Sit, Listen and Live
And the Lord said, “"Martha, Martha, you are worried
and distracted by many things…”
How often do we feel like Martha? Worried and distracted.
Either by all that’s going on around us. Or, the relentless To-Do Lists and Duties
we tell ourselves we need to accomplish. To what end?
Jesus and his crowd of followers from Galilee, traveling
with him to Jerusalem, are visiting the home of Martha and her sister Mary.[i]
Storyteller Luke tells us elsewhere that there are as many as 120 people – Ten
for each disciple? Ten for each of the twelve tribes of Israel? It was
“tradition,” a fancy word for “expectation,” for the women of the household to
see to all the details of hospitality for visitors – see that their feet are
washed, prepare meals, serve and clear the dishes, etc. Like Sarah who prepares
cakes for the three visitors who arrive unannounced where she and Abraham are
camped near the Oaks of Mamre.[ii]
Martha knows the traditions of her people well. Martha is busy in the kitchen.
Mary, on the other hand, sits at the feet of Jesus listening
to every word he says. Perhaps we find it curious that instead of taking Mary
aside and asking for her help, Martha goes right to Jesus and orders him to
tell Mary to get up and help her. Elsewhere, in Storyteller John’s account, when
their brother Lazarus is ill, the sisters call for Jesus. He intentionally
delays going. When he gets there Lazarus has been dead and in the tomb for four
days. Before he even gets to their home, it is Martha who marches out to the
edge of town and lets him have it. “If you had come when we called for you our
brother would not have died!”[iii]
That’s just how Martha is. No holds barred. Speaks her mind. Even to Jesus.
This time Jesus says, “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."
We tend to hear this as a put down. While you are worried
about how to wash and feed all of us, Mary sits still to listen to what I am
saying. That’s a good thing. It’s easy to miss what happens in that moment,
despite the fact that it happens wherever Jesus goes. Jesus becomes the host,
just as he does in the Holy Eucharist. Come over and sit with Mary, he says.
Let me host you today. It’s an invitation: Let me take care of all these people.
My Father has sent me to take care of everyone. Sit and listen. Stop doing
doing doing. Step away from your traditional and assigned roles. Turn your back
on all that lies behind you and all around you, and just sit. Just listen. I
want you to feel what it is like to have someone take care of you. What it is
like to sit and live in my Father’s world, my Father’s home. I am here to
inaugurate my Father’s kingdom, my Father’s reign. Sit and listen to me.
The story ends here. We are not told what Martha does next.
Does she sit down and listen? Does she go back to the kitchen? Does she grab
Mary and drag her into the kitchen? Could it be that this story I about us? Are
we Martha? When we are worried and distracted, will we sit still and listen to
Jesus? Are we ready to let Jesus be our host?
I remember years ago reading an address by the philosopher
Martin Heidegger celebrating a centennial year in his hometown. It was evening,
and he opens his remarks saying that evening time is the time for reflection and
recollection. As we look out over the rooftops of our homes today, he continues,
there are now antennas sprouting up on top of each household. Today it would be
satellite dishes or fiber-optic cables. Heidegger goes on to say that with our
televisions, and now computers and internet and smart-phones, we spend hours
every day letting strangers into our homes – such that we are no longer at home
in our homes. And so many of these strangers come with worries and distractions
which rapidly become our worries and distractions.
Jesus invites us to come home again – to the household of
God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness, God’s love. Several hundred years later,
Augustine of Hippo would write in his Confessions: Our hearts were made for
thee, O Lord, and are restless until we find our home in thee!
The invitation in this story is to sit and listen to Jesus,
and discover where our home really is – far away from all the worries,
distractions and technologies that plague us. Can we sit still long enough to
hear Jesus calling us o’er the tumult of the world’s tempestuous sea?
Edith Sodergran (1892-1923) is one person who did. Growing
up in Finland when it was part of Imperial Russia. With the advent of the
Russian Revolution, Finland fell into Civil War as well. Out of a series of
personal tragedies, Sodergran emerged as a poet and a major voice in
Scandinavian letters. Despite not receiving recognition in her lifetime for her
modernist approach, she never lost confidence in the importance of her work,
writing, “My self-confidence depends on the fact that I have discovered my
dimensions. It does not become me to make myself less than I am.” Sounds like
Martha!
One of her poems, Homecoming, expresses the kind of
discovery Mary makes and Martha is invited to make herself: one can walk away
from the duties, worries and distractions that occupy us, and we can sit with
God in Christ wherever we are.
My childhood’s trees stand
rejoicing around me: O human!
and the grass bids me welcome from
foreign lands.
I lean my head on the grass: now
home at last.
Now I shall turn my back on all
that lies behind me:
my only comrades shall be the
forest and the shore and the lake.
Now I shall drink wisdom from the
spruce’s sap-filled crowns,
now I shall drink truth from the
withered trunks of the birches,
now I shall drink power from the
smallest and tenderest grasses:
a mighty protector mercifully
reaches me his hand. [iv]
Home at last. A mighty protector mercifully reaches out to
us. We are invited to sit and listen with Mary. I choose to imagine that Martha
turns her back on the traditional role she has been assigned, and sits with
Mary as well. Listening to Jesus. Letting Jesus host us in his Father’s world.
The source of wisdom, truth, power, mercy and love invites us to leave our
worries and distractions behind us – to rest, to breathe, to live. To hear the
trees of our childhood rejoicing all around us: O human! Come sit, and listen,
and live! Amen.
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