St. Mark's Church
Proper 11
Year C
Don Esbenshade

Opening Prayer: Lord God, we thank you for allowing the Holy Spirit to dwell among us; now let us breathe in the Spirit; help the Spirit to breathe in us.  Amen

Distraction

Today’s Gospel seems to start as a quiet interlude. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and he decides to stop off for some down-home Judean cooking at the home of Martha and Mary. The next thing we know is that Martha is being reprimanded by Jesus and Mary is being held up as a paragon...of something.

What was Martha doing that displeased Jesus? And what was Mary doing that was so worthy of emulation?

It does sound as if Jesus is suggesting that Martha should get out of the kitchen and listen to him. To Jesus. Quietly. Like Mary. And without causing any fuss. But I really doubt that Jesus was all that concerned that everyone present should sit at his feet in rapt attention! Notice Jesus’ response to Martha: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things...” This is the second time in the passage that Martha’s ‘distraction’ is noted. It is doubly emphasized just as Jesus emphasizes Martha’s name.

Martha cannot decide what to do. She could prepare the meal, serve the guests, be a pleasant hostess, or she could listen to Jesus. But she couldn’t decide. And as a result did none of those activities well.

Let’s compare this with the similar event we heard today in our reading from Genesis. Abraham was sitting outside of his tent as three strangers appeared. He immediately jumped up and was the eager host looking to the comfort of his guests. He made sure that they were refreshed and fed while having Sarah and his servants assist in meeting the needs of these men. Then he “stood by them under the tree while they ate.” Sarah, as was the custom, remained in the tent. But she was also attentive. She was just inside the tent listening to all that was said. Abraham and Sarah were not distracted but were totally attentive to their guests. Their reward was the announcement that they would have a son even now in their old age.

With this story of Abraham and Sarah in mind, I think we can see that Jesus probably was not concerned that Martha was being a hostess. Nor was he concerned that Martha might not have been planning to listen to him. Jesus knew that either would have been fine if she would have been wholehearted in her attention to what she was doing.

In a sense, this is the central passage in this sequence of Luke. The Gospel readings of the last few Sundays, and next few Sundays as well, all describe Jesus’ travel to Jerusalem, a goal from which he is not distracted. And consider the Good Samaritan from last Sunday’s Gospel reading: The priest and Pharisee who continued on were both distracted by what they felt they had to do, and passed by ignoring what the beaten man clearly needed. The Samaritan was not distracted by other concerns and did what was necessary for the beaten man.

How often are we distracted? Regularly. Often. Even constantly.

People go out for a walk, or to run, or to bike and have headphones on. As a result, they’re distracted and they cannot attend to their path, to the weather, to their surroundings, or even to their own body. Cell phones offer a perpetual distraction we know well, whether it’s our phone or someone else’s. It seems to be impossible to go anywhere without being bombarded with advertisements. Gameboys, TV, and boomboxes are other examples of frequent distractions. Even our clothes are often advertisements, as are our coffee cups. It seems as if our society and culture have a vested interest in our remaining distracted...

And these are all external distractions. What about inside our heads? Is it ever quiet in there? Zen Buddhism has a term for this. It IS sort of an unofficial term but I find it utterly descriptive: “Monkey chatter”. Whether we wish it or not there always seems to be this ‘monkey chatter’ taking place in our heads: It is an ongoing internal monologue - NOT a dialogue - that continually evaluates, questions, and documents what we do, or see, or think or feel. Or what others are doing or wearing or saying. The monkey chatter is always there. Unbidden. And seemingly unstoppable. 

Apparently Mary was not distracted as she sat at Jesus’ feet. How can we be like Mary? How can we be open to Jesus? How can we be open to Christ? To God? And why doesn’t Jesus teach us this?

The answer? We ARE like Mary. Mary’s ability is a God-given ability we all have. In telling the parable of the Good Samaritan and in suggesting that Mary’s choice was ‘the better part’, Jesus is reminding us that we have this ability and can use it. In The Secret Spiritual World of Children, Tobin Hart suggests that as many as 80% of us have had spiritual experiences, have been like Mary. Of those people, 60 to 90% of them had their first such experience as children. Perhaps the important question is not “How can we be like Mary?” so much as it is “Why have we forgotten how to be like Mary?”

