You Cannot Be The One On The Floor

There was a Sunday in June where the whole room went, and she stood at the front with a microphone in her hand and a pastoral eye on the door.

It was one of those. It had been building for about three weeks and it came, and it came properly, and there were people on the floor and people weeping and a woman in her seventies who had not raised her hands in nine years standing there with them straight up.

And she ran it. That is what she does. She watched the room, she kept the sound right, she caught the eye of the two people who needed to be with somebody, she saw the man near the back who was frightened and got somebody to him inside forty seconds, and she made sure it did not run past the point where it would start to be about itself.

She did all of that extremely well and she does not resent one second of it.

And at some point in the middle of it she became aware of something she has been aware of before and has never let herself finish the thought about.

Everybody in that room got to receive except her.

She has been in charge of the altar in that church for fourteen years. Fourteen years of moving among people while they are on the floor, with a blanket, with a tissue, with a hand on a shoulder, keeping the room safe, and never once, not in fourteen years, has she been the one who is down.

It is not that she is not allowed. Nobody would stop her. It is that the moment she goes down, forty people are unattended, and she knows it, and so the thing in her that would go down does not even start, and it has not started for so long that she is genuinely unsure whether it is still there.

She said to her husband once, in the car, half joking: I have run a thousand altars and I have never been to one.

He laughed, and then he did not laugh, and neither of them said anything else about it.

He defended the one who was sitting down

Let me say what this is before anything else, and then I will keep to it.

Nothing is being asked of you. There is no suggestion at the end of this that you should hand the altar to somebody and go down yourself, and no arrangement to make, and nothing to try next Sunday. If a line of it turns into a plan then it has failed and you may drop it. You are being given something and asked for nothing.

Now, there is a scene in Luke that everybody has heard preached and that is almost never preached from this angle.

There are two sisters. One is serving, and there is a great deal to do, and the guest is important. The other one is sitting down.

And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.Luke 10:39

And the sister who is working comes and asks Him to send the other one back to the kitchen.

Now look at what He does, because this is the part for you. He does not agree, and He does not merely decline. He defends her. He says her name, and He says that she has chosen the good part, and then He says something about it that is worth having word for word: which shall not be taken away from her.

Shall not be taken away. That is a protection clause. He is putting a fence around a woman's right to be sitting down, against somebody who thought she should be up and had a completely reasonable case.

So hear this, standing at the front with a microphone in your hand: there is a seat with your name on it that nobody in that building has the authority to take. That is not my consolation; it is what His word records Christ defending against a hardworking woman with a fair point, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my sentence who takes a protection clause out of a domestic argument and lays it over a woman who has run a thousand altars.

Now let me be careful about Martha, because a great deal of harm gets done in that direction and I am not going to do it here.

Nothing in this is a criticism of the serving. What you do at the front of that room is real work that keeps people safe, and the man near the back who was frightened in June had somebody with him in forty seconds because you were watching, and that is not a lesser thing than lying on a floor. The Holy Spirit is the One who makes that true in a person rather than merely accurate on a page.

He is not correcting the working. He is protecting the sitting. Those are different, and Luke 10 is only ever heard as the first because people preach it at busy congregations, and what it actually contains is a guarantee issued to somebody who was already down.

And here is the one I most want you to have. The thing in you that would go down and does not start any more.

You said you are unsure whether it is still there. It is. That is not encouragement, it is what the verse means: which shall not be taken away from her. Not by fourteen years, not by a rota, not by forty people who would be unattended. A thing that shall not be taken away is not a thing that quietly perishes from disuse while somebody is busy.

You have a seat and it has not been given to anybody else. Scripture puts a guarantee around it in the Lord's own words, and the Holy Spirit has been holding it for fourteen years in a woman who has never once had time to sit in it.