Obedience & Freedom

Martha welcomed Jesus into her home and threw herself into preparation — the work of hospitality, the labor of love, the business of being a good host. Mary sat at Jesus's feet and listened to His teaching. Both sisters loved Jesus. Only one was doing what Jesus called "the good portion."

Martha came to Jesus frustrated and asked Him to tell Mary to help. Jesus's answer was gentle but clear: "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."

The good portion was presence. Attention. Abiding at the feet of Jesus while He spoke. Martha's work was not wrong — it was simply not first. The person who abides in His word first does everything else from a different center, with a different orientation. Mary was not avoiding obedience — she was practicing its deepest form.

The woman at the well was guarded. Five marriages, a current partner, the shame of being at the well alone at noon when the other women came in the morning. She knew how to deflect — she tried theology, geography, religion, anything to avoid the conversation going where it was going.

But Jesus stayed on the real thing. He told her what no stranger should have known about her life. And instead of feeling exposed and condemned, she ran to her village and said: "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" The truth that knew her did not destroy her — it freed her.

This is what it means to know the truth in the way Jesus describes. Not information about God at a safe distance, but a truth that sees all the way through you and loves what it sees — and in loving it, begins to change it.

After Jesus healed a man born blind, the religious leaders interrogated him. They wanted him to say Jesus was a sinner. They called Jesus a sinner. They questioned the man's parents. They questioned the man again. The pressure was enormous — this was an organized religious establishment demanding he deny what he knew to be true.

His answer became more confident with each round of interrogation. By the end, he was almost defiant: "Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I see." He held the truth he had experienced like a man holding the only solid thing in a room full of shifting ground.

They threw him out. Jesus then found him and revealed Himself to him. The man who had been born blind and then thrown out by the establishment ended up in the presence of the Son of God — because he would not let go of the truth that had set him free.