July 18, 2010 - 8th After Pentecost

Dr. Theodore Ferris, for years the rector of Trinity Church, Boston, wrote a prayer once that says what I covet for myself, particularly in my preaching. He wrote: "In our prayers, O God, draw us closer to thyself; help us always to be honest and real, and to say no more than we really think."

"To be honest and real and to say no more than we really think."

And what I have long really thought, when I am honest with myself, is that Jesus often makes me mad. Have you ever been secretly ashamed to realize that you have been thinking, as you have listened to some of the Gospel lessons being read, "it just isn't fair?" Once in a while when we are paying attention we really hear some of the things that Jesus says and are shocked into realizing that what he is saying are HARD words that make us angry, puzzled. And we find ourselves thinking: "But that isn't FAIR!" Let me put just a few of these hard sayings into twentieth century language:

"The air conditioning broke down and it was over 100 in the shop, but I worked a full shift - and then the boss paid that summer replacement kid the same as he paid me, and the kid didn't even show up for work until late in the day. Wail't'll I see my Union boss on that one! It's not FAIR!"

"I stayed home, ran the office, kept the books, never took time off - and then that kid of yours came home after blowing his wad in the casino on the Reservation and carrying on with those Indian girls - and you give HIM the red-carpet treatment. That's not fair!"

"I got there early so as to be first in line to get a good seat - and then I go locked out just because I forgot to plug in my rechargable battery and went to get another, and by the time I got back everyone else had gone in and I was locked out. That's not fair! I was there first and left my jacket to keep my place."

And now today I just read these words: "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to serve alone?" Can't you just hear her muttering her way back into the kitchen saying: "It's not fair?" Ask any woman here - we know what it's like when company shows up, particularly the unexpected ones - potatoes to pare, vegetables to fix, a dash to the Quick Stop for some sodas, table to set, on and on. Enough to make anyone harried and cross. 

The minute I read the Gospel appointed for today I was transported back to our cottage on the bay in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, where there were always at least eight of us for all meals, but ten or fourteen on the week-ends.

Every woman here can picture it, I'm sure. Doesn't have to be a cottage at the seashore, it can be Lake Carmi or Champlain, a river, a mountain shack, your own home or wherever you take a vacation. A July day like this is a good time to think about this Mary and Martha story, for it reminds us all of those times in a hot kitchen when the rest of the family and the guests would be off swimming, playing tennis, hiking, fishing, sailing - whatever. Most of the time at Stone Harbor everything was OK, but then there were those few times, those all too few times, when my brother Duncan and his family would come for a visit. Can you tell from my tone of voice when I say the name - DUNCAN - how I feel about him? I named one of my sons after this brother.t the news that Duncan was coming was enough to bring nieces and nephews and friends out of the woodwork. You never got just Duncan and his family, you got the entire Campbell Clan! And it took work to feed a gang like that. I can see myself now - sweat pouring off my face, trying to finish up those last-minute jobs so as to get into the living room, or out onto the dock if the night was a balmy mosquito-free one, so as to join the talk, the fun, the laughter. And usually by the time I'd finish someone would say: ""We'd better knock it off now and all turn in - I know Duncan has to make an early start in the morning to get all the way home to Vermont." And I would try to muffle my sobs in my pillow because everybody had had a chance to talk with my brother but me. And it just wasn't FAIR!

As if that weren't bad enough, we'd go to the little Lutheran Church across the street and hear some pious preacher who'd probably never helped his wife wash a dish pontificate about how "Mary chose the better part, and we should all be like Mary and not like Martha who was all harried and rushing about."

And the trouble is - ah! the trouble is - that he'd be right. He'd be right on three different levels:

First - on the practical level of common, ordinary good sense, I can see now, with hindsight, that I didn'`t have to have a leg of lamb or a roast of beef (with the oven going on a hot summer day?). I didn't have to set the table nicely and go to a lot of fuss. I could have had paper plates and hot dogs. Martha could have had the equivalent Israeli fast food stuff: dates and figs, pomegrantes and cheese or whatever didn't take a lot of work. I could have set food out in the kitchen and let them all help themselves. That would have been good sense.

Second - on a deeper level of good manners or decent politeness, I see now that I didn't need to stomp into the living room in front of everyone and berate my daughter: "You're never around when I need you! I though I told you to come home early from the beach to help?" Martha storms in from the kitchen and says: "Lord, don't you care the my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to come help me!" Why is it that it comes so hard to us to ask for help politely? 

I don't want you men to sit there feeling self-satisfied and a bit righteous just because I am talking about female stuff that you think doesn't concern you - about kitchens and meals and housework. Yes, the Gospel story is about these things, about women, but how many of you men, tired after a hard day at work, come home to snap at a son and say "I thought I asked you to cut the grass and here you are sitting in front of the tube again!" How many of you actually look at your wife and daughter and pitch in to help instead of tiredly sighing that "I see you didn't get the car to the repair shop!"

This brings us to the third level - the really deep one. WHY does it not come naturally to us to ask for help politely? Why do we feel we have to put on such a show of efficiency? Because we are ashamed to admit that we have our limits, ashamed to show that we get tired, overburdened, and bite off too much. In older times the church had a word for it, and it was considered a sin. That word is HUBRIS. The dictionary defines it as over-bearing pride. It is a basic American, a very human sin. When you dig deep enough you find that it can be called "origional sin". Wanting to run our own lives without any help from anyone. Maybe we should never have been taught that dreadful poem in grade school by Henley: "I am the master of my fate, I am the master of my soul." or listened to that TV ad that said over and over again: "Please, Mother, I'd rather do it myself." I don't need your help - yours or anyone else's, much less God's! Hubris. It LIKES having nieces say: "Oh, Aunt Virginia (Aunt Eunice, Aunt Ruth, Aunt Dinnie??) you give such mar­velous parties - it's no wonder we like to visit you in Stone Harbor, at Lake Carmi, on your farm" - fill in the blanks yourself.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem and Martha blew it. She probably wept into her pillow many a night and asked herself: "Why, oh why, didn't I keep food simple and go sit with him while he was here - for now it's too late."

So I come back full circle to where I began this sermon - that Jesus's demands are hard and make me mad, because the demands hit me in sore spots and ask me to re-order my priorities. This particular story about Mary and Martha speaks directly to me: "Virginia, Virginia, you are anxious and troubled about many things: one thing only is needful." And I am told to choose the better part that cannot be taken from me.

What is this better part? It is to never forget that I do not need to learn how to give, how to bustle about serving when the one who came to do the serving, the one who gives up even his life for me, is sitting in the living room. It is up to me , to each one of us, to learn that when we are harried and cross, tired, rushed and discouraged, that it is just then that we must let Jesus help us. But we have to admit to ourselves that we can't manage alone, have to ask (politely!) for help, and accept it when it is given. Then, we, like Mary, will have "chosen the better part."