Mary and Martha

Amos 8:1-12

Luke 10:38-42

            As I reflected on the story of Mary and Martha, a short vignette came to my mind.  There was a man who visited a farm one day slightly before thanksgiving.  He was watching the farmer, whose job it was to dispatch a turkey for thanksgiving.  Sure enough he chopped off the turkey’s head.  And as we’ve heard sometimes happens with chickens, the head-less turkey took off running around the yard.  “You see,” said the farmer, “activity is not a sure sign of life.”

Activity is not a sure sign of life.

            But we tend to think that it is, don’t we?  I was walking with a good friend the other day and we exchanged the usual conversation that we almost always have when we meet, every couple months or so.  “How are you?” she asks.

“Busy,” I answered.  And then I returned the question, “How are you?”

“Also busy,” she answered.  And then she paused.  “Why is it that if we answer any other way, we somehow feel we have failed?  Why is it that we have to prove our worthiness and our work ethic and even our label as ‘good person’ by being so busy we don’t have time to walk with a friend except once every few months?” 

There’s truth in this. Far too much truth for comfort.  My own life is work and kids, work and kids.  I now have a walk scheduled in for every other Thursday morning.  But I do it in such a way that it is part of my job: the “hiking group” that we have here: a time to connect with parishioners makes it acceptable for me to walk. 

While I tend to think this work-mania is worse now that it was in the time of Mary and Martha (though honestly, whose to say?), I think another big part of the issue here is that Martha feels she is taking the higher road.  She is doing what is expected of her. She is, no doubt, getting food ready to feed their guest, she is taking care of the work of the house, being a good hostess.  And yet Mary is the one reaping the benefits.  Martha is doing what must be done.  And yet Mary is getting to sit and listen and learn and just BE with her friend, her teacher, her Jesus.  Martha is outraged by it.  Why should Mary, who is not following the rules as we know them, not allowing herself to be defined by how active and busy and productive she is, not doing what is needed by the household and by the rules of propriety, why should she actually be gaining, be benefitting, be thriving in her scandalous behavior? 

And Jesus?  Well, he does not give Martha what she is hoping for.  He does NOT lift her up and praise her for the work she is doing.  He does not correct Mary for her choice to sit and listen rather than work.  He does not support what everyone knows to be the rules of good manners and good behavior then and now.  Instead he says, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”  Outrageous!  Frustrating!  UNFAIR.

I understand this.  I think about people I know personally who have what I call enchanted lives.  One in particular is very comfortable, has no need to work, and takes full advantage of that to do whatever he wants to do.  He has a lovely house, a cute zippy little car.  While fairly young, he does not have to work because he was born into privilege.  He does take the time to sit and listen, to walk, to be with people he cares about.  And there are times when I find myself very envious of his situation.  There are moments when, like Martha, I want to shout, “It’s not fair!  Make him do his part!  Tell him to help!”  I am truly grateful for the work I have and the privilege of raising my beautiful children, and the depth of the relationships that I have with them.  In my better moments, I know I would not trade my life of busy and crazy with anyone else's.  But there are moments when I also recognize that he too has been given a gift: the gift of time, and space; he has time to listen and reflect, to choose what he does, to step forward into a new life, a life without responsibility, a life of freedom.  And there are moments of recognition on my part that the gift in that is something I, too, should embrace, and in fact could embrace, with more frequency and more intention. 

Mary, we are told, has chosen the better part.  She has put aside the requirements and responsibilities of daily living in order to be in the moment with Jesus.  She has put aside the busyness of expectations and demands on her time, and has instead chosen to sit and learn and listen.  She has chosen to be alive in the moment, rather than running around, headless, without meaning or true life. 

How often do we pause, do we take the time to just take time?  How often do we say, “No, I’m not going to do whatever the world believes I need to be doing in this moment.  Instead I’m going to just BE, rather than DO?”

