Defense and offense, yin and yang, blood and oxygen…

This is a subversivepreacher archive (6 Pentecost 2011)
Text only this week.

Let’s have a show of hands between

Martha’s and Mary’s.

Martha’s are the ones who, as Jesus says,

dither about and are distracted by many things;

while Mary’s prefer to focus on one thing at a time.

Martha’s please raise your hand.

Mary’s?

I want to be very careful here

because this Martha and Mary story

has been appropriated in the history

of The Episcopal Church,

as one of the quote, “Women’s” stories.

And some people get a little cranky

about being labeled a Martha or a Mary.

And, somewhat unbelievably,

in the days of Church women’s groups –

which I guess still exist in some churches –

there was often a “Martha’s Guild”

and a “Mary Circle.” Yikes!

Anyway, at the risk of disturbing the sacred ground

that some people feel around this story,

I want to de-gender it.

I also want to take it out of the kitchen.

It is usually assumed that Martha

is working in the kitchen preparing a big meal

for the time when Jesus is done imparting wisdom.

But maybe she was a banker;

like the Muslim Hawala or Hundi

who handle currency in an informal network

beyond institutional banks.

Maybe she was a match-maker

or a potter or responsible for a garden

or making bread.

Who knows,

who cares?

The story is not about women,

any more than most Jesus stories are about men:

they are about us –

male or female;

gay, lesbian, or trans;

Martha or Mary;

Max or Mark.

So let’s strip it down.

Jesus comes to town and Martha invites him over.

Martha opens her home.

We do not know anything more than Martha

is hospitable.

The only other thing we know

is that Martha is busy doing a bunch of stuff

and her sister, Mary, is not.

Mary is sitting at Jesus feet

taking in what the master is laying down.

She is a student.

Hold on…

Mary is a student.

A disciple.

Mary takes on the posture of a disciple.

That is worth noting

for all those traditions that do not allow women

to be priests or ministers or speak in church.

It is worth noting how unusual it would have been

for a woman to be a student of a man.

Women did not study with men.

Women did not study.

Women and men did not sit together for meals.

So what was Mary doing there?

This is a theme, a really strong theme,

that the lectionary of readings has been

delivering so far this summer.

Over and over and over and over again,

Jesus crosses the boundaries,

and breaks the rules

and ignores the laws and customs and manners

of the rigid social and gender caste

within which he lived.

Martha and Mary is another such story

and it’s punch line can get lost

because we are swatting at Martha or Mary,

depending upon whose team we are on.

The fact that Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet,

studying and learning and being a student,

is like one of those detailed painting-puzzles

in which there are tiny details out of place

that you are supposed to find.

Mary is an out-of-place detail.

So all we know about his peculiar little story

is that Martha was host and Mary was disciple.

But like all these little stories we’ve been hearing,

there is a conflict at the heart of it:

Martha wanted Mary to be a host too.

Jesus wanted Mary to be a disciple.

That is what we know;

anything else,

regarding motives or activities,

is pure conjecture.

Now I could finish this sermon

by telling you the usual Church dribble that

it takes both Martha’s and Mary’s

to make a happy, wholesome world.

But that is so trite it is almost meaningless.

Or I could make us feel bad

by quoting the great choreographer, Twyla Tharp,

who says that multi-tasking corrodes creativity.

But feeling bad doesn’t do anything for us

and we are not going to stop multi-tasking.

Or I could psychologize the story

and remind us that we have both Martha’s and Mary’s

within us; and that we need to feed and care

for both our inner Martha and our inner Mary.

But while that is true, it doesn’t really

sound all that authentic coming from me.

So…what to say?

This story is like a Google map

where you can zoom in our out

to see a wider or smaller perspective.

We need to zoom out and see this story in the context

of the other stories that Luke has nested it among.

And when we look at the several stories

that precede it

and the several stories that follow it,

we see that it is of a piece with those stories.

For example,

the two stories that precedes Martha & Mary

are Jesus telling the lawyer that

the summary of Torah Wisdom is:

the Trinity of Love: God, Neighbor, Self.

These loves, Jesus says, are inseparable,

mutually dependent, and

seamlessly impossible to distinguish.

That story is followed by what we heard last Sunday,

the Good Samaritan.

That is a story that says goodness

is not defined by what we believe but by what we do;

and that what we believe

is not defined by what we say

but by what we do.

Next Sunday we will hear the follow up story,

in which Jesus presents his disciples with a prayer –

what we’ve come to know as Jesus’ prayer.

In that prayer Jesus says

that the goal of a spiritual life

is to make heaven and earth the same thing.

We are to grow up

and be like our Father or Mother in heaven;

and that when we act like our Father or Mother in heaven, then indeed,

life on earth is as it is heaven.

To make heaven and earth the same

is our prayer and our hope.

The story of Martha and Mary,

coming as it does smack dab in the middle

of these other great stories,

tells us that action and reflection are

inseparable,

indivisible, and

mutually dependent.

It does not matter

whether we like one or the other better,

both are required

and required all the time.

It doesn’t matter if we would rather be doing

or we would rather be studying or listening,

we have to do both

and we have to do them in such a way

that they are not dichotomized as either/or choices.

Action and reflection,

doing and learning,

hospitality and advocacy,

spiritual and prophetic,

charitable and activist…

they are not separate, distinct activities –

they are one and the same.

If we decide

that we prefer one to the other,

and we focus on only one…then we will lose the other.

When we disconnect them

or un-tether them in any way,

we will, eventually, lose both.

What Jesus is telling us in all these stories

is that love,

goodness,

spirituality

and action

are each seamless garments,

and we cannot subdivide them

into personal preferences

without doing severe damage to them.

Love of Self,

disconnected from love of Neighbor,

is narcissism;

but love of God

divorced from love of Self,

is hot air.

Action and advocacy,

unsutured from spiritual inquiry and listening,

dries up into pessimistic cynicism.

Belief un-rooted in corresponding action,

is empty rhetoric and moral flatulence.

For whatever reasons

we are always wanting to dichotomize the world

and our own desires and preferences

into good and bad,

true and false,

religious and secular,

spiritual and activist,

godly and human…

But when we do that,

we uncouple a yin and yang

of the human heart

and we suffer irreparable harm in the process.

Martha and Mary are the same person

in different but integrated modes of being.

They are sisters not strangers,

inseparably related not

Defense and offense,

yin and yang,

blood and oxygen…

So, get your Martha and Mary game on.

Defense and offense,

yin and yang,

blood and oxygen…

we are but one and the same

and the name of the game is integration

rather than separation

or doing our own thing.

Peace be with you.