christ’s perfect, spotless righteousness. Christ ‘died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.’ (Heb 9:15) Knowing we are set free from condemnation (Rom 8:1-4) transforms the way we live on earth and allows us to open ourselves to intimacy. Lavish, undignified worship and adoration will always offend some (think of Simon the Leper in Luke 7:36-50 or Michal, David’s wife, in 2 Sam 6:16), but will always be commended by God. One of the words commonly used for worship in the New Testament is proskuneo. It literally means ‘to come towards to kiss’ and had a secondary meaning of ‘like a dog licking its master’s hand.’ Kissing is one of the greatest symbols of intimacy we have. Our response to God’s great revelation of divine love surely has to be the same as Mary’s, the same as David’s, the same as John’s when he received that great revelation of the risen, conquering Son. We worship. We adore. We kiss the Son.