The lectionary readings for this week are here, and I’m reflecting on the gospel reading.
This story of the two sisters follows on from last week’s story of the good Samaritan. Last week, the Samaritan is the one who does what God does. In the unlikely enemy, the divine is manifested through caring and compassionate actions.
Love is a verb, after all, and a verb is a doing word, so when we love, we do.
This week’s story of Mary and Martha, though, has often been understood as highlighting the value of the quiet contemplative listener over and above the pragmatic and active doer, who is scolded after her rather pointed complaint.
In Luke’s account of the gospel, this family is only mentioned once, right here. It’s John who tells us about the raising of Lazarus, John who recounts Jesus’ conversation with Martha about the resurrection and the tears he shared with Mary. It’s John who tells us the story of the anointing with expensive perfume was at Bethany, by Mary. Luke has none of these stories. Luke just has the two sisters, the one who sits and listens and is validated and the one who is busy in the kitchen and then resentful and is chastised. If we just stick with Luke, then, we don’t have many details to fill out our image of these two women, and as a result, it’s all too easy for us to hear this story and fall into the convenience of opposites to understand it.
Sitting and listening to Jesus is good, being busy and fussily attending to the practical details is bad.
Human beings do seem to love matching things in opposing pairs. Up and down, Near and Far, Tall and Short – I’ve seen this on Sesame Street teaching children the basic skill of differentiation. We learn this skill when we are young and often we carry it through into adult life, and into our understanding of faith. Basic differentiation gives us a code of belief, our doctrines, which help us to define who is in and who is out. Who is saved and who is lost. Who is Near and who is Far. We have codes of behaviour which help us to define who is pure and who is impure; who is moral and who is immoral; what is sacred and what is profane.
But life is actually more complicated than that. And Jesus shows us over and over that these opposites have no place in the kingdom of God where all are welcomed, where values are turned upside down, where enemies embody God’s love, leaders serve, the untouchable are held, the last are first and so on until these differences make no sense at all.
In the stories of the gospel and in Jesus’ teaching parables we are offered many contradictions and paradoxes to dwell with and learn from. So let’s assume that these women are also more complex and that this story is more nuanced than it looks on the surface.
I think that part of what this story offers us is a further illustration of love as a verb – a doing word.
In last week’s story, the Samaritan’s love was embodied in many different actions. First there is the seeing – love looks a different way, sees through a different lens. Then there is the feeling – love is an action and it is also a feeling. A feeling that acts in us and upon us. Love is an emotion that rises from the heart, it’s an energy that fills and spills over, that causes physical sensations in our body.
Love is also a thinking – the feeling of love stimulates us to have thoughts about love, and those thoughts stimulate more physical sensations. We can have thoughts about whether we will act on this loving feeling, and if so, what action is appropriate. We might have thoughts about whether we feel safe to act. And we may then think about what will happen if we do, or don’t act. We may have thoughts about whether our loving action will be received or rejected.
Love is embodied through action, and that action may be: speaking; listening; being with; it may be a look; a smile; sometimes love is crying with someone, or crying for them.
Love in action has so many ways of being – many of them are subtle.
In this story, if we’re matching pairs of opposites, we see active Martha verses passive Mary. But if we look beyond those obvious differences, we can see a more subtle aspect to how love is being embodied here.
Firstly, I want to draw your attention to what Jesus calls Martha to recognise – how distracted she is as she goes about her work. How scattered her energy is as she attempts to do many things, and how her attention is not on what she is doing, but on what her sister is not doing. Mary is praised for having chosen to focus on one thing. On the surface it looks like Jesus is saying her focus on him is the better way.
But, I’m going to be potentially controversial and say that I think it’s not the object of the focus which is important here. Because I believe it is possible to serve like Martha, working on the practical aspects of hospitality, or whatever, with a focus on one thing, and that THIS is the better way.
Martha was chided not because she failed to focussing on Jesus. She was chided because while she was doing the tasks of preparation, her focus was on her sister.
In the middle of raising my children and working and volunteering at my church, the following insight was life changing for me, although I have no idea where I read it:
When you bring energy and attention to what you are doing, you are no longer engaging in maintenance. You are taking care of things. And taking care of things is love, given freely and wholeheartedly. While maintenance is duty, and duty can become a burden, lead to resentment and frustration and that leaks out in complaint or accusation.
Energy and attention have the power to transform daily, routine and repetitive actions into caring and compassionate love in action. Are there tasks in your life you might approached with energy and attention? What change might happen if you see whatever you are doing as taking care of things – as doing what God does – embodying love?
And secondly, the up-skilled version of putting everything into opposites is not seeing the world in fuzzy shades of grey. It’s being able to see beyond an either/or approach to life – either saved or lost, either sacred or profane – and instead to be able to hold the paradox of both/and.
The Christian faith is actually full of paradox, so this is a very necessary up-skilling if we are going to grow in love. Until we can hold the tension of paradox, until we can bear that two opposite things can both be true, we will try to keep things apart. That means, for instance, that you will think of faith and doubt as opposites – which mean questions, searching and wrestling cannot really be part of faith, and can even seem threatening.
But when we can hold paradox, we can see faith as a journey of trust where there is room for questions, for extended periods of uncertainty, for questing and testing and wrestling. Belief and unbelief mingled together and co-existing and essential if we hope to find our way to the possibility of growth. It’s the same for the opposites of sacred and profane. These opposites create a framework of purity which keeps God holy and separate from the common, the polluted, earthy, the dirty, the sinful things and people of this world.
And it is in these same common, sinful, earthy, impure things and people where God’s love is revealed, where God’s love is embodied, where God beauty is present and peace is active. It is in the messiness of life that we discover grace, that we learn to embrace the tension that we are both wholly loved, wholly worthy, and entirely helpless to help ourselves.
So your task this week is to see if you can catch yourself in the Sesame Street game of opposites, and to notice what happens when you do that? What happens inside you, and what happens to the other person who is the opposite of something you value, or the opposite of you?
And finally, I’d like to offer you an opportunity to make a passive response.
And when I say passive, I don’t mean just sit there like a blank piece of paper. I mean let’s pause here and allow what is present to take centre stage. Pause here and allow the energy of what is present in you to register.
What is rising in your heart? What is simmering in the background? What have you brought with you into worship today, what has been happening in your life or is waiting for you after this…..who is on your mind or who are you keeping in the compassionate chambers of your heart? And in the service of honesty and humility, let’s look as well for those we’re keeping in our heart to help feed our anger, or to re-open a wound, or they may be someone we pity or scorn. Because it’s true the opposites attract, and sometimes we love to hate.
So gently now, and honestly, what is it that you are being with?
Whatever that is, there’s an invitation for you this morning to light a candle in response.
This is an action that on the surface is utterly pointless, but this action points to an inner state of being. It is a focussed attention, it is your energy and attention which you are offering here as a service of the heart, and an embodiment of divine love. It is freely, wholeheartedly given as an expression of taking care of things,
As you focus here, you are engaging in some cleaning up, sorting and tidying your inner space, building a container for the tension of paradox, and so you give yourself a bit more room to grow…. And so the heart can expand just a little more.
This is my prayer for you. Amen.
