Mary, Martha.......and the Perfect Dinner Party!

Luke 10:38-42

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I wonder which of the two in our gospel reading you relate to most (and this applies to the fellas as well)! Do you see yourself as a “Mary”, sitting there quietly listening at the feet of Jesus? Or are you more of a “Martha”, never having time to sit down, always rushing about, doing three or four things at once? I have a sneaking suspicion that most of us, if we are honest would probably see ourselves more as Martha’s……always busy, worrying that things are maybe not quite right and doing our best to make sure that things go to plan. I’m sure that many of us have had friends round for dinner, and spent hours working out the perfect menu, selecting the right wine (to be served at the right temperature), making sure the seating plan is in order, and oh so carefully choosing the right kind of background music to create the perfect atmosphere for a dinner party to remember!

I’m sure that thoughts similar to these would have been running through Martha’s mind as she prepared for and received their honoured guest. She was in fact fulfilling the expected role of a woman at that time, certainly no time to sit down for five minutes at the feet of Jesus like her sister Mary!

Mary, on the other hand seems to have no problem with behaving in quite a different, and even radical way with Jesus. She sits at the feet of Jesus as though she is a disciple! This is almost unheard of!  It is simply not a woman’s place to take upon herself what was very much the male role of student, learning from the Teacher. In that simple act, by doing something that seems so very ordinary to us today, she completely turns upside down the expectations of society as to the correct way in which women should behave.

 

Sometimes we forget perhaps just how radical parts of the Bible actually are. We become so used to always having it there in the background that we can sometimes miss those times when the status quo is changed, particularly in such a quiet way. This is one of those times!

We read in other sections of the gospels of a similar scenario, such as when Jesus visited the home of Lazarus (who he had raised from the dead, and who also happened to be the brother of Mary and Martha). We again see Martha rushing about making sure everything is perfect and Mary sat at the feet of Jesus anointing him with perfume!

At the beginning of my Reader training we were asked to complete one of those personality style tests that are meant to pinpoint what style of personality you have. Some of you might be familiar with the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator……..this was a very much simplified version of that and certainly wasn’t an exact science! It basically slotted us into a number of categories according to whether we were an activist/doing kind of person or more of a contemplative/thinking one. For what it’s worth I came out as being at the more contemplative end of the scale, though in reality I reckon, like many I am a mix of both, but apparently it’s the contemplation that dominates!

If such tests were around in their time I reckon most of us would be able to guess what personality types Mary and Martha would fall into! Mary, the one who takes time to sit and learn, perhaps a bit more studious! Martha the practical one, eager to get things done, distracted, we are told by “many tasks”. We see similar personalities in the male disciples as well; it’s not simply a gender thing!

In a situation that those of you who are parents will probably sympathise with Martha complains to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do the work all by myself? Tell her then to help me!” (Lk 10:40) “I’m doing it all and she just sits there”! It does seem pretty unfair! And the response of Jesus? Don’t allow yourself to be so distracted by external things all the time. Slow down and focus on that which is really important!

 

It’s easy to get so distracted by things that are going on around us that sometimes we lose focus on what is really important. Even here in church, we can get so caught up sometimes in PCC meetings, rotas for the coffee, getting people to help out at the jumble sale, even who is presiding or preaching from one week to the next, that we can forget to take out time to be still like Mary.

All of those things, like Martha’s own preparations are important, but we need the times of simply sitting at the feet of Jesus to recharge and refresh us. We need to find time in our often distracted day when we can just be still and know that He is God and receive His love! Hospitality and generosity to others are absolutely essential to the gospel message, how we treat others is a key part of Jesus’s teaching, as we saw in last week’s recollection of the Good Samaritan. Yet, at the same time our actions need to be supported by our being fed by the one who brings us fullness of life.

Today we give thanks for the service that St John’s College has given not only this church, but also the local community. Like Martha they have been beavering away over the years providing us not only with our parish lunches, but also many who come to the community centre for a bite to eat and a friendly face at the same time as providing work experience for their students. The church would miss its Martha’s, and we will miss St John’s, but we wish them well and assure them of our prayers as they themselves move into a new phase.

