“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.”
Have you ever done that you thought was right, but it turned out that what you were doing was wrong all along?
When you did what was expected of you but it turned out you were misguided from the start?
Have you chosen between bad and worse, rather than bad and good?
Martha, Abraham and Sarah are in exactly such situations this morning.
The rub is that all three of them are doing what they are supposed to do, they are being hospitable. In the time of the patriarchs and the time of the our Lord’s life on earth, hospitality was one of the most important parts of life in the near east. To be a poor host or hostess was shameful and could even provoke violence. To be a poor guest was equally shameful, and, for nomads like the three divine visitors in the Genesis story, could mean losing a meal and having to go home a different way, quite a hassle in the days before interstates.
So, in both stories, our mothers and father in the faith launched into their duties. their responsibilities, so that they could be hospitable. The inhospitable one in the stories is Mary, who shirks her duties. Nobody likes a layabout.
Everybody can get behind being hospitable.
Except for Jesus.
Why is it that the eternal Word who formed us and this world out of the void and who was miraculously born of a virgin never seems to have the same expectations that we feeble humans have created for ourselves?
Rather than chastising Mary for her sloth and for being out of her place, Jesus, I imagine taking a deep sight, addresses Martha: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.”
In the midst of Martha’s distraction there is the only one thing that matters. The only one person who matters. In the midst of Sarah and Abraham’s hustle and bustle, there are only three divine ones who matter. One Trinity that matters.
Now, before we apply the sharp two edged sword of the Word to ourselves, we need to follow our ancestors a little further.
Sarah and Abraham probably sought a blessing, given how Abraham bows to this guests and refers to them as Lord, Kyrios. Unjaded by our materialism and atheistic worldview, angel visitors would not have been outside the realm of possibility for them. But Holy Mother Church teaches that indeed, whether in angel form or human form, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were the three guests lounging in the shade of the oak trees on that hot afternoon. They came not just with a promise of more sheep and more goats. God came with the promise of himself. The eternal Son received hospitality from his great-great-great... grandfather and the eternal Father promised that Abraham would be the father and Sarah the mother of the chose lineage.
How did Abraham and Sarah react to this promise, laughter, worry and distraction. Sarah, just a couple verses after our lesson ends, laughs on account of her age. Later on, distrusting the divine promise, Abraham sleeps with Haggai, begetting Ishmael. Their reaction to God’s gift is disbelief. Disbelief that they act on.
So it is with Martha also. She rushes to go about business as usual even though Jesus had already set his eyes towards Jerusalem. She set out host a great rabbi. Mary sat at the feet of the lamb who was about to be slain. Who knows exactly what Martha meant when she asked Jesus to chastise her lazy sister. Perhaps she just needed a helper. Perhaps she understood too well what Jesus was headed for, and wanted him to pause so that the cross would not loom so large over her home.
Now, blessedly, because God is faithful and merciful, all three of our protagonists finally “get it.” Sarah and Abraham do have Isaac, and in faith Abraham even takes Isaac to be sacrificed, before, of course, God provides the sacrifice. Martha, you’ll remember is the sister of Lazarus. And when he dies, she says to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” And then, when Jesus asks if she trusts that he is the “way the truth and the light,” she responds, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world."
All three, not by their own will or choice or actions, but by God’s patience and favor, come to see the goodness of Christ unfolding in the world.
So what about us, as we flounder in a world of worry and distraction? As we flounder in selves made of worry and distraction? This question is especially though for us since our individual and collective wills are misordered by sin. I know I’ve manufactured situations where I bad and worse were the only possible outcomes. I know our society has labored for goals, thinking them to be right, only to find out that we were misguided from the beginning.
St. Athanasius approaches our problem with this question that is insightful because it moves the focus from our problem to God’s response. He asks: “What was God to do in the face of the dehumanizing of humankind...”
To him, the worry and distraction of our human condition, even when we seeking the right and good, is dehumanizing. Made in our creator’s image in order to worship our creator we get distracted and cast our eyes onto worldly things. Like Abraham, Sarah, and Martha, we fail to see Christ right in front of us. We fail to see Christ dwelling in our neighbors. We turn away from the prospect of crosses.
But, you see it is only in Christ’s being one of us, by taking on our lot, by shattering the divide between creator and creation, that we are saved by God. The Trinity at Marme, shrouded in mystery, was just a glimpse, a shadow of the the real human baby who was to be born 1400 years later. But the messiah, that child who came into the world in Bethlehem and took his first step towards Jerusalem when he was young sojourning in Egypt as Abraham and Sarah had, that divine child in his body bore the remedy for our distraction. God became incarnate for the wondrous task of bring we who are incarnate, fleshy, into God.
And so, fellow Marthas and Abrahams and Sarahs, when we laugh or stand incredulous in the face of God’s promises, know that they are unfolding in spite of us. And know that you are beloved in spite of your defiant laughter and in spite of your Haggais and in spite of your poor dinner party etiquette, and in spite of the million other things that we exclude God from but put ourselves into. And know that your neighbor is beloved, and the person sitting next to your neighbor is beloved. And know that this is because Christ, who died a human death, has, in his humanity, risen to redeem all this world’s deaths, be they the daily ones we inflict on each other or the final ones that end our lives. Christ, who has been making promises for a long time, speaks the final word to you as he did to Mary, “ you have been given the better part, and it will not be taken from you.”
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
