Today's gospel reading is usually seen in fairly stark terms: either we are similar to Martha – task oriented and a stickler for details – or more like Mary – more oriented towards contemplation, learning, and prayer. It's a simple dichotomy and temptingly easy to choose one category or the other, even if Jesus seems to imply that contemplation serves the better role in the long term.
That interpretation is easy, but it does little justice to what Jesus is saying, even if one of the greatest threats to the practice of religion in our society is over-activity: that constant pressure to fit more and more work and leisure events into the same old number of hours in the same old number of weeks in the same old yearly structure.
Like so much else in life, Jesus is speaking about the choices we make in how we spend our time, our energy, and our resources, even our monetary resources. As a house guest of Martha and Mary, he simply observed that Martha was stressed-out, perhaps out of proportion to the need for stress, and Mary was, in that circumstance, better taking advantage of what Jesus had to offer. The crucial difference is: "in that set of circumstances."
It is important to remember that our circumstances vary from day to day. While I enjoy – and need – a certain amount of time for prayer and contemplation each day, I cannot long retreat to a life of contemplation if our Cathedral's life and work is to continue. Contrary to the old platitude that the clergy work only one day a week, each day brings its obligations and responsibilities. Some seasons are busier than others, some more hectic than others. But each day, each season, requires the ability to be adaptable to change and need. We can't live one way or the other.
Perhaps one of the things Jesus is saying is that constant activity, without reflection, is usually neither productive nor very satisfying in the long run. And, equally, as we view Jesus' own life and ministry, we see that he was a mixture of both activity and reflection. Nothing gets accomplished if we are constantly planning but never doing. There is the clear danger of the "paralysis of analysis."
Several decades back Dean Wilshire said something which has stayed with me since I first read it. He wrote, in effect, that one of the principal differences between the clergy and the laity is that the clergy are expected to take the time for prayer and reflection each day. It is an obligation of the ordained life. And it is a true obligation, one that I have tried hard to take seriously.
But that being said, most of us are neither a Martha-type nor a Mary-type personality. Most of are – and need to be – a combination of both skill sets, or we could not survive in a world which expects much from us each day. And as we grow in both faith and life experience, more is often expected of us.
William Willimon said this: "I think many of you could testify that the harder you work at being a Christian, the more tough assignments you take on, the more desperately you need times of quiet and reflection, times like this service of worship." 1
That's so true because life presents many of us with a startling menu of ways in which to spend our days. We can travel, we can surf the internet, we can shop till we drop (as long as our credit card balance allows or the bank account has funds), we can use our unlimited cell phone minutes to text-message or Twitter our days away (as too many people do). We can explore new places to eat or drink or do both. Some folks love to travel o Atlantic City or elsewhere to try their hand at "luck". Often the beach or the pool are much more popular than church is. The choices are dizzying!
But think about this fundamental truth: "The lives of many people are characterized not so much by wrong choices as by the failure to make any deliberate choice of the 'best dish' on life's bewildering menu." 2
Jesus wants us to make the best choices possible when it comes to where our priorities lie. That is really what's at the heart of today's gospel passage. We can't make those choices if we are constantly distracted, to the exclusion of all else, by the constant menu of choices which surrounds us. We need to consciously work at spending time with God on a daily basis.
A priest-friend told me recently of a continuing education course he offered for his congregation. One of the questions he asked the participants was this: what is the primary thing you want to gain from your religion? The answers he received were many. Some wanted peace of mind, some wanted social justice, some wanted a sense of community or belonging. But one thing lacking, he told me, was that no one really wanted or seemed to feel the need for time alone with God.
Ephraim Radner wrote an article "Alone With God" which began with this revealing dialogue.
"Someone once asked me to visit a woman he knew, who lived alone in her house. So I went to talk to her. 'I wish I were dead,' she told me. 'I'm just miserable. I've got nothing to do, no place to go. What's the point?"
"'Do you pray?' I asked her.
"'I've prayed to get out of this place for ages; and God simply doesn't listen.'
"'Do you pray, not for things, but just to be with God?'
"'What in the world do you mean be with God?' she asked.
"'You know,' I said, 'be with God out of love?'
"She stared at me blankly. 'I haven't a clue what you're talking about.'" 3
Which is, I suspect, a bigger societal – and church-related – problem than many people realize. I fear that what too many people who are nominally Christian want is "feel-good, junk-food" spirituality which lacks introspection and reflection. Or to put it another way: it really lacks any personal relationship with Jesus.
You can't deal with Jesus and not be either challenged or changed.
It is the challenging and the changing which many people find difficult to handle. Thus they fill their daily lives – days and nights and weekends and holidays – with frantic, and often unsatisfying, activity which leaves them tired and drained but unfilled in terms of purpose or direction for their lives.
So the question Jesus asks us today, all of us, is: What part have you chosen? Do you have the time – and the courage – to face me, to talk with me, to let me talk with you in a world filled with other choices, less demanding but also less fulfilling choices?
Will you make "the better choice"?
The Very Rev. Theodore W.Bean, Jr.
Dean of the Cathedral
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1 Pulpit Resource, Vol. 38, No. 3, p. 15.
2 Halford E. Luccock, Preaching Values in New Translations of the New Testament (New York: Abingdon Press, 1928), p. 144.
3 The Living Church, July 18, 2010, p. 17.
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