transcript of a sermon gave on February 3rd, 2024.

Before I begin, I want to read this week’s passage again, just so that it is fresh in your mind as you listen. This translation is the NLT, so it may be a little different from the Bibles on your tables. The title of the passage is,

Jesus Visits Martha and Mary

38 As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39 Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught. 40 But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.”

41 But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! 42 There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38-42, NLT)

What is your mystery, God?

“What is your mystery, God?” is the lingering question that has remained in me ever since the first time I read this passage. What is it that Mary knows? And what is it that Martha doesn’t know? Why does Martha say it seems unfair that she is doing all the work while her sister sits and listens to Jesus? Why does Jesus not simply tell Martha what the “one thing worth being concerned about” actually is? How is Martha supposed to find out?

If you replace all the Marthas with Kevin, I think you might get a glimpse of where I was, and still am, spiritually. But to help you understand why I have been feeling this way, I want to take you on a journey. And as we progress toward the end of this journey, my hope is to affirm you, dear travelers of faith, to be not afraid of the courageous act of wondering and wandering.

Upbringing (mental establishment of righteousness)

Like Martha, my upbringing trained me to learn that work made me righteous. My parents always did more than they had to and wanted to, because they knew best that in a meritocratic society, to do more was to survive. Their survival mentality was instilled in me from a young age, and even until now, I still find myself being anxious when I am not doing anything productive.

I was also in a competitive environment for most of my pre-college years. My friends were all overachievers, and I would often suffer from feeling like an imposter, or inferior. Matters would become worse when they would become a point of comparison. As an average student in this environment, I felt guilty for not doing justice to the opportunities that my parents gave me, and shameful because I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t thriving.

College (confusion, responsibilities, and ownership)

This mental establishment of righteousness as work remained in me as I entered college, newly determined to be an absolute academic machine. As I made a deal with my dad from the beginning that I would finish undergrad in three years, I worked extra hard to make it happen, filling up credits and making myself competitive for graduate school. Liberated from my parents’ influence and my competitive environment, I thrived in college. I finally found things that I loved studying, and felt deep fulfillment in giving my all for academic work.

But strangely, my framework of righteousness permeated into my religious work as well. In my second semester here, I joined a small group in an Asian American Christian organization, which was a taste of home in my otherwise very foreign experience of being an international student here. Inspired by the way they treated me with love and compassion, I led a small group of my own the following year, and became deeply engaged with the organization. There were many growths that I went through in my experience, but in hindsight, I was undeniably overworked. Again, I felt myself feeling affirmed by the work that I was doing to prove my righteousness at the face of God. Though the amount of work that I could do was ever increasing, I was constantly rewarded by a sense of righteousness as I added more and more onto my plate. As Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing, I too, was distracted by all the work that I was doing. And because of my distraction, I did not quite have the space to be sitting at the Lord’s feet and listening to what he taught, like Mary did.

Then, all of this came crumbling down last semester.

Embodied Faith (deconstructing, and reconstructing)

As I led Bible Buddies, which, if you don’t know, is a weekly small group I lead with Will here at Pres House, I met a bunch of Marys. To me, in this story, what Mary represents is curiosity. A curiosity to ponder what Jesus might really be saying in a parable, a curiosity to voice the truly reckless force of rebellion or challenge towards faith, and the curiosity that allows our faith to mature. The people who joined our weekly meetings pushed me to break apart the assumptions, the givens, and the constants that I used to presume in all matters that are religious, and be curious towards how my faith changes as I play with variables I never fathomed of playing with. No matter for how long or how deeply ingrained my different definitions of right and wrong was, I gained the courage to question them one by one. And in my journey so far, the posture of curiosity has been truly liberating.

The Luke passage presents an image of this posture of curiosity—not in cooking a huge meal or cleaning up the house at the presence of Jesus, but to simply sit, and be curious towards the way God may move me. Unlike work, and things I can do, a realization that dawned on me was that the “one thing worth being concerned about” is not necessarily something I can work to understand, something that can be written in text for me to consume. Instead, it is a mystery that is meant to take a person on a journey. When I finally accepted spirituality not as a quest for the meaning of it all but as a journey, it slowed me down a lot.

A very tangible way I felt this “slowing down” was Taekwondo. When Erica first mentioned that this is a spiritual practice for her, I thought I misheard. The Taekwondo I knew was an after-school activity where I used to run around with my friends and learn some cool kicks, back when I was in Korean elementary school. So with skepticism, I went to the first practice at the Pres House Dojo upstairs.

But as we eased into the practice with a meditation and a breathing exercise, quickly followed by what I would call a vigorous warmup session, I teleported into a real sense of connection with my own self, void of the abstractions and traditions of religion that used to define spirituality for me. Simply, through feeling one movement at a time, I was turning my initial skepticism into a curiosity. In a way I had never felt before, I felt present with the body that God had gifted me, and felt a deep appreciation for it and all the bodies around me as we trained together. It was perhaps the kind of experience that one has when they “stop being worried and upset over all these details.” (41) It may sound strange and otherworldly, but I think sometimes, that is what experiences and journeys of faith can feel like.

It is difficult to get across how far these acts are pushing on the boundaries of what was my upbringing, my sense of religion, and my sense of what is right or wrong. And I think that not being able to put a point on it, is itself an experience that we are all familiar with. Maybe for you, it is singing songs of praise that makes you feel weird and uncomfortable. Maybe it is prayer. Maybe it is meditation, or maybe it is Taekwondo. Maybe it is service to the community, maybe it is dealing with how Christians are perceived nowadays. Maybe it is sitting at the face of the world’s deepest tragedies. Whatever it may be, I know that there is some discomfort involved in being travelers of faith.

I assure you that those pain points are worth a deeper look. I assure you that they are worth leaning into. Though it may take a bit of courage and a little discomfort in the beginning, I think that facing the mystery that God has planned for each of us in a special way is an act of faith. And my hope for you and also for myself is that, as Jesus told Mary, whatever it may be that we discover in this journey of faith, it is something that will not be taken away from us. Amen.