Service With a Smile: Sunday Reflection

This morning’s Gospel reading is Luke 10:38–42:

Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” 

The Lord said to her in reply, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

Pull up a chair, everyone, so that I may yet again regale you with a tale that proves just how old I am. 

When I was a child, before two waves of oil embargoes gripped the country and forced a change in the economic model of gas stations, it was de rigueur for the tires to roll over pneumatic hoses, ring a bell, and prompt an attendant to provide service at the pumps. They would pump the gas, check your tires, wash your windows, and make sure you didn’t need to top off your oil or windshield-washer reserves. Self-service was an option at that time, but not a terribly popular one, especially since these stations routinely promised “service with a smile.”

Not long after the oil crises in the 1970s, however, service went out of style. And smiles did as well, perhaps, as gassing up became a lonely chore.

Today’s Gospel and readings brought this to mind today, as they address the need for service, but in many contexts. Service to the Lord allows us to exercise charity and love of neighbor. It provides us with formation for the Trinitarian caritas to which we aspire, but how we orient ourselves to that mission matters.

Let’s start with our first reading from Genesis. Abraham is greeted by three men and immediately senses the importance of their visit. Abraham offers them hospitality despite their status as complete strangers, and asks that they accept his service as a favor to himself. When they agree, Abraham hastens to provide the best his household can offer in food and rest, waiting on them while they enjoyed his hospitality. At the end of the visit, the three men inform him that his barren wife Sarah will bear a son, as a blessing from the Lord.

This is, of course, God’s plan all along. He has put His finger on Abraham’s heart to become the father of nations. That plan requires Abraham’s cooperation, of course, because the Lord does not rob us of our dignity and strip us of free will. Abraham’s service — and his apparent delight in providing it — shows that his formation in God’s love will allow him to complete his mission, including the heartbreaking test that Abraham will endure, to serve the Lord.

Our second reading offers another look at dedication to service. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul writes about the sufferings in which he gladly rejoices, in order to “bring to completion for you the Word of God.” This is a different kind of service than Abraham offered, for a new model of salvation. Paul’s service is to take on afflictions in the body of Christ, the Church, so that it may grow through his own pain and sacrifice and have Jesus’ saving Word reach all nations. Paul takes this on gladly and completely, formed through Jesus’ own intervention into an evangelist and theologician whose teachings will become the foundation for disciples of all nations. 

Conversely, today’s Gospel shows us the very human side of our response to service and its meanings in this passage about two sisters, who loved Jesus and whom Jesus loved. There is no doubt of this in any of the Gospels; both Martha and Mary are friends of Jesus and devoted to Him. However, Martha resents the division of labor at this particular visit, where she toils with all of the burdens of hospitality — a very important cultural value then, as now. In a sense, Mary is manning the self-service pumps while Martha is trying to provide “service with a smile,” and getting frustrated by the lack of help. 

Jesus does not dispute this, but instead teaches Martha that service is not more important than His love itself. “You are anxious and worried about many things,” Jesus tells her, a rebuke about her concern for hospitality and the way it overshadows the opportunity to just rest in His presence. Jesus came to serve them, in that sense, and Martha is overlooking that effort and the formation He is trying to provide. 

This distinction is easy to mistake, and it’s difficult to parse. In my experience, it has been easy to mistake service for discipleship. Or to put it another way: it’s easy to get so focused on tasks that I forget to listen to the voice of the Lord in my heart. In a real way, it’s missing the forest for the trees. 

The best example from our shared experience might be weddings. What is the purpose of a wedding? It is to bring a man and woman together in the shared sacrament to unlock God’s grace on their marriage and new family. That’s all that really matters — and yet we have turned weddings into massively complex social events. (This is not at all new; Jesus performs His first miracle at Cana to prevent a family from social humiliation at a wedding.) if you ever want to see anxiety and worry about many things overshadowing a core purpose, just hang around a bride’s family on her wedding day. 

And it’s not that the attendant hospitality and logistical issues don’t matter at all. Of course they do! The families want to ensure that the feast and all of the traditions are satisfied, just as in Cana. Jesus understood it at that wedding, and He understands it at the house of Mary and Martha as well. Service when directed in love for others is a good thing, but it is not the only good that must be served or the most important. It is far more important to attend to the Word of God, especially in those moments where He is present, than to focus so much on tasks that we overlook Him.

Jesus’ gentle rebuke to Martha should guide us all to keep perspective on what matters most. We must serve others and do so with joy, but we must serve the Lord and attend to Him first. If we do that, we will find that our service comes with a smile naturally, without resentment, and without scorekeeping, as our anxieties and worries fade. If we do not find joy in service, we should consider whether our priorities have shifted to the service itself rather than who it serves.  

Previous reflections on these readings:

The front page image is “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary” by Pieter Aersten, 1553. On display at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in the Netherlands. Via Wikimedia Commons. 

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature that looks at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.