Sermon-Becoming 'Cross' People

It was a great privilege to lead the Church of England’s National Online Service broadcast on Sunday 20th July 2025. You can watch the recording at this link. The text of my homily, based on Colossians 1.15-28 and Luke 10.38-42 is below.
When we are baptised, we become adopted children of God. Part of one great, growing and global family of faith.

But even members of the most faithful families can sometimes find it hard to get along!

In our gospel reading today Jesus pays a visit to his friends Mary, Martha and their brother Lazarus - and we find an argument brewing between the two sisters over who does the household chores. Lazarus is noticeably absent!

While Jesus is speaking, Mary sits at his feet, listening attentively. Martha complains to Jesus - does he not care that she has been left to do all the work? Martha asks Jesus to tell Mary to come and help. He replies:

‘Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’

In trying to make sense of what that better part is – to decide what the one thing is that Jesus is talking about - it is tempting to read this passage through a lens of conflict. To pit Martha’s busyness on one side against Mary’s attentive listening on the other. To make this a story about action versus contemplation. Doing versus being. We might even ask ourselves whether we are more of a Mary or a Martha type of person - as if these faithful sisters are binary opposites – somehow entirely unrelated.

But when we think about the situation like this we are missing the point entirely.

If we look carefully at what Jesus says, he doesn’t condemn Martha as a bad person or denounce what she is doing. He isn’t pitting one sister or activity against another. In fact, quite the reverse - he seeks to bring both sisters together – through him. He says Martha is worried and distracted and calls on her to refocus – on Him.

This is the defining feature of Christian discipleship - the one thing that matters. All we say, all we do must flow through and from Jesus Christ.

All our activity, all our relationships, all our prayers, must be through Him.

Hang on a minute, I hear you ask – Martha appealed to Jesus to get Mary to help! Isn’t that what a relationship with others through Jesus looks like?

Well – no. Martha appeals to Jesus through her own frustration. She wanted Mary to do what she expected her to do. She couldn’t accept Mary’s freedom to sit and listen to Jesus. Meeting one another through Christ means seeing each other as Christ sees us. Acknowledging and embracing the freedom each of us has been given to be the person that God has made us to be.

In appealing to Jesus for help in the way that she did, Martha wasn’t really acting through him at all. She was seeking to control him!

How often do we do the same - in what we say or do or how we pray? Are we truly acting through Christ or through our own self interest?

Do we encounter one another through conflict and control - or through mercy and compassion?

Jesus teaches us that truly living our lives through Him means an end to conflict and control, disputes and frustrations.

In his letter to the Colossians, drawing on wisdom from an ancient hymn, St Paul explains that true peace – not just within ourselves or between members of our family – but peace among the whole of creation - can only come from living in this way. It is through Christ, he says “that God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

So let us be a family of cross people! Not seeking conflict - going through life seeing other people as objects to be controlled - which is a sure route to frustration as Martha found out. But by encountering each other and the world around us through the amazing grace that was revealed by Christ on the cross and the peace that passeth all understanding.

Amen