Martha, Mary, and an eclipse

Sermon for Pentecost VI, 2022, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY

Text: Luke 10:38-42

In August of 2018, we drove to my mother’s house in Nashville, Tennessee to see the total solar eclipse that passed over the city. I brought all of my photography equipment and a telescope that I had recently bought. As we sat in a parking lot with dozens of others, I was busy setting up, checking and rechecking everything. I wanted the perfect, Pulitzer-prize winning photo of the total eclipse, as if no one had ever taken such a picture before. I had rehearsed everything in my mind over and over, and when the sky went dark and that dim, silvery eclipse light shone down on us, I took pictures, and looked through my telescope, and took more pictures. I almost missed the eclipse itself. About mid-way through it, I stopped and looked around at everyone else marveling at the sight. So, I took it all in, and for the remaining precious few minutes, I experienced the eclipse. I saw how everything was different, and what a strange sight the sun was, a black dot in the sky with a silver halo. And then it was over, the sunlight quickly returning to full light and full August heat.

As I read through the Gospel reading, I was reminded of my experience before and during the eclipse with all of my preparations, and understood what Martha was missing as she was preparing and serving her guests. Here Jesus was, this charismatic man that some claimed was God, in her home. She had to prepare a place for him to sit, food for him and everyone with him to eat, and wine to drink, which was the expectation of hospitality at that time. How could she possibly prepare for God? Would anything that she did ever be enough? And to add to her burden, her sister, Mary, is sitting at Jesus’ feet, drinking in every word he says instead of helping her. Martha was missing out on listening to Jesus because she was so busy being the host.

This story immediately follows last week’s reading, the parable of the Good Samaritan. At the end of the parable, Jesus says “go and do likewise,” that is, go and serve the needs of others. And that is exactly what Martha is doing, serving the needs of her guests. But is this what Luke means, to serve to the point of exhausted frustration? It would seem so, because Jesus calls out Martha by name and tells her that her sister has chosen the better of two choices: to listen, rather than to serve. Luke presents two ways to respond to Jesus’ presence, listening and learning, or being active and doing something. But why would Jesus say that listening and learning is better than doing when he just finished saying to the legal expert to go and do as the good Samaritan has done?

We mistakenly interpret the story of Martha and Mary by assuming that a choice has to be made between preparation and participation, when in fact, there isn’t a choice to be made. We can do both, prepare and participate. If you look around this sanctuary, you see the work that the Altar Guild did to prepare us for worship: the hangings in the color of the season, the altar set for the Eucharist, the gifts of bread and wine to be brought up during the offertory. That sets the scene for worship, but it isn’t the focus of worship. As this service began, we heard the Collect for Purity (Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid:...) that prepares us for worship, but it isn’t the focus of the service. I’m delivering a sermon to you now, preparing you to take the word of God with you out to the world, but that isn’t the focus of the service. The focus of worship is to be in the presence of God, like Mary was in the presence of Jesus. It is made possible through preparation, like Martha’s preparation.

In the story, Martha lives the active preparatory spiritual life we have, while Mary lives the contemplative spiritual life we search for. Both preparation and participation are possible, and in fact are both needed but they have to be kept in balance and in perspective. One depends on the other, where our experience of being in God’s presence moves us to prepare a place for that to happen again, which leads us to experience God’s presence, and so on. Our active spiritual life can pull us out of the cycle of preparation and experience and into worldly life, and that was where Martha was at the moment that she complained to Jesus. She became overwhelmed when her spiritual effort crossed over to her worldly life, and Jesus’ words to her were to remind her what her preparation and service was really for, without being condescending. He would have said the same thing to Mary had her and Martha’s roles been reversed. Jesus doesn’t follow the saying that the true experience of life is in the journey, rather than reaching the destination. He instead says that it is the destination, or listening and learning, that is more important than the journey, or preparation. So, the goal in our spiritual life is really to be in the presence of God as we pray, sing, and listen without distraction, and the preparations in the sanctuary make that possible. We share in Martha’s frustration when we lose sight of why we prepare, or when we get caught up in the details of preparation and it becomes our reason for worship. Whether too focused, or overwhelmed, we lose that connection with God.

We could take Luke’s story further by imagining that Jesus would say to Martha, “You have served me and the others well, and made it possible for Mary to sit and listen. Come, sit by her and learn, and let others prepare and serve.” Jesus’ humility would set the tone for preparations that would meet his needs, not his expectations or his status as the Son of God. If Martha could let go of her anxiety, she could let go of the impossible task of properly serving Jesus according to his status and serve him with love instead. In the same way, our preparations for worship or for our spiritual life do not dishonor Jesus’ status, and as the Peanuts character Linus puts it, the Great Pumpkin who comes on Halloween, chooses the most sincere pumpkin patch, not the best. The sincerity of our preparations are what counts, rather than them being the best preparations possible. There are no special actions or words we can make or say that will be seen as the bare minimum for Jesus to approve and see us as acceptable. He would, instead, recognize our efforts, thank us for our hospitality, and invite us to rest beside him, to listen and to learn. We can’t make the mistake that Linus made and think that Jesus will come because we’ve prepared for him, even with all the sincerity we have. Our preparations are for us to find Jesus who is already here among us, not win his approval.

An interesting thing happens when we prepare to invite Jesus to be with us. The hospitality that our preparations create is seen as an invitation by the community around us to come join us in that experience. That hospitality invites people to join us as they are, rather than who we want them to be. It’s because we have prepared for them to share the experience of being in God’s presence with us, rather than us preparing based on their status. We know that we will not be judged and rejected by God for our preparation and hospitality, because we have made the better choice to focus on listening and learning from Jesus. And we are sure that we have prepared for that experience by cleansing the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, so that we are able to truly love our neighbors as they join us. Jesus loved both Martha and Mary, and valued their presence. He included them in an event that only men would normally participate in. He values us as well in both our preparation and our attention to him.

Oh, and the next solar eclipse will be just north of us on April 8, 2024. Don’t miss out on it.