Summary: The familiar story of Martha and Mary cannot be reduced to a conflict between activity and contemplation. Rather, to hear it in context, the account invites us to hold both in creative tension.
Today we have the tale of two sisters. One is in the kitchen and the other is not. Martha is the diligent one. She is working hard, and she does not have any help. She wants Jesus to tell her sister to help her. No doubt she is frustrated, as she has cooked up an enormous meal while Mary sits there. Who could blame Martha for being annoyed?
Then we have Mary, who sits at the feet of Jesus. She listens to his voice, sets her agenda aside, receives his instruction and ponders his words in her heart. This is the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus is always on center stage. He is the one we must listen to. If Jesus came to our house, wouldn't we want to sit at his feet?
Most of us know the usual way this story is used. It is held up as a mirror, and the question is asked, "Which one are you?" Are you the industrious Martha, pursuing the tasks at hand, making the necessary preparations behind the scenes, watching the clock and tending to all the necessary details? Or are you devoted Mary, gazing into the face of Christ, free from worry, focused on the deep significance of the moment, and not bogged down with the unnecessary details? Some are drawn to Martha, others attracted to Mary. That is how the issue is usually posed.
But that is a simplistic take on the tale. The Marthas who love details need their Jesus-time too. They intend to get it, but first the potatoes must be peeled and the meat cooked. The Marys cannot float on the ether of contemplation. There are necessary life tasks that cannot be neglected.
Parker Palmer, a good Quaker, says we cannot divide life into action and contemplation. For us to be fully alive, we must hold together the work to be done with the necessary reflection that finds wisdom and meaning in what we do. Palmer says one cannot exist without the other. As he puts it,
When we fail to hold the paradox together, when we abandon the creative tension between the two, then both ends fly apart into madness. That is what often happens to contemplation-and-action in our culture of either/or. Action flies off into frenzy -- a frantic and even violent effort to impose one's will on the world, or at least to survive against the odds. Contemplation flies off into escapism -- a flight from the world into a realm of false bliss.1
Our souls need both action and contemplation, to do and to be, to work and sit still. This insight becomes even clearer when we consider when Luke tells us this story. At first hearing, the tale of Martha and Mary suggests the value of sitting, listening and receiving the word of Jesus. Yet it immediately follows Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan, a story that challenges us to "go and do likewise."2 One story invites us to listen to Jesus. The story before it implores us to care actively for neighbors, whoever they are. We do miss the point of the Christian life if we pursue the message of one story without the other.
Yet it is difficult to hold these stories together. What many people do is work hard and then go on vacation, alternating between labor and rest. They put in time at the office and keep weekends free. That is easier said than done. Who keeps their weekends free? Look at our calendars: every available moment is jammed full. For many, it is all Martha, no Mary, and a lot of us are exhausted.
Can we be like Mary and Martha at the same time? To get the work done and to be still, to stay contemplative while active, to remain active while contemplative? Our distracted age makes this difficult. Cell phones tempt us to stay connected, and therefore distracted. Hundreds of television channels call out for our attention without offering much benefit in return. Most of us know there are emails waiting for our answers, even if they are inconsequential. And the calendar on the kitchen wall is much too full.
Jesus offers a situational corrective. When Martha storms out of the kitchen with her dirty apron, the Lord makes it a teaching moment. With the gentlest voice possible, he declares to the Marthas in our midst there is a time for hard work, but there is never a good time to be distracted by many things. Anxiety may be a real emotion, but it is usually counterproductive.
Jesus knew how to work hard. He healed one person after another, spoke to enormous crowds, never had a minute's rest from his own disciples, was always "on" when people were around. Yet, he could also say, "Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these."3
Here is a gospel word to Martha and all the others like her among us. If we are burning the candle at both ends, we are invited to look at the birds and admire the lilies. If we are weary, the Bible invites us to rest. That sacred pause is the essence of Sabbath. It is God's gift of time for the restoring of our souls, an invitation to rest in the Lord and to let God run the world for a while. All of us could take Sabbath time today, but we must commit to taking it. It really comes down to that. In our story, Mary has chosen what Jesus calls "the better part."
Some years ago, a group of church leaders gathered for a week-long ecumenical training conference for both clergy and laypeople, all of whom were high functioning individuals, well organized and capable in so many ways. Their combined list of personal accomplishments was extraordinary.
At the end of the week, the final worship service promised to be very long. There were lots of readings, standing and sitting, more standing and sitting, some genuflecting -- and then a gentleman stood to share the morning homily. He was well up in years and looked disheveled, like an absent-minded professor. He spoke without notes in a southern twang and seemed to have a hard time gathering his thoughts.
Then he began to tell a story about being raised by his grandparents. They were good, solid country folk. When the speaker was a boy, his granddad went to a nearby farm to get the Thanksgiving turkey. He stuffed the live turkey into a burlap sack and took the trolley back home.
This was where the story got interesting, as seen through the eyes of the young boy. The boy went to the back yard as granddad returned. The axe fell, the turkey's head rolled away, and that turkey took off running. It ran and ran; it stumbled and got up and ran some more. It was cool stuff for a 9-year-old boy. A headless turkey running around the yard!
By this time, everybody was puzzled as to where this man was going with this story. Here they sat with a bunch of robed-up clergy in all their high church finery and this guy was talking about a headless turkey.
Then he said, "Let me give you the moral of this story. Activity is not a sure sign of life." Yes, that was the point of it all. Activity is not a sure sign of life.
Jesus looks to Martha and tells her not to be worried. He tells her to avoid distraction by all the things she must do. Can we imagine what else he says to her? It is the same thing he says to us, "Here I am. Come, sit with me."
For what does it profit a person to stay busy all the time if they cannot sit for a while with Jesus?