I want to take you with me on a very personal journey over the next month, one I hope has the potential—given the collateral damage of 2020—to bring healing to your heart, relationships, and our communities. More on that next week, but this week I want to give you some background.
Last year at this time, my mom and I decided to read through Augustine’s Confessions together. After the Bible, the Confessions—written in the 400s—is one of the most important books in the Christian tradition. Further, it’s far less intimidating than Augustine’s less personal, 1000-plus-page City of God. We just finished before Christmas and there was one prayer toward the end of the book that arrested my attention, helped me immensely, and is my primary focus going into the new year:
“My heart is deeply wrought upon [literally, my heart is bustling about], Lord, when in the neediness of this my life the words of Your Holy Scriptures strike upon it.”[1]
You may need to read it over a couple of times but when I first read it, it wasn’t even Christmas yet, and I definitely had an anxious, bustling heart about many things. (Again, more on that next week.) In the great translation I read, there was a footnote under the larger context of the prayer that revealed that Augustine was thinking about the story of Mary and Martha when he wrote it. Moreover, it was Martha specifically he was thinking about who, like him, had an anxious, bustling heart. Here’s the simple story that struck my heart and that we’ll unpack over the next three weeks:
“Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.’”
Luke 10:38-42, ESV
If possible, read through the passage several times in preparation for what we’ll share. I promise you, if you do, you’ll be blessed and I can’t think of any passage that has more to say to us going into 2021 than this one. Here’s the outline we’ll follow:
- Mary listened. (Part 2 of 4)
- Mary listened to Jesus. (Part 3 of 4)
- Jesus said that Mary teaches us a better way to live. (Part 4 of 4)
If you’d like, you can get an overview of where we’ll be going in this series by listening to this message I just preached at Ashland Church in Voorhees, NJ here. The sermon begins at about 40:10.
[1] Augustine’s Confessions, Second Edition translated by F.J Sheed (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co., 2006), 261.