6 PENTECOST, PROPER XI - C - 19 LUKE 10. 38-42
Have you ever attended a party or some other social event where you tried to make conversation in a crowed room with someone you were acquainted with but because of all of the distractions you were unable to do so?
You were focused on them looking them squarely in the face as you spoke but could tell that they were just “not there.” Their eyes did not meet yours rather they were looking past you searching the crowed room for someone else in whose presence they had rather be.
Suddenly and abruptly, they departed from your presence as if you were never there. It has happened to all of us I am sure, as well as our having been the guilty party. How often we are “not present” to another person.
We do not hear them, and in some cases, we do not really see them. They are present to us but we are not present to them. Our thoughts are elsewhere. Our attention is not on them. We are distracted by whatever it is that has hold of our thoughts at that moment. We don’t really hear what they are saying.
Jesus is on his way to
In today’s passage from Luke, he enters a certain village accompanied by his disciples. Here he is welcomed into the home of a woman named Martha and her sister Mary. Hospitality was taken very seriously in Jesus’ day. Every effort was made to receive and entertain both strangers and guests with liberality and kindness.
It would appear from this brief story from Luke that Martha was going all out to ensure that Jesus and his friends would be well fed with more than the usual fare. She was focused all of her energies on what she was doing to prepare the meal and set the table.
She went hurriedly about her business going in and out of the kitchen making sure that everything was just so when she realized that Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to him while she did all of the work.
Her focus suddenly shifted from her work to her sister’s attention to Jesus. “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me.”
To sit at someone’s feet meant, quite simply, to be a student. Mary was learning about God’s kingdom from the lips of God in Christ himself. She was listening and learning, focusing on the teaching of Jesus and putting it all together in her own mind. Mary was present to Jesus. Martha was not.
Jesus was being served by Mary in a way that Martha’s meal and preparation could not. Christ was being fed by Mary’s attentiveness and nourished by her being totally present to him in a way that mere physical food could not do. Is this what Jesus meant when he said to his disciples at the well in
Martha got worked up over the details and was distracted from what was really important - the presence of Jesus - and missed the opportunity to be present to him. How often we miss the opportunity to be present to Jesus. We allow ourselves to be distracted by the every day comings and goings of our lives. Our attention is not on God, but on earthly things.
We come to church, for example, with perfectly good intentions of offering ourselves to God in worship, song and praise. However, our thoughts drift off and our mind becomes focused on other things, most likely during the homily. Or perhaps we think about what we are planning to fix for dinner after the service and who all will be present.
We simply lose spiritual focus and forget why we are here. We may have been distracted when we walked in this morning by the thoughts and cares that were on our minds when we left home. We tried to focus on our worship but our minds were elsewhere.
We failed in our attentiveness. We were not “all there” for God. The same holds true for our prayers. How often we lose focus while praying. When our thoughts are on something other than God, it is hard to pray.
And because of that, we say that we pray but never hear God speak. Listening is an art. One has to block out everything else in order to hear what one wishes to hear. In this case, God. Mary sat at the feet of Jesus listening to his words.
Her focus was not on offering hospitality to him, per se, but in the offering of herself. She was in the presence of Jesus and she made herself present to him. Her reward in listening to his words was a glimpse of the vision of God’s kingdom Jesus was presenting and with it the hope of glory
Abraham showed hospitality to the strangers that happened his way. He focused on meeting their every need and for his attentiveness he was rewarded with the promise of a son. God always rewards our attentiveness to him. He is always present to us whether we realize it or not, waiting to speak if we will only listen.
Martha was not only distracted from the presence of Jesus by her attention to detail but by the attention Mary was giving to Jesus. Her focus was misplaced. She was in essence concerned with self, consumed by the details, and missed the opportunity to sit at the feet of Jesus.
When we are full of self and our own self-interests there is no room for God; no room for God to work in our lives, and not even a sense of his presence. Mary chose the better part that day and in so doing has given all of us an example to follow.
We need to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to what he is saying. For he will feed us with the “real presence” of His being if we will make ourselves present to Him with our whole hearts, mind, and spirit. It is in the gift of His presence and our attentiveness to His words that we come to know the “hospitality of God,” that is, God’s love, grace, mercy and forgiveness that is given to all who seek Him.
And through the guidance and teaching of the Holy Spirit, we learn to respond to one another with that same “hospitality.” For once, we have experienced it our lives are never the same again. AMEN+
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