Luke 10:38-42  As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.   She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”   “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Romans 12:4-6  Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function,  so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.  We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.

Luke 10:38-42 has puzzled me because it seems to fly in the face of a Bible full of admonitions like “bear one another’s burdens,” (Gal. 6:2) “You also should wash one another’s feet,” (Jn. 13:14), to a man who interrupted his trip to give medical attention to a battered man, “Go and do thou likewise, (John 10:33) and of course the ultimate serving admonition from Jesus was, “the greatest among you will be your servant.” John 10:33.  I call this “the togetherness principle.” It is summed up in the Latin phrase, “Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno,” or “One for all, all for one.”  It is the unofficial motto of Switzerland. The togetherness principle says that the goals of the group are more important than the goals of the individual.  You know the cliche, “there’s no I in team.” For God’s purposes to be accomplished we need winning teams.

However it’s really important to be able to hold two principles in tension.  The two principles in tension here are the principle of togetherness and what Dr. Murray Bowen called “the Principle of Self Differentiation.”  The principle of self differentiation establishes where others end and you began or vice versa. Jesus self defined or self differentiated when his family tried to force him to come back home with him after he had started his public ministry.  Christ announced in Mark 3:35, “For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.” Jesus entire ministry would have been derailed if he had not been able to self define and think for himself. 

I believe it God’s intention that we develop a healthy self and that is why He put that little story of Martha being rebuffed by Jesus when she tried to force Mary out of a posture of worship to assume a posture of work.  There’s no way this story affirms ignoring others in distress or the goals of the group as a normal pattern. I believe God is reminding us that everybody needs an intimate and exclusive relationship with the creator where they discover who they are and what they are called to do in the world.  What a blessing you can be to others when you bring to them a self that has been well defined in the presence of God. This means you know your gifts, your strengths and your limitations.

• We all need to be reminded that we are not God.

In this case, Martha had to be reminded that she wasn’t God and therefore couldn’t just go around creating emergencies that other people had to rescue her from.  Mary has to accept that she wasn’t God and therefore wasn’t required to be everyone’s savior who over committed themselves to unrealistic goals. Jesus established himself as the only sovereign in the story.

Although you have every right to expect me to do what I have committed to do that’s not the same as others being able to always determine what I am to be committed to.  If Martha had previously committed to Martha’s goals and the role she was going to play there’s no way Jesus would have supported her sitting at his feet while Martha slaved away. 

•  When the togetherness principle is taken too far it results in toxic groupthink, not far enough and we have toxic individualism.

I believe, to be a healthy individual you need to have a personal relationship with Christ as well as a vibrant corporate relationship with Christ through the significant people he has placed around you.  When “togetherness” becomes all there is we lose the ability to hear that thing God is calling us and no one else to. Furthermore, the inability to think apart from the group is cultish and unhealthy.

“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us’.”  St. Anthony The Great

• Jesus knew that humans would constantly put buildings, performance, technology and other measurables ahead of true worship.

I don’t care if it’s politics, families or churches, Christ constantly gets forgotten in a back room somewhere by the elevation of the groups ambitions. After we, as a group create our ideologies, build our enormous edifices and exhaust ourselves with our ambitious projects we tack the name of Jesus onto it with a dedicatory prayer and claim it was all for HIS glory. Christ knows when we barely have time for him and he was not the center of our lives.  In other words, the group tends to get elevated above the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. For this reason, the Holy Spirit planted a story in the Bible of a formerly sinful woman who was obsessed with the glory of Jesus and who self defined as the most famous worshipper in history.

P.S. Jesus proclaimed that the actions of this worshipping woman would would be constantly retold till the end of time.  The evidence that you are self defining when you say no to a panic stricken “emergency” someone has alerted you too has to be a powerful  revelation of Jesus, otherwise you might just be self centered. 

Matthew 26:13 Truly I tell you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”