In talking with my eldest daughter about this, she has shared with me that, as she is a quieter person, that the business and activity of her fellow students makes her feel that she is somehow failing.  She has already learned to measure her worth by busyness.  Which is unfair, both to her, and to the other students who have forgotten how to find the time to simply BE.  She has much to teach them by her quieter stance.  But what she has to give is harder to learn.

I used to think that retired people were better at this, but as I’ve watched many of the schedules of my retired friends, I no longer believe this to be the case.  We all struggle with this.  Maybe in part because we feel that we aren’t doing anything by just Being.

But science actually tells us something different.  It’s not intuitive, it’s hard to understand.  But science tells us that observing, watching, just BEING changes everything around us.  As an article in Science Daily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm) said it, “Strange as it may sound, interference can only occur when no one is watching. Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the openings, the picture changes dramatically: if a particle can be seen going through one opening, then it's clear it didn't go through another. In other words, when under observation, electrons are being "forced" to behave like particles and not like waves. Thus the mere act of observation affects the experimental findings.”  If this is the case at the quantum level, think how much more true this is at a grand scale level.  When we take the time to look, to see, to observe, to notice, to hear one another, to listen, to learn, to reflect, the world around us is affected.  It is changed.  It is often when we do the least, that we do the most.

I think about the trees that surround us.  They are not “active” and yet, they produce the very air that we breathe.  And their ability to stand, quiet, still, silent, can have a profound effect on all of us when we actually take the time to be in the forest, with the trees. 

There is a wonderful book called Touching Spirit Bear, by Ben Mikaelsen (New York: Harper Collins Pub., 2001) about a young juvenile delinquent who is dealt with using restorative justice practices rather than retributive justice.  What this means is that instead of incarcerating and hardening the boy to become a life-long criminal, the community came together, including those hurt by his crimes and decided together that instead of incarceration, he would first make amends, and then spend a period of time alone on a secluded island, with occasional help from wise officers, working through his past in order to make new decisions about his future.  I won’t ruin the story for you by telling you all of his experiences.  But I would like to share with you a segment of his story.  He has had a bear encounter that ended very badly, but now he is searching out that bear, trying to restore and reconcile what has happened to him since his time there.  He calls the bear “spirit bear”.  The story continues with Cole, the boy reflecting…

“… what happened to people in their frantic worlds of noise and hectic rushing?  How much of the world did people miss because they were not calm enough, empty enough, to experience it?...When dawn finally arrived, he hiked to the opening of the bay… As he walked he focused on the patterns around him.  The lapping waves came as regularly as deep breaths, the light drizzle roughed the water’s surface, clouds hung low as fog, and thousands of smooth worn rocks lined the timeless shoreline like a ghost highway that disappeared into the mist.  Cole felt a part of the pattern as he meandered alng the shore.  When he reached the point, he picked a natural saddle between two rocks and sat down.  He focused his gaze on a small whit erock near the water’s edge and breathed in deeply.  To see the [] Bear, he needed to clear his mind and become invisible, not to the world but to himself.  He left his hood down to let his head and senses remain exposed to the air.  The cool drizzle soaked his hair, and soon droplets of water dripped off his forehead onto his cheeks.  When he closed his eyes, the droplets felt warm on his face.  At first they felt like his own tears of anger and fear.  Then he breathed more deeply, feeling the rhythm of the world around him, an endless rhythm where time disappeared.  As the past, present, and future became one, the droplets on Cole’s cheeks dripped to the ground, melting into the landscape to which they belonged.  When he opened his eyes once again, it was as if he were waking from a deep sleep.  Far down the shoreline, where the rocks disappeared into the folding mist, a white object had appeared.  At the place where things visible faded into not-being, there stood the [] Bear, as clear as if it were standing only feet away.  The bear gazed patiently.  As Cole stared back with the same patience, all time, even the present, ceased to exist.  He no longer thought of himself as Cole Matthews, a juvenile delinquent from Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Instead he was part of the landscape, without a beginning or end. …(p189-191).

