PRIDE 4

Luke states very simply that while Martha opened her home, Mary “sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.” Can you imagine what went through Martha’s mind? It was Martha’s home and she was kind enough to let her sister live there. After all, that is what sisters do, right? How could Mary be so inconsiderate of her guest and her SISTER by ignoring all that remained to be done? But Martha said nothing. If the job was going to be done, she would have to do it.

If you are a parent, if you have ever been an employer or supervisor, or if you have ever had responsibility for another human being, you know the pain Martha felt at that moment. You make decisions and take actions that you feel are in the best interest of all. Do you get cooperation? Are you thanked? Do you gain understanding? Too often those in your care are clueless. It hurts. They owe you better than that.

Pride’s trick is to take a need or a hurt and turn it into self-pity. It stores away the slight for a later time when it can be used as a club against the thankless person. It justifies the use of that club by reminding how hard you worked and how much you sacrificed. After all, you deserve better! Pride knows entitlement but nothing of grace and forgiveness.

Paul writes to the Philippians, “in humility consider others better than yourselves” (Phil 2:3). Martha seems the epitome of this verse. She didn’t say anything to Mary about not helping. She was doing her best to provide Jesus with a good meal. She was simply doing the humble, Christian thing by putting others needs ahead of her own. Luke tells us something unpleasant happened in the process. She became “distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.” Pride pulled a switch. What started as an effort to serve others became an effort to serve food. So much had to be done that the reason for doing it got lost.

PRIDE 3

One of the tragic consequences of the sin of pride is its ability to take something good and twist it into a bargaining chip. The bargain was that Martha would open her home to Jesus and give him a wonderful meal. Jesus would complete the deal by saying how grateful he was, what a gracious host Martha had been, and leave with some words of wisdom, which would bless her home.

That does not sound like a bad trade. We often give in order to get. Pride argues that giving is the only way to get, and life’s disappointments seem at times to underscore that message. Pride cannot accept grace.

Grace is kindness given where it is not earned or deserved. Jesus came first to give and without pride. That is the story of his suffering and finally his death on the cross. He died for us to give us life by taking our sin on his shoulders. God raised him from the dead and now he gives this gift of life to all who will receive it. He didn’t do this to wrangle a thank you. There is nothing we can give back to him for this gift he has given. He believes his gift of grace will change our lives, that we will be grateful, and that we will become giving people because of his gift. This does not make his grace a give-to-get transaction because that would assume that somewhere down the line we could expect Jesus to call in our account so that we would repay him. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He gives simply believing his gift will do what it is intended to do, give us life. He believes the Holy Spirit then will produces new fruit from our lives in response to that gift. Later on we will examine how that works.