God’s Love Calls Us to Transformation
By Rev. Kelly Nieman Anderson
Sermon given July 20, 2025
Today, we continue our July sermon series about God’s love, as we journey together through the chapters of Luke. Last week, in the parable of the merciful stranger, Jesus reminded us that God’s love calls us to humility and compassion. This week, Jesus’ loving interactions with his friends help us to recognize that God’s love calls us to spiritual transformation.
But, to be honest with you all, I needed my own lesson in humility and transformational love to prepare this message.
Because I realized that I have a complicated history with today’s Gospel. Even though Mary and Martha are clearly some very important people to Jesus, and even though they are two of the very few women in the New Testament who are both named and quoted… I’ve never personally heard a female preach on this text. In fact, I have rarely heard that Jesus’ interaction with Mary and Martha was a demonstration of love.
Oh, I’ve heard all sorts of sermons and Sunday school lessons about this story. But most of them seem to sound more like the “tsk, tsk, tsk” of “Martha, Martha, Martha” with all the comic dismissal of a Brady Bunch rerun. Sometimes, the story sounds more like a first century reality show, where the two sisters are in competition to earn Jesus’ approval. But the absolute worst was the all-too-common unloving replay of this Gospel story repeated weekly in the church of my youth.
A male pastor would calmly and peacefully walk into the pulpit to preach on this text, while the women of the church had collectively spent hours making Sunday morning happen: the women created the bulletins and set the communion table; the women had cleaned the church and prepared the coffee hour supplies and taught the Sunday School. The pastor would then unironically chastise all of us for even thinking of our to do lists during his very important, and very theological, sermon.
Unfortunately, this scenario continued to play out even when I moved to more progressive spaces. All too often, the contemplative “Marys” (despite their gender) are often honored despite the reality that so many of our religious institutions are almost completely built on the unpaid labor of all the “Marthas”.
Thus, my aversion up until now to unpack this Gospel for myself, let alone reflect on it well enough to share with others.
But, as we journey through Luke together, I tried to remind myself that throughout these chapters, Jesus is not showing us how to die. Jesus is showing us how to live – and, that God’s promised abundant life is one full of love. I began to wonder: what if I reconsidered the entire story as a loving one?
What if Jesus was actually friends with Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus – good enough friends that they could be really honest with each other? In a loving and respectful relationship, not every gentle reminder is a harsh criticism. When we invite friends and loved ones into our homes, like Mary and Martha did, we want to take care of their physical needs and we want to spend time with them. Both are acts of hospitality and both are ways of showing respect to an honored guest. When our friends encourage us to leave the dishes behind in the kitchen and enjoy the fun time with our guests… sometimes, we just hear their loving request as a blessed gift.
Throughout their friendship, its obvious that Both Mary and Martha generously give of their time and resources to support the physical needs of Jesus, and they both are eager to spend time learning from and listening to Jesus’ spiritual teaching. Both actions are required of true disciples, and Jesus commends both types of service.
If we hear this Gospel as a loving exchange between friends who are as close as family members, then the problem wasn’t that Martha was working in the kitchen, nor that she was speaking bluntly to Jesus. The problem was that Martha distracted by the wrong things. She became focused on the fact that her sister wasn’t helping. Like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son or the Pharisee in the Parable of the Tax Collector, Martha is focused on the actions of others and their perceived shortcomings, as opposed to focusing on her own relationship with Jesus. It is this misorientation, not her service or her hospitality, that leads to Jesus’ gentle rebuke.
Through his loving words and actions, Jesus reminds us that we do not need to earn our spot in God’s presence. Instead, our Christian acts of charity, hospitality, and service should all be done with a loving heart. In a world which is focused on personal productivity, God’s love reminds us that we are loved because of who we are, not just what we do. God’s love transforms our own hearts to recognize our own inherent beloved-ness, so that we can serve others as beloved children of God, too.
God’s love can transform even our most embarrassing mistakes into blessed moments.
Each of us likely has our own story about a time when a gentle, loving reminder helped to get us re-focused on what’s most important.
One of those moments happened for me about 10 years ago, when I was also hosting some beloved house guests.
That week, my husband and I had my brother’s two young kids staying with us for a few days. They were around kindergarten age, and I was SO excited that they were coming to stay! But, since our normal routine doesn’t include kiddos, I felt that there was a lot to do to prepare for their arrival, and a lot to do while they were there to ensure they had a good time.
I quickly became so focused on creating photo-worthy vacation memories, that I ended up spending most of my physical and emotional energy on the “to do lists”, until I was too exhausted to even enjoy our time together.
It only took a few days for me to finally hit my breaking point, and then I simply collapsed, weeping and exhausted, right in front of the guests I was trying so hard to impress. But when my husband gently suggested that perhaps I should take the time I needed to rest… well, my first instinct was to get really angry at him for even suggesting anything other than the very carefully crafted to-do list yet to be done.
Just then, I heard a little voice calmly say, “Aunt Kelly, how about we rest together? Then, we can have more fun together later?” and another little hand came out to grasp mine. Finally, I remembered: Those three humans love me because of who I am, not because of what I do. They wanted to spend time with me, just me, not my carefully crafted list of accomplishments.
God used those little kiddos to remind me of an eternal truth: love does not require us to earn our own beloved-ness.
In a culture of hectic schedules and the relentless pursuit of productivity, we are tempted to measure our worth by how busy we are, by how much we accomplish, or by how well we meet the expectations of others. Seems as if not much has changed since Mary & Martha’s time.
But God’s love keeps showing us, reminding us that we do not need to earn God’s love for us – in fact, nothing we do can ever make us worthy of God’s love. Instead, God’s love transforms us into people who are worthy of sharing love in this world.
Most of our busyness and distraction often stems from the desire to love God and others well. We want to raise our children well, we want to serve our neighbors, we want our church and our community to flourish. In a perfect world, our hearts would easily be able to balance the “why” we love and serve others with the “how” we love and serve others. But, in this broken world, sometimes even the nobles of intentions can still leave us with a to-do which is devoid of love or joy.
In this way, the story of these two sisters serves as a powerful example for disciples today. Both listening and doing, receiving God’s Word and serving others, are vital to the Christian life, and it seems that Luke is not prioritizing one act of Christian discipleship over another. Instead, Luke seems to be reminding us that God’s love transforms our own hearts to recognize our own inherent beloved-ness, so that we can serve others as beloved children of God, too.
As God’s love fills us with comfort and compassion, God’s love also calls us to loving community. Together, we remind each other of our own beloved-ness, until we begin to notice signs of God’s love, all around us, lovingly inviting us to participate in God’s loving transformation of this whole world.
No matter what distracts us this week, may we each remember how beloved we are – and remind someone else of their beloved-ness, too.