             I think about my own moments of being so completely in the present that the amazing happens.  Or maybe it’s not the amazing that is happening, but the ordinary that I’m finally seeing.  As you may or may not know, one of the things that gives me the most sense of life is walking, is being outside with nature and with the beauty that God has made.  A few weeks ago I was sitting by myself outside for a few minutes, just breathing in the depth of the air around me and listening to the world.  Just for a moment I was still.  Suddenly a dragon fly came out of nowhere and landed on my knee.  It was facing me, looking up into my face.  I have never before been so close to a dragonfly.  But I looked into its face as it looked into mine.  It squatted down: that’s the only way to describe it.  It had been up on its legs and it kind of bent down, tipped it’s head and looked at me again.  I didn’t want to breathe.  But I did breathe.  And together we sat looking at one another in wonder.  It must have been a full minute.  But suddenly the world around me was back in my mind.  And I went from being present in that moment to wanting to take the dragonfly’s picture, to share the moment with my family and friends.  I went from being present with the moment, to being in the future and into what I should “do” with that moment that was given to me.  The moment my thinking shifted from being there with the dragonfly to thinking about sharing it in the future, the dragonfly spread his wings and left.  Before I had even moved, but the moment my attention became divided, the dragonfly left. And I was the one who was no longer blessed by that special time. 

            Yes, we have much to do in this life. We have responsibilities that need to be done, people who need our care and our attention.  We need to do the things of daily living and not shirk our responsibilities to ourselves, our families, our communities and the world.  But we are also called to sit at the feet of Jesus and to listen; to be present to this glorious, beautiful, amazing world that we have been privileged to experience.  We are called to take it in, to be fed and nurtured by it, so that we CAN do the work of the church in the world, loving, giving, working towards justice.  We are called to eat and drink of the bread of life, to allow the gifts of God to build us up so that we can enter the world with strength, with wholeness, with grace. 

            There will be times of being Martha.  But let us not be so consumed by them that we also miss the times of being Mary.  For they are the “better part”.  And they are an invitation to us to live with fullness.  Amen.

The Spiritual Gift of Simplicity

Matthew 19:16-22

Luke 12:13-22

                During lent this year, we will be focusing on Spiritual Disciplines. I want to start by clarifying that discipline does not mean something painful or harsh or unpleasant.  Instead they are called spiritual “disciplines” because they are ways of organizing, committing to and structuring our dedication to a behavior or way of being.  Spiritual disciplines are activities that bring us closer to God.  The purpose of the disciplines is to help us focus on our relationship with God for a specific period of time, and to invite us to ask, with our behavior, Where is God in our experience?  How do we discern God’s presence?  And what is God doing anew in our lives?  The disciplines are for the purpose of relationship with God.  Therefore it is very important that they be about relationship and not about being rigid or stuck in a behavior.  Richard Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline, who is known as an expert on spiritual disciplines put it this way, “The way to death is to turn spiritual disciplines into laws.”  They are meant for our good, and they are meant to enhance our faith and relationships with God. 

                There are 12 spiritual disciplines that Foster identifies.  Four are considered inner disciplines and those include prayer, fasting, meditation and reading or study.  Then there are four outward disciplines: simplicity, solitude, submission and service.  Finally there are four disciplines that are considered communal: confession, worship, guidance and celebration.  Some of these - prayer, reading, confession, service and worship, in particular, we practice regularly in the church.  Others you might do on your own – meditation, for example, or seeking guidance.  But others we are less familiar with. 

                Of those twelve disciplines, fasting, or the giving up of something intentionally, is the one we most often focus on during lent.  But I would invite us to try to add or to focus on any of these spiritual disciplines during lent as a way to intentionally deepen and focus our relationship with God.  There are twelve, and yet we tend to focus on the one of fasting from something in particular.  But I would like to  encourage all of us to expand our way of thinking about these disciplines, and instead of thinking of giving something up, think of adding a practice into your faith commitments.

