Martha, Mary and Mantras
Texts: Luke 10: 38-42; Psalm 142
I have to admit that when I looked at the passage from Luke’s Gospel for this Sunday, my heart sank. Who of us in our overwhelm needs to hear Jesus dismissing Martha’s cry for help only to favour her sister who’s just sitting there glowing in the light of his presence? Sometimes, it’s just plain unavoidable … all that needs doing. And we can know in our heads and most of all in our hearts the wisdom, the goodness of simply being, but that doesn’t accomplish the tasks at hand, the things, the people that await our care and attention. Spare me your “Martha, Martha, you are distracted by many things …there is need of only one thing and Mary has chosen the better part.”
Really? Could Jesus be that out of touch with the complexities of people’s lives -- the complexities of our lives? Could he be that out of touch with the dynamics between siblings that he would so blatantly take sides? And is he really favouring contemplation over action, being over doing? Hasn’t he just finished telling the parable of the Good Samaritan … with its punch line “go and do likewise.” This is one of the hazards of lifting little pieces of scripture out of their wider context. There may well be more going on than meets the eye at first glance.
I want to share with you a couple of things that have shed some light on this passage in a way that have helped me hear in it something of God’s Word of LIFE!
One is a commentary (1) that takes a more careful look at the way the Greek has been translated into English --in particular around the word “distracted.” First we hear the narrator tell us that “Martha was distracted by her many tasks.” But then by the time she comes to Jesus to ask him “don’t you care? Tell my sister to come and help me”, and Jesus says to her Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things … the word “distracted” there would be better translated “panicked” … as though Martha isn’t just facing the usual busyness that comes with hospitality. Martha is experiencing this inner riot, this whirlwind of needs that need to be met.
Maybe you know that feeling when something in us becomes like a magnet … for all that needs doing or for all the pain in the world … wherever we look we don’t just see it. It comes at us--we absorb it somehow. So here is Martha, inwardly spinning out of control. And what’s Mary doing just sitting there? It’s not hard to imagine the resentment, and by this point the fury … and so through Jesus, she solicits Mary’s help, which is really to pull Mary into her panic … into her whirlwind.
Good thing for Mary, that Martha went to Jesus first … or Mary might have been drawn right in. And good thing for Martha that she went to Jesus first … who perceiving her state, addresses her in a way that has the possibility of speaking through the whirlwind. Instead of hearing Jesus say, “Martha, Martha,” like he’s patting her on the head, (“dear, dear”), we might picture Jesus like he was in the boat that day, in the midst of the storm, when he rises and calls the wind to “BE STILL”. So we might see Jesus looking into Martha’s eyes, maybe even cradling her face, speaking with firmness to her … reaching her in her panic attack, startling her enough to help her calm down and breathe. This isn’t Jesus comparing contemplation with action … favouring being over doing … this is Jesus who, it turns out, has Martha’s back, and is helping her return to herself … detaching her from all that’s pulling her apart, so that she might be in the world with all the fullness of herself.
Maybe the “better part” that Jesus is speaking of is this way of being fully present, at home in ourselves, amidst the swirl of life and need around us.
The other thing that has helped me to hear God’s Word of Life in this passage is recalling an interview (2) I heard with Father Gregory Boyle, the Jesuit priest who heads up Homeboy Industries … this incredibly beautiful and successful intervention program based in Los Angeles for gang members, many of whom are coming out of incarceration.
At one point in the interview Gregory recalls the story about the desert mothers and fathers… how “whenever they would get absolutely despondent and didn’t know how they were going to put one foot in front of the next, they had this mantra. And the mantra wasn’t ‘God’; and the word wasn’t ‘Jesus’. but the word was ‘today’. And that’s sort of the key,” he says. And then he goes on … “There’s a play off Broadway right now called Now. Here. This. It’s Now -period; Here h e r e -period; This - period. That’s become my mantra, he says … so when I’m walking, or before a kid comes into my office, I always say Now. Here. This. Now. Here. This. -- so that I’ll be present right here to the person in front of me.”
In the recording of the interview, the next thing you hear are questions from the audience, starting with a woman who begins by saying, “so I’m thinking you’ve already told me the answer to my question: Now. Here. This.” But she goes on to say: “I’ve been moved by your work. I’m moved by the plight of the poor. I’m here for a week and then I go back to my privileged life in Connecticut. What is the message? she asks. What is there to be done besides shrugging my shoulders, and writing a cheque?”
“Don’t stop writing cheques!” Gregory says. And then he says, “the answer really is kinship. Everybody is so exhausted by the tenor of polarity right now in our country -- and the division is the opposite of God quite frankly. I always think of the rich man and Lazarus, he says. (referring to the parable in one of the Gospels, where Lazarus, who was the neglected beggar at the rich man‘s gate, is now resting in the bosom of Abraham in heaven, while the rich man is in the fires of hell.) The rich man is in hell, says Gregory, not because he’s rich, but because he refuses to be in relationship with Lazarus. That parable is not about bank accounts and heaven. What’s on Jesus’ mind is his prayer ‘that all may be one.’ And that’s where we need to inch our way closer, says Gregory. We imagine a circle of compassion. Then we imagine nobody standing outside that circle. God created an ‘other’ so we would dedicate our lives to each other.”
Isn’t that what Jesus was doing with Martha … bringing her into this circle of compassion.
Whether it is being aware of the need of the poor in our midst … or hearing the barrage of story after story of mass killings … or feeling overwhelmed by all that our own lives hold … the possibilities abound that would leave us paralyzed or panic stricken. But there is another way that Jesus shows us. Instead of losing ourselves in the swirl, or taking on the whole deal, our task is to be deeply present to what we are truly about … returning to ourselves in a way that allows us to turn toward one another with grace. For that’s what meets us there, if we can only go there, to the heart of ourselves … that well-spring of God’s grace and mercy … God’s loving kindness that is our to tap and let flow in us and through us.
How might we get there …it might be by way of a companion who stops us in our tracks, who looks into our eyes and speak through our panic … or it might be by way of a mantra. If it worked for the desert mothers and fathers, maybe it can work it wonders for us! -- the repeating of a mantra: Today! Now. Here. This.
To be sure chaos abounds. But grace all the more!
1. D. Mark Davis, Martha's anxiety: struggling alone against many things July11, 2016
2. Gregory Boyle, The Calling of Delight: Gangs, Service and Kinship interview with Krista Tippett, On Being, April 2, 2015.