Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 38:3 (Summer 2024)
Article: Martha The Minister: A Sermon On Luke 10:38–42
Author: Alison Gerber

PP 38:3 (Summer 2024) p. 21

Martha The Minister: A Sermon On Luke 10:38–42

Alison Gerber

Alison Gerber was pastor of Second Congregational Church, Peabody, Massachusetts, and is doing a PhD in Preaching at Baylor University. She has won the Lilly Strengthening the Quality of Preaching Award (2021), the Keith Wilhite Award for research on preaching (2022), and the CBE Writing Contest (2023). She teaches Empowering Preaching Women at Truett Seminary.

I was sixteen years old when I heard the second most influential sermon of my life. Truthfully, I’m not even sure it was a sermon. For whatever reason, my pastor had failed to prepare anything that Sunday. Instead, he waltzed into the pulpit and said, “Tonight I’m just going to tell you what I do from week to week. About what I do as a minister.”

That thoroughly unplanned message was very much planned, I think, for me. I had heard a call to ministry before, but this time, with a new clarity, it was all I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted his week to be my week. I wanted his life to be my life. I wanted to be a minister too.

Do you have a story like mine? Of the day you knew you wanted to become a minister?

Serve Jesus

Did you know Martha wanted to be a minister? Not an ordained, seminary-trained kind of minister, but she did want to minister to Jesus.

Did you know that the word “minister” also means, “to attend to the needs of someone”? It comes from an old Latin word that means “servant.” And this is what Martha did—she wanted to attend to the needs of Jesus. She wanted to serve Jesus.

That’s something we don’t say enough about Martha. Too many sermons paint her in a wholly negative light: Martha the failure, Martha the bad one, Martha who wouldn’t sit down. Martha who did everything wrong. “Martha, Martha, Martha.” But there was one thing Martha did get right. Martha wanted to serve Jesus.

She wanted to minister to Jesus, just like us.

When Martha first heard that Jesus was coming to her house, imagine what must have happened next. She had to get ready. She would’ve picked up her basket, and picked up her pouch of copper coins, and run down to the market to buy fixings for a feast. That’s Martha, wanting to minister to Jesus.

While she’s at the market, I can picture her, dreaming up the dishes she might make. Maybe her special herb bread with fennel and cumin? Maybe that baked fish with field peas and roasted onions? Perhaps those red lentil sesame seed pancakes her brother has always liked, the ones you dipped in date honey? Oh yes, nothing less than the best for Jesus. That’s Martha, wanting to minister to Jesu...