Distracted By Dinner

Distracted By Dinner

Luke 10:38-42
July 22, 2007

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named
Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’
s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many
tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me
to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her,
“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.”

Just last month, on June 9, in New York Mills, Minnesota, the 15th Anniversary of The
Great American Think-Off took place. For the past 15 years this national philosophy
contest has invited people from all walks of life to try to answer a new question posed
by a panel. All you have to do is submit a 750 word essay, and if you are chosen as
one of the four finalists, you then are invited to Minnesota to participate in a live debate
with other 3 contestants. Winning doesn’t really bring you any real money, and the
only thing you get is the title of “merica’s Greatest Thinker.” Previous year's questions
have included "Is the Pen Mightier than the Sword?" (2002), "Is Democracy Fair?"
(2000), "Is the Death Penalty Ethical in a Civilized Society?" (1997) and "Is Honesty
Always the Best Policy?" (1998). Now, this year’s question, which was released to the
public in early January, is “which should you trust more—your head or your heart?”
Now, that is a good question, and I think most of us can relate to it, though I often
wonder about either/or nature of the question—is life that simple, that its either this or
that way, head or heart, conservative or liberal, black or white, good and bad? I think
most of us realize that we may fall one way or another on a lot of questions, that life is
more often grey than black or white, and the labels fails us when we are caught up in
real life, where things get a little messy and are never very neat as the labels seem to
demand from us. But as the Great American Think-Off reminds us, we still seek the
either/or answers in a world where the questions have become more and more
complicated and difficult to answer, though trying to answer them we must, I think.

And so today, we have an either/or question that we need to struggle with, a question
that would be a great one for the Great American Think-Off: is it better to be Martha or
Mary, when it comes to our spirituality? I mean, that is the question the church has
been asking for centuries because of this little incident, these four tiny verses in which
Jesus seems to take the side of Mary, who sits at Jesus’ feet, against Martha, who is
busy with the household chores. Whose way of being, whose mode of spirituality is
better? Should we quit our doing, the busyness that distracts from the work of the
spirit, and find ourselves a comfortable seat at the feet of the Master, to listen to the
one whose words are life, who is life itself given flesh and bone? Should we all be
mystics, should all of us hold up in monastery somewhere, and contemplate the
presence and wonder of God through daylong prayer? And yet, for centuries as well,
there has been a rebellion against this idea, this idea that all of us should be Mary’s, as
you can see in some of the Prayer and Meditations readings in today’s bulletin. Some
of us are Martha’s, some of us are doers, and, to be honest, I think Martha had a point
here—I mean, I can’t imagine not thinking with Martha: “can we move the conversation
into kitchen so I can be part of this as well, and you guys can help me out? Or maybe
could you send Mary in here to help me clean up so both of us can hang out with you!”
Martha has a valid point, as far as I am concerned.   I don’t know how many of you
remember one of the slogans that was popular in the United Church of Christ some
years ago, but it went something like this: To believe is to care is to do—that is Martha’
s spirituality right there, better than I could have ever expressed, and it’s the point of
the Samaritan story we heard last week. You can’t love God without expressing that
love through action, through actually binding up the wounds of, say, a stranger you find
on the side of road, whose religion is not your own and whom, if you were to be honest,
you cannot really stand.

But Jesus seems to be pointing us to another kind of way of practicing our faith,
seemingly in contradiction to the parable of the Samaritan woman,   If “to believe is to
care is to do” is Martha’s way of being in relationship to God, then “to believe is to care
is to listen” seems to be Mary’s way of being relationship with God. Again, that
either/or, Great American Think-Off question about Mary and Martha is before us,
though , to be honest, I don’t there has to be a winner here because the question for
centuries has been set up the wrong—it really isn’t about whether we should do or
listen, to bind up the stranger at the side of the road, or sit at the Master’s feet and
simply listen. Because, let’s face it—if there was no Martha, there would be no Mary,
as the wise monks of the early church realized when they told this story, a story about A
brother who went to see the head monk on the mountain of Sinai. When this newly
arrived monk saw the brothers working hard, he said to the old man, perhaps a little too
smugly, "Do not labor for the food that perishes. Mary has chosen the good portion."
The old wise monk said to another disciple, "Give the brother a book, and put him in a
cell without anything else." So when dinner time came, this brother watched the door,
expecting someone would be sent to call him to the meal. When no one called him, he
got up, went to find the old man, and said to him, "Have the brothers not eaten today?"
The old man replied that they had. Then he said, "Why did you not call me?" The old
monk said to him, "Because you are a spiritual man and do not need that kind of food.
We, being carnal, we want to eat, and that is why we work. But you have chosen the
good portion and read the whole day long, and you do not want to eat carnal food."
When he heard these words, the brother made a low bow, saying, "Forgive me." The
old man said to him, "Mary needs Martha. It is really thanks to Martha that Mary is
praised." Isn’t that the truth—if it wasn’t for Martha, Mary couldn’t do what she was
doing in that moment, listening to this Jesus of Nazareth, who words seems to be as
rich as was the food they had just eaten together.

