+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My in-laws came to visit last week, and they were excited to give us a recommendation for a television show they’d been watching. Annie and I have neither the time nor the inclination to watch television (which they know, though it’s always sweet when they think they can convince us otherwise), and one of the benefits of this is that they can tell us what they liked about it without fear of “spoiling us” on the plot twists. Anyway, the program they had been watching is called “The Bear” and, as I understand it, it’s about an accomplished chef who inherits his family’s Chicago “Italian Beef” sandwich shop and attempts to transform in into a fine dining restaurant. One of the episodes they were telling us about was a “flashback” in which the protagonist’s mother, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is depicted trying to put together a family holiday meal. The kitchen is chaotic, family drama interrupts the delicate cooking procedure, everything must be perfect, and the mother remains on the edge of “losing it” throughout the entirety of the episode. At the end she pulls it off. The meal is executed perfectly and the table is set. At thus point, the mother calmly walks outside and a moment later, she drives her car through the front of the house.
I worry my in-laws might have been sharing the plot because it reminded them of observing me cook Christmas dinner every year. I don’t think I’ve ever visibly lost my cool, and I’ve certainly not threatened life and limb or intentionally damaged property. That said, all concerned have mostly learned that I do not require assistance in cooking any meal–that as nice as the offer is, it is in fact the opposite of helpful in practice–and least of all do I need additional bodies in our small kitchen while cooking a complicated meal where everything simply must happen at a particular moment for the whole thing to come together. Anyway, like Martha of Bethany, my attempts at hospitality have probably, ironically made me less hospitable in practice.
I think the tricky part of this story is that we can take it to an extreme and fail to see that Martha had the right intentions, just the wrong way of going about it. And note well, Jesus does not berate her for trying to provide hospitality in her way, but rather for her criticism of her sister, who was being hospitable in a different way. The point of the story, I think, is not that we should all be slugabeds. Rather, I think it is meant to remind us that service and companionship are two sides of the same coin, and neither should be taken to an extreme.
So Martha isn’t entirely wrong to be working hard to make her Lord and Master and houseguest comfortable and well-fed. That was not only her social obligation (hospitality in ancient cultures being far more codified and demanding than today), but for at least part of her, before she got carried away, it would have also been her joy. She just went overboard and, worse, started resenting Mary. You need to feed your guest, but maybe Jesus didn’t need or want a Michelin-starred seven course dining experience.
And then we have Mary. Just as with Martha, there is more to Mary than the caricature. She wasn’t just shirking obligations in an attempt to be relaxed. Jesus is not elevating the slothful over the conscientious. Quite to the contrary, Mary is being conscientious in entertaining her host rather than fretting obsessively about the outward show of hospitality. She is acing as the truly hospitable hostess by being with Jesus. She recognizes that her own obligation, and in fact, the sine-qua-non of her relationship with Jesus, is found not entirely in doing stuff for him but must include simply being with him.
When it comes to our relationship with God, it is entirely possible to lose one’s soul in a program of highly useful activity. As a priest, I can attest to this. I can spend all day accomplishing tasks which I believe benefit Christ’s Church. If I don’t take some time to simply converse with God, though, and render my thanks and express my deepest joys and fears, then all that stuff I do for the Church doesn’t get me a step closer to God. The same can be said for any of us. In our culture, which elevates action over contemplation much more than the culture of Jesus’ day, it can be more difficult, but no less critical, to stop and pray, to be still before the Lord our God, who made us and loves us and wants a relationship with us.
The result of taking such intentional pauses in our work for the Kingdom to be present before God, is that the work we do ultimately benefits. I mentioned earlier that Martha had likely gone overboard in her attempt to be hospitable, ironically making her less hospitable. When we take Mary’s approach, the result is not that we remain in inactivity forever, but that we are given new directions in our mission. When we stop working for a bit and pray, God will help us know how to do His work better. Perhaps God has some task for us which we’ll never know unless we stop frantically doing something else that we think we’re supposed to be doing but aren’t.
Taking an hour out on Sunday morning to be present before God in worship is a great help in this regard, but it is not enough. Only through daily, intentional, quality time with God (in prayer and in meditating on Holy Scripture) can our relationship with Him grow to its full potential. Only when we take time every day to sit with Mary at the feet of our Lord can we learn how to serve Him in our work for the Kingdom, how to be a bit more circumspect in our activity than was Martha. So, settle down, breathe, pray, and He’ll tell you how you can serve Him more effectively.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.