Listening before doing
The Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 10.30am Eucharist, 17 July 2022
There are a number of stories of sibling rivalry in the Bible. Jacob and Esau, for example, who provided the beginning for a famous pseudo-sermon by Alan Bennett, using the text, ‘My brother Esau is a hairy man, but I am a smooth man.’ The Jacob/Esau story is a powerful one, involving parental favourites, deception, and stolen blessings. At least there is some kind of brotherly reconciliation, decades later, as there cannot be for another pair of siblings from the book of Genesis, Cain and Abel, with the former murdering the latter.
We can only speculate about the sibling dynamic in today’s Gospel, involving Martha and Mary, with Jesus cast in the role of parent, ‘Tell my sister to come and help me.’ How galling to be told your sister is in the right; not just partly right but entirely right, for Jesus says there is need only of the ‘one thing’ that Mary is doing. And what is this ‘one thing’? It is quickly stated: ‘Mary sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.’
I suspect many, perhaps most of you, will sympathize with Martha. ‘Distracted by many tasks’ is a description many of us will recognise. She, after all, is working her socks off to get everybody fed, and Jesus apparently doesn’t value what she’s doing. But can Jesus really be saying that activity, doing, in this case the work involved in hospitality, is unimportant, and that sitting and listening is all?
Hearing the Gospels in bite size chunks can be misleading. From the four verses of Luke we heard this morning, it seems clear we’re meant to contrast Mary and Martha. I want to suggest that the contrast intended by Luke is just as much, if not more, the contrast between Mary and the lawyer we heard about in last week’s Gospel; the lawyer to whom Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan.
In the reading Martha must be the leader of the household, as it she who extends hospitality to Jesus, and welcomes him into her home. She may be the leader, but she’s also the one with the responsibility. Although we aren’t explicitly told her ‘many tasks’ relate to preparing a meal, they almost certainly do, and in this Martha is living out the kind of hospitality Abraham extended to his three mysterious visitors by the oaks of Mamre, although there also it was a woman (Sarah) who did most of the work.
So why does Martha’s activity come in for criticism? If you read Luke from beginning to end, the connection between listening and action, hearing and doing, is stated many times. A few examples: in Luke chapter six Jesus talks of the importance of building on solid foundations, and says ‘I will you show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them.’ Luke 8.21, ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.’ Luke 11.28, ‘Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it.’
And then we have last weeks Gospel, the Good Samaritan. Immediately before Mary and Martha we hear the account of the lawyer who answers his own question to Jesus (about eternal life) by citing the commandments to love God and neighbour. Jesus then offers the Samaritan as an unlikely role model – as Hannah Barraclough pointed out in her excellent sermon last week, this is like a Ukrainian reaching out to a Russian – binding up the wounds of the victim, carrying him to the inn and paying the costs. The parable ends with a clear instruction: ‘Go and do likewise.’
The lawyer has been listening, as Mary does, but what is vital is that hearing should lead to doing. If it doesn’t, it becomes a mockery of what has been heard. The vital corollary, however, is that doing without listening can easily degenerate into random busyness. Here is the importance of the repeated word ‘distracted’ as applied to Martha. Understandably enough, her activity has left her disconnected with what it is all for, and this is what Jesus challenges. In this sense Martha is the perfect paradigm for today’s hectic world, full of tasks, busyness, worries and distractions. But to what purpose, and how much listening is going on, and who is worth listening to anyway?
One of the many theories about why the Mary-Rose sank is that the crew did not listen the instructions of their new captain, or ignored his orders, or did not understand them. And what they actually did proved disastrous – with great loss of life, as signified by the grave of a member of the ship’s company where we will later lay a wreath as the fortieth anniversary approaches of the raising of the ship from the depths of the Solent.
And in relation to today, it is often observed that many, maybe most of us, live in ‘echo chambers’ in which we only listen to views and experiences that confirm our existing worldview. Those taking a different line seem to us seem obviously misguided, idiotic, or malicious. This can apply to both individuals, and the way groups of people (political parties, say) dismiss other groups. And, as the Conservative party leadership contest shows, sometimes family disagreements (sibling rivalry again) can get extremely heated.
I’m currently reading a book by the American social psychologist Stephen Haidt, with the subtitle, ‘Why good people are divided by politics and religion’. I was intrigued that at one point he quotes from the teaching of Jesus to back up one of his key conclusions – that we are all ‘self-righteous hypocrites’. ‘Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, [said Jesus] but do not notice the log in your own eye?’ Haidt argues that better self-understanding, in which we realise most of the reasons we give for our opinions are simply rationalisations of our emotions, intuitions and gut reactions; and that we are far too quick to denigrate opposing views rather than give them a fair hearing.
The complex language of our second reading, Paul’s letter to the Colossians, can help us. It refers to those who are ‘estranged and hostile in mind’, and also to Christ as the one ‘who made peace through the blood of the cross’. That is, after Jesus has been betrayed and left to die alone, he somehow returns as the resurrected one, a source of grace and hope to his treacherous and fearful friends. Through his risen power, those disparate disciples are formed into a new community, which has no boundaries of culture or race or language because it is not founded over against anything else, but is simply a gift, something given, rather than a product of groupthink.
I suggested that Martha’s busyness and distractions were a paradigm for today’s world, where all kinds of voices clamour for attention. But if we, as participants in the new community of Christ’s church, make the effort (like Mary) to listen to him, what might he be saying to us? Well, apart from hearing the challenging teaching about our tendency to hypocritical self-righteousness, there is also the language of ‘fullness’ and ‘riches’ that Paul uses. This language of abundance can be heard right through the Gospels. For example at the wedding at Cana, following Jesus’ intervention, there is far too much wine – more than 120 gallons. At the feeding of the five thousand, there is too much food – twelve whole baskets of leftovers. The hospitality of Jesus’ table fellowship seems to have no limits either, as prostitutes and tax collectors and lepers are all included. The problem with Jesus, it seems, is the opposite of the usual human complaint – not too little, but too much. Not famine, or subsistence, but abundance. Too much drink, too much food, too much love.
This may be a hard notion to take in when are constantly hearing about food and energy prices, about war in Ukraine and elsewhere, about the devastating impact of climate change. We haven’t fully worked out how to save the planet, or how to prevent wars, bring people out of poverty, or manage an economy.
But if we think human life is all about scarcity, perhaps we need to listen harder to Jesus, and attend more closely to all that God gives: an extraordinary world to inhabit, reasons for living that endure, inexhaustible mercy and love, a future with Him.
To be part of Christ’s church is to be given the chance, like Mary, to sit at his feet and listen to him. It is to belong to a community that subverts all other forms of belonging, for it is not founded on any form of tribalism or sibling rivalry, but is nourished only on the abundant love and self-sacrifice of Christ, and the Kingdom to which he pointed. If we listen to him in the midst of our Martha-like distractions and worries, and if we learn where to look, the things that really matter overflow abundantly: community, imagination, friendship, hospitality, eating together. Christ’s community, the Church, is here to help us live out of this abundance, for the sake of God’s world and all those in need. AMEN