So, I come back to the question I asked at the beginning! Are you a Martha or a Mary? And truth be told, each of us will have a mixture of the characteristics of each with us. We need both Martha and Mary. We need to be people who are prepared to go out and get our hands dirty and also take time to sit at the feet of Our Lord and be refreshed.

AMEN

Discipleship isn't meant to be cosy!

Mark 6:7-29

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our reading this evening from Mark’s gospel recounts one of the more gruesome stories to be found in the New Testament, that of the beheading of John the Baptist. There really is no way to sanitise or dress this event up to make it seem somehow better than it was. During his birthday celebrations, at the request of his niece, Herod orders the brutal execution of the one who had prepared the way for Jesus. It is almost beyond comprehension to even consider that such an act could happen seemingly on a whim!

It is almost too easy at times to become acclimatised to incredibly brutal and often graphic violence as we switch on the TV news and hear of the latest act of mindless violence, sometimes very close to home. I come from the generation that first experimented with video games, and back then it was all about PacMan or trying to stop aliens from invading the earth. Contemporary video games with increasingly realistic graphics are thought by many to possibly blur between what is real and what is not! It is understandable perhaps, in that context that some people can seemingly become so immune to increasingly high levels of cruelty and violence.

We are more used perhaps of thinking about John the Baptist during Advent as we consider his role as the forerunner of Jesus…….the one who prepared the way. There the story is of one who is “crying out in the wilderness…..proclaiming a baptism of repentence for the forgiveness of sins” (Mk 1:3-4). Here now, we see this great figure at the end of his life, still in a sense preparing the way ahead for Jesus, even as he himself faces death. In his own death he mirrors something of what lies ahead for Jesus. Herod, like Pilate with Jesus, seems to want to protect John, but ends up allowing him to be killed instead. The ones responsible for the death, in John’s case……Herodias, and in Jesus’s case, the Jewish religious leaders have no real authority of their own. Rather they exert pressure on the one who ultimately makes the decision. With John, what makes the whole episode even more chilling is the apparently casual manner with which he is dispatched……then his head paraded on a platter like some kind of trophy.

The church often speaks about Stephen being the first Christian martyr, as recorded in Acts. In a very real sense though it is actually John the Baptist who is the first to die for Christ.

Looking back to the beginning of our gospel reading we hear of Jesus sending out the disciples in pairs. They are told not to bother with material possessions, only take what is absolutely necessary and to go out healing the sick, casting out demons and accepting whatever hospitality they may find. And they are told, if anyone isn’t interested in their message, to brush themselves down and move on.

There are similarities here with the ministry of John the Baptist. He spent many long years in the wilderness, as an itinerant preacher proclaiming a message that wasn’t always popular or well received. Yet he did so because of the call of God upon his life, a call which itself is recounted at the beginning of Luke’s gospel. His life (and that that of the disciples) wasn’t about looking for the easiest or most convenient way to get by, but rather about obeying the call of God wherever it may lead and whatever the consequences.

I’m reminded of some of our more contemporary martyrs who like John the Baptist devoted their entire lives to proclaiming the Kingdom of God in both word and deed. Saint Maximillian Kolbe was one of them, having been imprisoned in Auschwitz for protecting Jews from Nazi persecution. As a catholic priest, who had dedicated himself to living out the gospel, he offered his own life in the place of another who had been selected to die.

It is unlikely that any of us here will ever be called upon to make that kind of sacrifice, though there are still those around the world who do just that. What each of us is called to do however, as disciples of Christ, is to go out and proclaim the Kingdom of God in both word and deed to all we meet. Some may be receptive, others less so, but we are called to do it in humility and obedience to Our Lord.

Both Maximillian Kolbe and John the Baptist heard and obeyed the call of God upon their lives, even to the very end. May we not allow ourselves to become so used to our comfortable and sometimes quite cosy Christian lives that we forget how radical and often dangerous it can be to be a follower of Christ.

AMEN