                Each week I will focus on one of the spiritual disciplines in particular as well, and today I would like to start our Lenten focus by talking about simplicity.  The idea behind simplicity is that we become enslaved to the complicated things in our life, in particular the “things”, the possessions that clutter our lives.  Most of our fear in this world seems to be directly tied to anxiety about losing our stuff, our possessions and therefore the things that we think make us secure.  And as a people, we are controlled by that fear.  It enslaves us.  Therefore, the spiritual discipline of simplicity calls us to let go of the fear, that bondage and enslavement to our stuff.  To trust instead that we can survive, truly, with nothing but God.  Our fear, and our desire to protect ourselves with possessions, separates us from God.  Our desire to hold on to our things separates us from truly relying on and trusting God.  The spiritual discipline of simplicity calls us to be intentional about letting go of those things that build a wall between ourselves and God, that separate us from God.

I have mentioned before that there have been a number of studies that show that the richest people in the United States give a shockingly small percentage of their incomes to charities, while the poorest people in our nations give a huge percentage.  An article came out in a few years ago in Forbes Magazine that looked at giving and indicated that this trend is on the increase: the poor are giving more and more of their resources and the rich are giving less and less. I’ve shared with you before the joke about the poor man who begged God for money with the promise that he would give 10% of everything he earned.  After finding 10$, he faithfully gave one back.  Then he found $100 and faithfully gave back $10.  He soon found a job and was making $10,000, and faithfully returning $1000 of it.  But when he got to the place where he was making $100,000 and had to give $10K of that back, or later when he made $1,000,000 and had to give back $100,000 to keep his promise, he began to feel very uneasy.  He went to the local priest to ask how he could get out of his deal with God.  The priest responded, “Well, I don’t think you can get out of the deal.  But I’m sure God would be happy to return you to making only $100 or so, if you’d be more comfortable only giving $10.

It is clear that it should not be the case that the poor give so much more than the rich. And the reality is that we could go a long way towards ending suffering if the rich were to give even a small percentage more than they currently give.  We could easily end world hunger.  We could fix the water problems around the world.  But the reality is that the more we have, the more fearful we seem to become about losing what we have.  So fearful, as I said, that we hold on tighter and tighter to what we believe is “ours” forgetting completely that nothing we have is ours – all of it belongs to God.  We are stewards of God’s resources, and as such, are called to use the resources entrusted to us for the good of all people, not the good of ourselves alone. I am reminded of the parable Jesus told of the servants who were given the talents of differing amounts.  Do we bury the resources we are given?  Do we SPEND the resources we are given on ourselves?  Or do we share them, grow them, use them for God’s good which is the good of God’s creation? 

                Simplicity, learning to live with less stuff, learning to depend less on our things and more on God teaches us that God really is all we need and that forming idols from our things does not make us happy, healthy or whole.

                If we decide to take this on, then, as a spiritual discipline, where do we start?

There are specific things we can do towards the goal of simplicity:

a.        Buy things for their usefulness rather than simply because they are pretty or because we like them.

b.       Reject addictive things

c.       Get used to giving things away

d.       Refuse to be propagandized

e.       Enjoy things without owning them (library books, videos, skates, etc.)

f.        Appreciate creation

g.       Pay for things now, not later – incurring debt is not conducive to simplicity

h.       Use simple speech: in other words, don’t use big words when simple ones will do.  Don’t feel the need to say in a paragraph what can be said in a single sentence.  Don’t repeat yourself.

i.         Reject things that oppress others – this includes ideas as well as things that put some people in an oppressive position: women, people of color, hierarchies of relationships.  This includes being aware of the chain of events that leads to each product that you buy, and make care to buy from places and from people and specific objects that do not hurt people in order for you to obtain them: don’t buy things made with child labor or slave labor.  Buy things that are purchased fairly and that pay the actual workers fairly.  Don’t buy products that harm the environment or that are made by harming the environment.  Be aware of where you buy things and how things come to be on your shopping list.

j.         Shun things that distract you from God: social media, TV, or anything that takes you away from God.

