(Luke 10.38-42) Pentecost 6
© Neil Millar – 21 July 2019
‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’ Okay, a show of hands … Who identifies with Mary in this story?
What about Martha? All the Martha’s, hands up!!
So, what’s it like to hear this passage read, how do you receive it, what sort of thoughts and feelings does it stir? I imagine a few thinking that Martha gets harsh treatment here; even feel a bit annoyed about it. It’s all very well for Mary to be sitting around being ‘spiritual’, we might say, but someone has to peel the veggies and prepare the meal and wash up afterwards. These things don’t just happen. Come on Jesus, you needed a meal, cut the poor woman some slack, her objection needs to be taken seriously, she’s playing a valuable part!!
I’m sure none of us would dream of actually saying such a thing to Jesus, but I wonder how he’d respond if someone did? I’ve been pondering this, and let me tell you what I think he might say. First, I think he’d be glad that we’re engaging honestly with the scripture and encourage us for that. Today is the third in our little series on Bread for the Journey. The theme is ‘the bread of attention’, and attending carefully and honestly to scripture is part of what guides and sustains us as disciples of Jesus. It’s important so, good stuff.
Next, though, I think he’d encourage us to be wary of being too dualistic in our reading of the story, in pitting Martha against Mary or vice versa and identifying too closely with one or the other. To identify just as Martha and say, (I’m a practical person, I’m not good at prayer or study, I just do the behind the scenes stuff), is to sell ourselves short and let ourselves off the hook. There’s more to each of us than that. Likewise, the other way around. It’s not helpful to over-identify as Mary, to say (I’m not good at practicalities, and caring for people’s needs, I leave that for others). I don’t think Jesus is actually setting these two women and their roles over and against each other here. Now, why do I say that, because on first reading it sounds as if he is?
For a start, hospitality is central to the character of God and constantly highlighted as a trait of faithful people of God. Think of stories like Abraham and the three strangers, like Jesus and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. In Luke, the importance of hospitality and kindness to strangers is a thread running through the whole gospel. Remember a few weeks ago – that Samaritan village that refused to show hospitality – it was a low act born of unsavory rivalry. As Jesus and his disciples travel, they seek hospitality, indeed, they depend on it – as did Paul and other missionaries. Remember the priest and Levite in last week’s story who refused to show hospitality to the man lying in the ditch – who passed by on the other side of the road.
The importance of showing hospitality is regularly affirmed in scripture, so let’s be clear that Martha isn’t being criticized for this. She symbolises initiative and welcome – she opened the door of her home to Jesus, invited him in. Without such receptivity, no further listening is possible. She opened her outer door but what about on the inside? Is she creating inner spaciousness for her guest, is she open to deeper connection – to listen and learn, to receive? The text suggests that having welcomed Jesus in, she immediately became busy, a bit stressed and resentful. As my friend Linda Chapman reminded me recently, ‘there’s a short distance between our Martha and our Martyr’. Don’t I know it!!
And, this is where Mary has something to teach us. Christ has entered and now Mary is sitting attentively before him. As such, she is modelling another deeper level of hospitality to God, practising what we’d call contemplation. It’s a practice because it requires commitment and discipline. For Mary to be in this place she has to be quiet and still, to let go of being distracted by other things. It’s not that Martha can’t or couldn’t be doing this, it’s just that she hasn’t yet taken this next step. She welcomed Christ but then, when the distractions came (as they do) she convinced herself that they were the priority, allowed them to set the agenda. She’d taken the first important step – letting him in. But not the step of attending. ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.’
As I hear these words of Jesus, I sense tenderness and concern notcriticism or condemnation. Jesus understands the situation (just as he does with you and me), but he doesn’t settle for second best, he desires that she (and we) step fully into fellowship – that as well as welcoming, we eat the bread of attention.