And so from this ancient story from the early church and from the Biblical text today, we
really can see something else emerging here, especially when we put this story of
Martha and Mary, and remember that it is right beside the parable of the Good
Samaritan. Last week I said that love was something we did, right? Remember when
that smart young man came and asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal
life, the young man responded with “Love God and love others,” and then Jesus tells
that story of the Good Samaritan in response to the young’s man question about who
was his neighbor?   Well, last week we learned what it meant to love another human
being, even someone we don’t believe deserves it—and this week, in this story
immediately following the parable of the Good Samaritan, we have Jesus telling us what
it also means to love God through this painful exchange between him and his beloved
friend Martha, where he points to Mary, her sister, the one who is listening to his words,
rather being distracted with the busyness of the day. When Michelangelo was working
on Sistine Chapel in Rome, he painted both the major and Minor Prophets, the major
prophets having written down a lot more than the minor prophets—that really is the only
difference between the two groups. If you look up at the Sistine Chapel, you can
actually tell them apart, because, though there are angels, cherubim, at the ears of all
the prophets, only the Major Prophets, the ones who left us the greatest legacy in
terms of witness in our Scriptures, only the Major Prophets are actually listening to
those angels, in Michelangelo’s great masterpiece.   What Jesus seems to be saying to
us is that we got to be both, both Martha and Mary, both doers and listeners, and love
needs both of them, and so does Jesus, he needs both Martha and Mary for the great
work he is about to do in this world.

Last week, we saw how the doing of love is lived out, of faithfulness means responding
with action, but maybe this week our work is to learn how to listen, to be at the feet of
the Christ, whose presence in the room of our heart is worth letting the dishes stack up,
worth letting the coffee get cold, and worth letting the butter melt, if need be.
Sometimes we just got to stop and listen to God, amidst all the doings in our lives, to
attend to the God who is still speaking, so we UCC’ers say, but who cannot speak to us
if we are not around to listen or too distracted with the doings of our listen to listen.
Listening to God means attending to our prayer lives, it means showing up for worship
to gather with fellow listeners when we can, to eavesdrop on what God may be saying
in song, in words, in the silence, even in the chatter of our fellowship time. But, of
course, this place isn’t the only place that Christ speaks to us—he speaks to us in all
sorts of places, beyond these walls, through the most unexpected voices, strangers,
and sometimes even enemies, sometimes even wounded enemies we find on the side
of road. As I’ve said before here and in a million other places, its not that God has
stopped talking—its just that we don’t know the language, and that language is silence,
silence before the texts of Scripture, silence in the deepest parts of hearts, that place
where Mary sits with the Christ, coffee in hand, the quiet of late evening falling around
them, waiting for what new thing God may yet be saying through this one who hails from
Galilee.

But the problem is that Martha is doing too much right now, too much in the other parts
of the house, too much in the other parts of our hearts. We are people busy with
busyness, and I am the greatest offender. Eugene Peterson has written about
busyness: “Busyness is the enemy of spirituality. It is essentially laziness. It is doing the
easy thing instead of the hard thing. It is filling our time with our own actions instead of
paying attention to God's actions.” (The Door, November/December 1991)   And the
easy thing is get lost in the kitchen, you know, thinking that the dinner party is about
the food rather than the guests, making the mistake of thinking that the main course
was on the table, rather than around the table, in the time together with those we care
about and whom we can learn from.   And yet, I want to make sure that we understand
that Jesus’ problem with Martha is not that she is doing something, but that the doing
has gotten in the way of the listening—and she become distracted, she was pulled
away by the work at hand, and it has caused her great anxiety. She reels around and
hurls a not-so-subtle accusation of laziness towards her sister, who knew the better
part in that moment was to listen, to immerse oneself in the one speaking, rather than
cleaning up the dishes in the kitchen. There is so much of our lives we loose by not
sitting at the feet of the Master and listening, by not attending to the ways God is
speaking to us right now, right here. There will be plenty of time to do, plenty of time to
love our neighbor, but there are also moments when we are asked to not simply love
God by helping our neighbor—we are asked to cease our binding up, to cease our
tending to the strangers, and love by God by listening to the God who wishes to say
something to us, something true and hopeful and good. The Martha in us wants “to do
for” rather than “to receive from,” but there are moments when we need to tend to the
better part, to receive from God the gifts we are being given, and we are asked to put
down the wash rag, the Palmolive, the 409, and make our way to the living room, where
the Master, the Christ, awaits us, waiting to give us more, more life, more strength,
more hope, so that when we have to return to the mess that awaits us in the kitchen,
the doings that we are called to do in this world, we will have the strength to finish the
work before us. Amen.