                None of these things are easy.  But as a Lenten discipline, I think the intentional choosing of simplicity is an act that can have a radical effect on how a person relates to God. 

                Rev. Mark Scandrette said this in the study, "Animate", “Shortly after I began working as a pastor, I had a moment of crisis. One Sunday morning I was standing in the pulpit preaching and as I looked out on the congregation, I saw people falling asleep and fidgeting in their seats anxious to get home to watch the game or to get to the restaurant before the noonday rush. I knew that no matter what I said people would come through the line after the service, dutifully shake my hand and say, “good message pastor” or maybe make a comment about a funny story I’d told.  The possibility that I might spend a life time of Sundays reenacting this script made me want to scream, “Is anybody listening?!  This should really make a difference in how we live our lives!”  And then I thought about myself that I could preach a sermon about love and then go home and be crabby with my family.  Or talk about God’s heart for justice knowing that I wasn’t in relationship with anybody in poverty or struggle myself.  This was all going through my mind while I was speaking and I wondered, is anyone actually listening to what I’m saying? Is what we are doing here making a difference for any of us?  Do I really know what I’m speaking about from lived experience with God?  Or am I just regurgitating what I’ve read?  Maybe we’ve forgotten that Christianity isn’t just something to believe, but it’s a way of life that we are being invited to practice.  It seemed to me that we were being invited not just to (rehash) the Christian story but to become part of it, joining what our maker is doing to bring healing, restoration and hope to our world.  It’s what Jesus described as the kingdom of God or what I call Jesus’ revolution of love. I realize that many of the ways I’ve learned to be religious didn’t naturally move me towards transformation for the good of the world.  It was easy to get stuck in my head. There was a huge gap between how I wanted to live and how I actually lived.  My practices tended to be individualistic, information driven and disconnected from the gritty details of life.  Slowly I began to realize that if I was going to be part of the revolution of love that  Jesus embodied and promised, that I would need to be more honest, more active and more connected with other people. …  We won’t learn how to practice the way of Jesus without taking tangible steps to walk in his way.  The promise of the gospel is that we can learn a whole new way to be human, to live without worry, fear, greed, lust or anger.  To live a life animated and empowered by love.  This is the kind of life Jesus lived and invites us to experience. ….” 

                Mark Scandrette talked about a number of things his congregation did and does as a way of following Jesus.  One of them had to do with the Lenten discipline of simplicity and that was the “have two, give one away”, which simply means if you have two of something, give the second one away.  The congregants met weekly for two months, talking through the stuff that they had, what they really needed, and what could be given away or sold to help those who have less.  In the process of selling and slimming down and giving away, they raised thousands of dollars to help overcome poverty.  But as Mark realized, the practice probably did not make a big dent in the world’s poverty.  Instead, it changed those who engaged this practice of simplifying.  They came to really look at their stuff in a different way: as resources, lent to them by God for the use of all of God’s people, as objects that could be used for God’s glory, or could be simply selfishly held on to for one’s own pleasure. 

My last congregation tried a similar project.  We worked together and supported one another in going through our things and collecting objects for a huge rummage sale with the idea that we would not be selling these objects to one another, but really getting rid of things that were no longer useful, had no purpose other than self-gratification, were cluttering and complicating our lives in a time when we were called to simplify and cut back. All of the money we raised then went towards hunger issues. I would encourage you all to consider doing the same.  Go through your things this winter and spring.  Really look hard at what you have that you don’t use or don’t need, see what you have two of that you only need one of.  Again, this is for OUR benefit.  We may not change the world by it, but we can start to change ourselves as we strive to be closer to God and more active in our following of Jesus.  This is just one way, but I find that the de-cluttering of our lives, the simplifying of our lives is an amazing step towards overcoming fear and greed in particular.  It is an invitation to rely more fully on God.  It is an invitation to trust.  It is a call to be more fully present with God.  And that is a gift indeed.  Amen.