6th Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 11, Year C – Katharine Armentrout
KEEPING THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING
First: Let me say that when I hear this story I get really irritated – This story has become almost a cliché – You can hear people thinking: “Oh that’s just Martha, fussing away in the kitchen again… and whining to Jesus.”
It has made it easy to hear this story only as a story of a frustrated woman in the kitchen
and to ignore the important teaching of Jesus.
I think Luke could just as easily have made the story about the brothers, James and John – It would go like this:
James welcomes Jesus to his home but stays outside to finish work on a boat that Jesus will need in the morning. But his brother, John, goes inside, sits at the feet of Jesus as disciples did, and did not help James caulk the keel.
James gets frustrated and irritated that John isn’t helping with this important task for Jesus. He fusses at Jesus: “Make that lazy John help me.”
And Jesus replies:
“John has chosen the better part.”
I think when we put James and John in the story it makes it easier to hear the point Jesus is making – that we need to listen to His Word, put it in us, then do our work.
And by the way, was Jesus criticizing Martha for being in the kitchen preparing food for them?
I don’t think so. Think of the story of Peter’s mother-in-law who had been ill. Jesus lifted her up. He cured her and then she began to prepare a meal for the disciples. No criticism there. So it isn’t being in the kitchen that Jesus was focused on.
Instead it was Martha’s state of mind that was the issue– One writer put it this way: .
“Jesus didn’t call Martha out for her hospitality. It was not her cooking, cleaning, or serving that bothered him.
Notice the actual problem he named: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.’
Now the root word for “worry” is “strangle” or “seize by the throat and tear.” Think about that – when we worry we are strangling ourselves!!
And the root meaning of the word “distraction” is “a separation or a dragging apart of something that should be whole.”
These are very strong words and tell us what we do to ourselves when we get wrapped up in worry and frustration. When we lose sight of the main thing.
Martha, like many of us I think, had let herself get into a state of frustration and anxiety —
“[S]he could not enjoy the company of Jesus, savor his presence, find inspiration in her work, receive anything he wished to offer her, or show him genuine love.
Instead, all she could do was question his love when she said: “Lord, do you not care?,
and fixate on herself when she said: “My sister has left me to do all the work by myself”
and she then does what a therapist would call “triangulate”. She said to Jesus: “Tell her then to help me.” Debi Thomas, Journey with Jesus. July 2029
How many of us have found ourselves in just such a state???
Getting ready for an important financial meeting, preparing a fundraiser for non-profit or putting on a reception here at church.
And we get focused only on how it will go, worried about lack of support, etc.
We plan, and organize, and get involved, often taking on far too much. Then we get resentful and irritable and angry with others who don’t have the same commitment that we’ve shown.
But, my friends, that is not the discipleship that Jesus is trying to teach us.
When we let ourselves get wrapped around the axel, when we get in a snit over a project, we are no longer serving the Lord; we’re serving the meeting or the event and, to some extent, our own egos.
We have gotten distracted from serving Christ and we are focused on the event only.
I know I have been guilty of that state of mind many times. So do we do about that?
What did Jesus say in response to Martha’s distraction?
He said: “Mary has chosen the better part.” Mary who was sitting and listening to Jesus.
“Mary has chosen the better part.” Now I don’t know about you, but I would have liked a bit more delineation with that answer.
Was he saying: I want all my disciples to be quiet contemplatives. You need to sit so that you can be learning, studying and praying all the time.
Was Jesus saying that contemplative discipleship is preferred to an active life of discipleship?
I don’t think so.
“When we hear Jesus say, ‘Mary has chosen the better part’ we should not assume that Jesus was opposed to industriousness.
Remember that Jesus Himself traveled. He taught. He cured. He fed.
He raised from the dead, and then he sent the seventy to do likewise.” Don Armentrout, Syntheses July 22, 2007
So what was his point? Is Jesus, who has just told the parable of the Good Samaritan, which was full of active discipleship, now saying that sitting at His feet is the better thing to do than serving him and serving others?
The answer is “No”. Instead I think Jesus was saying we need to make the First thing first – Make the Main thing the main thing…
and then out of that will come both contemplative practice and service discipleship.
And what is the Main thing????
It is our commitment to the Lord and His teaching.
This story of Martha and Mary comes right after the story of the Good Samaritan. It is a bookend. It is as if Luke, our gospel writer, is showing us in real time how Jesus wants us to live out the Great Commandment.
The Great Commandment, which many of us know by heart, calls for us to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all mind….and to love our neighbor as we love our selves.
So the Great Commandment combines loving God and caring for our neighbor, contemplative practices and acts of service discipleship.
Discipleship is, of course, characterized by service as well as by listening to the Word; and each response is dependent on the other.
“Doing without listening can become purposeless; while listening without doing makes the words empty.”
I think Jesus was saying to Martha and to us that whether it be a contemplative practice or a work of service we are engaged in,
in everything we do it must begin with our faith, not with ourselves.
Jesus insists there is need of “only one thing.” It must begin with Him. It must begin at His feet.…
To Jesus, the starting point of any service or of contemplative practice needs to be a focus on what God desires and what God teaches.
“Listen to Me” says Jesus. That needs to be our starting point.
Whether we plan to be in the kitchen, like Martha or working out on a boat like James, whether we plan to work at the church, or at the prison we need to be listening to Jesus.
Whether we plan to be at a retreat, or reading ancient mystics, at a Vestry meeting we need to pay attention to God.
And there is someone who took this teaching of Jesus very seriously – he turned his attention always to God all the while carrying on his very busy work.
It was Brother Lawrence who was a lay-brother in a monastery in Paris in the early 1600s. He had little education but he was a deeply faithful man.
He worked in the busy monastery kitchen, not in their chapel or their library, which are more contemplative places.
Yet Brother Lawrence was always in touch with God.
He emphasized the importance of maintaining a simple, loving attention to God throughout the day, rather than relying solely on formal prayers. The presence of God is “a simple attentiveness and a general loving awareness of God… or to speak better, a silent and secret, constant communication of the soul with God” (41).
“It consists in taking delight in and becoming accustomed to his divine company, speaking humbly and conversing lovingly with him all the time, at every moment, without rule or measures; especially in times of temptation, suffering and weariness…”
He believed that finding contentment in God’s will, regardless of circumstances, was a key aspect of spiritual growth.
He is quoted as saying: “In the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while serving persons who are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees in prayer.”
And his focus was always on the Lord, whatever he was doing, and he did it with joy: “We can do little things for GOD; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of Him.”
“I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for the love of Him.” All begun and ended in our Lord.
He does not propose sophisticated ideas or punishing abnegation. Instead he proposes that we tune our hearts to God lovingly and constantly.
Marcus Borg, in his book The Heart of Christianity, suggests a similar spiritual practice: He writes: “Loving God means paying attention to God and to what God loves.”
That paying attention will mean that whatever it is that we are doing comes from love of God and not from our own sense of how things ought to be done or out of societal expectations.
We are called to recognize that it is God who gives us life and that paying attention to God strengthens us to do the good He would have us do.
We need to focus …just as Mary did that day in Bethany.
It is God that enables our service or a contemplative practice to be life giving.
In both times of service and times of a contemplative practice, when done with a focus on God’s desire, we are like Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus. That is “the one thing he talks of. That is keeping the main thing the main thing!” Amen.