Our bible is full of invitations to eat this food of the soul, to taste and see (as the Psalmist puts it – 34.8): Look! Behold! Listen! These exhortations recur again and again and again. God is known to those who attend. Think of Moses in Exodus 3, out in the wilderness tending sheep; he sees a flicker of flame in the scrub and he says, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight’ (Ex 3.3). Indeed, the passage seems to emphasize attending. In the very next verse it says: ‘And when the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called him out of the bush.’ If Moses hadn’t turned aside to attend, would God have spoken? Would he have heard? … In this moment, Moses (like Mary) chose the better part.
It’s the same in the New Testament. In John 1, John the Baptist is standing with two of his disciples when Jesus walks past. ‘Look’, says John, ‘here is the lamb of God!’ The two disciples take off after him. Jesus sees them coming and asks, ‘What are you looking for?’ They say, ‘Rabbi (Teacher), where are you staying?’ And he says, ‘Come and see.’ In other words, come and pay attention. Being a ‘disciple’ of Jesus (a learner) is to practice ‘a state of being in which you are looking and listening without interruption’, says Rowan Williams in his comments on this passage (2016.2). Discipleship is a state of awareness, he writes, ‘disciples watch, they remain alert, attentive…’ and this requires ‘a degree of inner stillness’ (2016.6 & 8). Mary modelled discipleship here, she sat with her Lord while Martha ran with her distractions. ‘Mary has chosen the better part’, Jesus says.
But, Martha, dear Martha, you can choose it too. Yes, there are things to do, I don’t deny it. But first spend some time with me, and then you’ll know what is really yours to do. ‘What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action’, the mystic, Meister Eckhart wrote centuries ago. Contemplation leads to right action. Without it, so much of our action (even action for justice) is just busyness – driven and distracting, harried and exhausting.
Which brings me back to the dualistic belief that we are either a Mary or a Martha – a contemplative or an activist. A few weeks ago I was talking to a woman in our carpark after Friendship Group and she asked me about meditation or contemplative prayer. I talked about it as a practice of attending, of being quiet and open in God’s presence, not talking to God but simply available and receptive. ‘That’s not for me’, she said immediately. ‘My mind’s too active … I’m always thinking about something’. In other words, I’m distracted by my thoughts, distracted (perhaps) by my ‘to do’ list, my anxieties, my plans, all those tapes that play out incessantly in our heads. But as Laurence Freeman, the director of the World Community for Christian Meditation often says, ‘we meditate because we’re distracted – if we didn’t get distracted, we wouldn’t need to meditate’. All teachers of contemplative practice acknowledge that distraction is part of the journey. We sit down to meditate and pray, to be still and present to God, and immediately thoughts beat at the door, the Buddhists call it ‘monkey mind’.
We remember something that needs doing – the housework, a call or email, something we forgot at the shops… or we remember an earlier interaction, a slight we received or harsh word we spoke… or we drift off into a daydream. Distractions… they’re forever pressing, and in these moments it’s easy to convince ourselves that there is something else to be getting on with. But, as Linda noted: ‘I wonder whether the resentment that we hear from Martha towards Mary is because she really longs to be able to simply sit and listen. Attend to the Lord. Rest in quiet contemplation.’ Meditation is practice for helping us to be in that place, to offer the deeper hospitality of our selves, to sit at the Lord’s feet without an agenda, simply open to receive.
So, am I a ‘Martha’ or am I ‘Mary’? I think it’s truer to say that I can act like a Martha – I can easily get into the kind of situation that Martha is in, in this story, but I can also settle and be in that quieter place with myself and with my Lord. ‘Mary and Martha live in us’, Linda Chapman writes. ‘Mary becomes unbalanced when she doesn’t engage in necessary active works. There are actions for justice that need our voice. Prayer and action go hand in hand. And, of course, the daily round of tasks doesn’t go away’. But even then, doing the dishes can be profoundly contemplative. Contemplation is not abstraction. It is grounded in and can change the quality of ordinary, everyday life. But the words of the Lord are clear. ‘Martha you are distracted by many things; only one thing is necessary’. Martha, Mary, let me feed you – let yourself feast on the bread of attention.
Referenc:e
Williams R (2016) Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life, SPCK, London.
http://stninians.ht.dstier2.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NM.LK10.38-42.pdf