Mary has discovered the one thing most important by choosing to sit at my feet. She is undistracted, and I won’t take this privilege from her.” Luke 10:42 TPT
Yesterday we saw that Jesus grew in grace, wisdom and favor during the first 30 years of His life. That growth happened as He continued to grow in His relationship with God that prepared Him for His baptism and beginning of His earthly ministry. Scripture tells us He continued to have a close and intimate relationship with His Father to focus on doing His will not His own.
In today’s Scripture we can see two sisters who Jesus visited with. In the culture of their day it was very important to serve every visitor and go above and beyond to show them hospitality. Women or servants were the ones who prepared the house, made the meals, and waited on the visitors. But in this instance there were several things happening that were quite revolutionary. Mary the one sister was sitting at the feet of Jesus instead of helping to take care of the preparations. This was a cultural taboo because “sitting at the feet” of a Rabbi meant a posture of being a disciple and learning from the teacher. Women were not considered to be disciples and had no need of learning, spiritual or otherwise.
But today was different, Mary was resting at Jesus’ feet as Martha her sister was busy making all the preparations. After some time Martha had enough. Besides being embarrased by her sister putting herself in an unwelcome place, she was being forced to prepare the visit for Jesus by herself. She boldly went up to Jesus and dema.nded that Jesus make Mary help her. I can almost hear her in exasperation saying, “Jesus, please tell her to help me, I’m doing this for You!” But Jesus surprised her with His response of today’s verse. He just broke all the cultural and spiritual rules of the day and changed the culture forever.
The Amplified Bible it explains it better, only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part [that which is to her advantage], which will not be taken away from her.” In the Hebrew “Mary has chosen the good part” means; recognizing the good that is being done, familiarizing oneself. So this passage literally says, Mary was learning from Jesus the Teacher and she recognized how good and beneficial it was to her and He in turn also recognized her and was not going to deny her this opportuity. Now what Martha was doing was not wrong, she was doing what was expected, and made her feel like she was being successful, but it was not beneficial to her. Mary on the other hand found that it was more beneficial to spend time with the Teacher and learning from Him, than for her to do things for Him. She was not just seeking the Kingdom, but His righteousness (Matthew 6:33).
Tomorrow we will look at two Old Testament accounts that confirms that our focus although not bad, can be distracting and keep us from what is truly beneficial.
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