Choosing the Better Part — A Sunday Sermon on Luke 10:38–42
I suspect the majority of us here would likely identify with Martha:
Just get on with it!
Sit when the job is done, and not a minute before!
And, dear Jesus! THERE IS SO MUCH WORK TO DO!!!
How’s it EVER GONNA get done???!!!
Is anyone gonna help us???
After all…
What’s the point of sitting at Jesus’ feet, when the dishes must be done?
What’s the point of praying in this building, when there is so much need in the world?
What’s the point of all this worship with no REAL ACTION afterwards?
What about the poor? The disenfranchised? The abused? The homeless? The injustices all around us?
What about the hateful rhetoric, hateful people, and and the culture of violence which underwrites it all?
In case you haven’t guessed, I’m sympathetic to anyone in the congregation today who is a little peeved at Jesus when he seems to scold Martha for her crankiness at Mary. Presumably, the Bethany sisters have a house full of folks traveling with the Jesus entourage — at the very least, the Teacher, and a number of his disciples. The cultural expectations around providing table hospitality for guests in situations like these are high. The Gospel writer gives us no indication about how much time Martha and Mary had to prepare to provide for everyone, but it seems as if all the guests simply appear at the door…and whaddya know, they’re just in time for dinner!
Oh, and it’s not lost on this 21st century preacher that none of the MEN in the house seem to be inclined to pitch in to help…
Who can blame Martha for being frantic and stressed?
Meanwhile, there sits Mary.
Sitting with the men — as if she belongs there!
Sitting at the feet of Jesus — occupying a space and a posture as if she’s equal with them — as an equal, for goodness’ sake!
And Jesus, fully aware of the social conventions Mary is ignoring does not rebuke her, but welcomes her.
In this moment of active inactivity, Mary is ignoring the expectations of her culture and angst of her sister, for something more important — to hear the Good News from the Teacher himself.
In her busyness to attend to all the details, Martha is unable to see the scene for what it is. She is missing a holy moment with the Holy One. The dishes will wait. The dishes CAN wait. For a few moments, anyway. Relationships are more important than tasks. Rather than scolding her for sibling rivalry, Jesus is inviting Martha to pause, to see what is really going on, and to take her place with Mary, to sit and to listen.
Jesus is headed to Jerusalem. The movement is gaining momentum, and also gathering resistance. God only knows what awaits him there. These few moments of quiet conversation will never happen again.
Breathe, Martha…breathe!
Earlier this week, as I was reflecting on this Gospel lesson, I recalled that this passage was the basis for my first sermon at Trinity Church — on July 18, 2004 — three days after my official start date as a priest in this place. Because of the three year cycle of our lectionary, this is the sixth time during my tenure we’ve read this lesson together. I wished I had the text from that first sermon fifteen years ago, not so I could recycle it, but so I could revisit my own naïveté as a new priest in a new place. Given my own proclivities, I’m sure the sermon was much more about emulating Martha than sitting with Mary.
This week, though, I saw something in the text I’ve literally never seen. This passage is NOT about two different spiritualities — the active and the contemplative — which are constantly in tension with one another. This passage isn’t about how we need “Mary types” to pray and we need “Martha types” to get the real work done. The passage, I believe is about something else. It’s about the ability to choose rightly at the right moment.
If we read Jesus’ words to Martha with an inflection of compassionate invitation, we don’t hear him asking her to “be more like Mary.” Listen again, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part…”
The word we use around the Church for knowing how to choose rightly in the right moment is “discernment.” And discernment cannot be done whilst overwhelmed with distractions. Discernment requires some stillness. Some listening. Some patience. Choosing to sit still when everything within us and around us presses us towards activity is an act, not of religious impracticality, but of holy resistance to a culture of freneticism.
In her book, “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,” artist and author Jenny Odell reflects deeply on our present culture of distraction and the ways in which the distractions shape us towards a state of continual stress and perpetually divided attention. She argues passionately for doing nothing in order to give ourselves space to see who we are and who we are to be so we can do what we need to do. She writes, “Simple awareness is the seed of responsibility.”
“Simple awareness is the seed of responsibility.”
Two weeks ago, in my first sermon after sabbatical, I invited us to begin to think of the city of Wauwatosa as our primary context for ministry. To turn our attention to the 48,000+ people who share this city with us is not to ignore the needs of the greater Milwaukee area, our country, or our world.
Rather, focusing our attention amidst all of the distractions is to discover the opportunities for ministry right outside our doors. This is the beginning of settling our anxiety about things we cannot directly control, and focusing on the ways Jesus is calling us to participate in proclaiming the Good News right here and right now. This is the beginning of discernment. And discernment is not doing nothing. Discernment is holy work. Discernment is about becoming aware, and “Simple awareness is the seed of responsibility.”
To begin the process, I’m inviting us to pray specifically for Wauwatosa in our daily prayers. And guess what? The Prayer Book has a prayer for that!
Heavenly Father, in your Word you have given us a vision of that holy City to which the nations of the world bring their glory: Behold and visit, we pray, the cities of the earth, and in particular our own city of Wauwatosa. Renew the ties of mutual regard which form our civic life. Send us honest and able leaders. Enable us to eliminate poverty, prejudice, and oppression, that peace may prevail with righteousness, and justice with order, and that men and women from different cultures and with differing talents may find with one another the fulfillment of their humanity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
You can find the prayer on page 825 in the Prayer Book, but we will be including it in the Sunday prayers of the people for the next few weeks, in the weekly E-news, and printing it in the monthly newsletter. And for those of you who don’t live in Wauwatosa proper, feel free to pray for your own city too.
In addition to praying, earlier this week, with some help from a couple of parishioners, I now have some maps of Wauwatosa to help us begin to visualize the place in which this church has been planted for the sake of the Gospel. Beginning in August, there will be opportunities for parishioners to join me in a series of prayer walks — in which we will walk the city limits. We will walk, not only as a way to pray for the city, but also as a way to pray that our eyes will be opened to see the city in perhaps a different way. I’m calling these prayer walk opportunities for “active contemplation.” I’m already praying these walks will make us more aware of how we’re being called to serve, because, “Simple awareness is the seed of responsibility.”
In a little while, we’re going to gather around the font and baptize Vanessa into the Body of Christ. And before we do, we will renew our own Baptismal Covenant. We will recommit ourselves to prayer and worship, the holy work of justice and peace-making, the challenging work of loving our neighbors as ourselves and respecting the dignity of every human being. These are big promises, and if we’re not careful we can treat them as churchy words with little bearing upon our lives outside these walls. But baptisms are times when we can reconnect with our identity as the Body of Christ to serve the world in Jesus’ name.
We have this Gospel moment, you and I. The distractions abound. We can get lost in them. Jesus calls us today, not to ignore all the responsibilities we have, but rather, to choose rightly — to choose in THIS moment of our parochial life how we will respond to his call to work and witness, learn and serve.
We can choose the better part.
And it will be enough.
And it will never be taken away.