All of us can ask, “How can we be open like Mary? When is it that we have we done this?” We demonstrate this ability when we forget ourselves and act without thinking. For example, if a mother sees her child falling and about to hit his or her head, she does not have second thoughts about the situation. All that exists is her child’s falling motion and her rush to intercept. There is no thought; just a complete presence to what is happening, and a total response.

Or consider Mark McGuire. Was he distracted when he hit one of his seventy homeruns in 1998? There was only the ball in flight and his bat moving in response. Had he been distracted and not open to the moment, there would have been no homerun. 

Often, such moments occur in a crisis event or one that is totally unexpected. But we can intentionally give ourselves such moments as well. We can give ourselves these moments through prayer and meditation techniques.

One technique called “Centering Prayer” has roots dating back to the early Christian monastic tradition of the desert fathers and mothers. Centering prayer is a wordless prayer in which you are quiet and essentially try to focus on the center of your own self. I noticed in the paper that last week, in Belleville, there was a workshop on practicing centering prayer. There will be another such workshop this coming week in Dittmer. Writers such as Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating, Cistercian monks in the same order as Thomas Merton, have both written about centering prayer.

The simple act of focusing on one’s breath can also be a meditation, a way to be open to God. While such breathing meditations may be found in many diverse traditions, they can also be found in our own Anglican tradition. Nancy Roth, an Episcopal priest, has written a book entitled The Breath of God – An Approach to Prayer. Among the Chapters she includes are “The Breathe of God as Silence”, “The Breathe of God as Thought”, “The Breathe of God as Speech”, and “The Breathe of God as Action.”

And we’ve all heard of rosaries. They are a well known part of Roman Catholic tradition but they have a place in Anglican tradition as well. A rosary is just beads. A string of beads. Your string of your personal beads. With any number of your beads on that string. With each of your beads you recite a prayer phrase. Your own prayer phrase with each bead. This is praying your rosary.

There are many such techniques to be found in the Christian tradition, as well as in other traditions. How we pray or meditate is less important than the attempt. With even the smallest and most mundane effort, we can be like Mary, open to Jesus, open to God. You don’t even have to call it ‘prayer’!

Much of the Christian monastic tradition is built on the idea that our activities can be prayerfully done. Monks have long followed the Benedictine rule. Part of the monk’s day consists of manual work with the goal of having a prayerful attitude permeate all of his actions. Included in this is hospitality. Monasteries often offer (a spiritual) refuge to visitors and these acts of hospitality are prayerfully done.

My wife, Burnell, often sits and sews, recognizing what she is doing as a prayer activity. Other such crafts can also allow us to forget ourselves and be open to God: woodwork, gardening, and painting are such activities. Sometimes I find a brief interlude of doing the after-supper dishes can help me to settle and to be open.

It’s not too hard to see that even Martha’s activities as the hostess – cooking and caring for her guests – can be done prayerfully.

So, what are we promised if we engage in some of these prayerful activities? Let’s ignore the medical benefits, and there are well-documented medical benefits. I doubt that medical benefits were what Jesus had in mind anyway. What Jesus promises all through Luke is that we are saved if we are open to him, and to God. Jesus promises salvation. Jesus – when he was holding Mary up as an example – was telling Martha how to find salvation. When we pray in a way that we can forget ourselves, we find peace… and salvation.

Admittedly, this is not how we normally think of salvation. More typically, it is part of our theology, of our culture even, to think of salvation as something to look forward to in the future. In Luke, however, we find over and over little hints about how we can be saved now. God wants us to be saved, to be saved now. And distractions prevent our lives from being as God wants them to be. In entering into prayer, in helping ourselves to be less open to distractions, we open ourselves to salvation now.

Salvation, the Kingdom of God is not in the future. It is not even in the demands of others. It is in our prayerful, undistracted openness to the will and word of God.

We are each of us, unique. And, how we choose to forget ourselves and be open to Jesus Christ, to God and to God’s will, can be unique as well.

In so doing, we let the Spirit breathe in us.         Amen. 

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Hart, Tobin. The Secret Spiritual World of Children. (Makawao, HI: Inner Ocean Publishing, 2003)

Keating, Thomas. Open Mind, Open Heart – The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel. (Amity, NY: Amity House, 1986)

Pennington, M. Basil. Call to the Center: The Gospel’s Invitation to Deeper Prayer. (New City Press, 2003)

Roth, Nancy. The Breath of God – An Approach to Prayer. (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1990)

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