What Can Never Be Taken Away

Luke 10:38-42

Every time I read this story, I leap instinctively to Martha’s defense:

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with practicing hospitality by taking care of your guests.
She’s just getting the work out of the way so she can listen too, right?
It’s just not fair to praise Mary when Martha is trying so hard – is it?

I do this so automatically that I get defensive for Martha even when nobody’s actively criticizing her.

On some level, I’m arguing against generations of interpretation that have made this story about opposites, about what’s appropriate women’s work, or about the one right way to be in relationship with Jesus.
I’m arguing against a history of interpretation that makes this story about limits, or about choosing sides. (“Are you a Mary or a Martha?”)

But I realized recently that I’m also so automatically defensive on Martha’s behalf because, well, I’m personally jealous of Mary.

I love bible study, reading and exploring and getting deep into the Word of God. I’m uncomfortable in the kitchen, and would secretly love to be praised for staying out of it (not so secretly any more). I wish I knew when to just stop and bask in the presence of God.

But wanting to be Mary often makes me act a bit more like Martha. I’ll spend hours trying to perfect a bible study question or plan an education program, and have been known to complain about people not carrying their fair share of the planning. I ask someone else to plan the meal, then agonize over whether it will turn out right after I’ve given up control – or spend the whole party in the kitchen trying to prove to myself that I’m willing to do the work.

So I’m jealous of Mary’s confidence in her relationship with God that lets her sit right down and listen with attention and openness, instead of working and working to make things right.

And I’m jealous that Jesus says that the good Mary has chosen will not be taken away from her, because it’s obvious to me that the things I work hard for can so easily slip away.

I could plan a brilliant class on the meaning of the Eucharist, and you could all hate it. My competence is fragile – every time I lose my voice or sprain a wrist I notice this. Age and youth, time constraints, illness and accidents take things away from all of us, any day.

It’s because things like exciting work, household competence, success and independence, can be taken away that I work so hard to keep up with them. It’s because they can be taken away that I worry about doing them well enough or fast enough not to lose them.

In his recent book Seculosity David Zahl writes about this drive to keep up, to chase what can be taken away, as a quest for “enoughness.” A quest for proof of our value; that we matter or make a difference; that we’re good enough, capable enough, anything enough.

Zahl describes the religious behavior that has emerged around the pursuit of enough in secular ways: the rituals, and rites of dating, marriage, and romantic love; the sin, confession, and penance of parenting “right”; the devotional acts of paying attention to our phones or TVs or computers, and being connected; the righteousness many of us struggle with around healthy foods, or political alignments.

I suspect that in many cases, we strive for these things because we want these tasks to make us right with God, as well as prove our worth to ourselves or our community, just as Martha tries to do right by Jesus through food service and clean towels.

With deep empathy, Zahl describes how our culture encourages all of us to pursue these things in a quest for wholeness, and how we will never catch up to that wholeness in pursuing the things that can and will be taken away.
He shares his hope that we can reconnect to the truth that Jesus lived for us: that we don’t have to be enough, to keep up, or to hold on to the things that are taken away, because God is more than enough for all our efforts and our inadequacies.

“Martha, Martha,” Jesus says, “you are worried and distracted by many things.”

It’s not Martha’s actions of cooking and care that Jesus is challenging. It’s her worry. Her distraction. That in her attempt to welcome Jesus, her tasks of service have become her focus, dragging her attention away from the wonder and joy of God sitting down right here in her house toward the anxiety of making her house good enough, her need to get it all done, the sense that she isn’t enough for the task.

I’ve felt that myself. Perhaps you have too.

And Jesus doesn’t want us to.

“There is need of only one thing,” he says. The same good that Mary has chosen which will never be taken away.

Mary – on this day, in this story – is a model of how to rest in the wholeness of God. To focus her self and her actions on her confidence that nothing can take that wholeness away.

I don’t think Jesus wants Martha to stop serving, necessarily. He knows she took on this work because she wanted to serve him, to honor his presence in her home. But any of us can become distracted, anxious, or worried, drawn away from God’s enoughness, even by tasks we take on in God’s service.

So Jesus wants Martha, and you and me, to serve in a different way, one that takes even more attention and care. He wants us to serve the way Mary listens.

To experience whatever work and rest, service and prayer we take on for God as the unquenchable joy of the presence of God, not as anxiety and distraction. Jesus wants Martha, wants us, to experience that confidence in her relationship with God that nothing can take away.

Some of us – especially those of us who are busy day after day, week after week – may need explicitly to sit still, to do nothing else but listen for a time, in order to recognize that wholeness of God that Jesus fills us with and wraps around us. We need to know what that confidence feels like so we can live it in our action and work as well as stillness.

Others of us – especially but not exclusively those of us who feel helpless, who sit still because we fear we can’t do anything, or can’t make a difference – may need to act. We may need to serve others or serve God deliberately and directly, in order to experience the wholeness that comes from knowing that what we do is inadequate, but what God does with us is enough, and more than enough, so that we can keep that confidence when we are still.

And whether we are acting or resting, still or busy, Jesus calls all of us to choose what can’t be taken away: the presence of Jesus.

Calls me to open my whole self to the presence and wonder and love of God, whether I do it in the kitchen or in bible study; to keep my focus on what God is up to in the world at the altar or at Iron Hill. Calls you to open your whole self to God’s presence and love in the church or in your car; to focus on what God is doing here and now whether you are praying or in a meeting or in the grocery store.

All of us are like both Mary and Martha, craving enough-ness, unable to win it for ourselves. All of us, like both Martha and Mary, beloved of God, have already been given the gift of God’s wholeness that can never be taken away. And when we forget, Jesus calls us by name and reminds us to rest in that gift.

So what stillness will you find, how will you be set free to act, when Jesus calls your name and you know – know – that the wholeness of God has found you, and can never be taken away?