Proper 16 Year C |
St James’, Peace River |
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Today's Old Testament and Gospel readings call our attention to a paradox, or at the very least a tension, in the way Christians understand and practise our faith. We heard the beginnings of that tension last week when we heard the summary of the law in Luke's gospel: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself. In theory there shouldn't be a gap between those two commandments – but in practice we always seem to end up focusing on one at the expense of the other. And Scripture, at least on the surface, seems to reinforce that tension. Today we hear Amos proclaiming God's condemnation to his people because of the injustice they do to their neighbour. They worship, respect, fear and maybe even love God – that's not the issue. But even during the days set aside for worship, Amos says, they are planning how they are going to cheat each other once the markets open for business. The impact of that mutual deception falls disproportionately on those with the least power and the greatest need. And Amos, like all the prophets who follow him, tells us that God doesn't care about his own prerogatives nearly as much as he cares for what happens to the poorest and most vulnerable members of human society. We know that Jesus echoed that teaching in so many ways, giving tax collectors and prostitutes the first invitations into the kingdom of heaven; telling the rich it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle; identifying himself with the “least of his brothers and sisters” when they receive care and kindness from people like us. So it's ironic that today we hear Jesus putting the shoe on the other foot, telling Martha to slow down, take a breather, not worry so much about looking after everyone – and instead commending Mary for sitting still, taking the time to respond to the love of God in the words and very presence of Jesus. Back in the middle ages, traditional teaching used Mary and Martha to illustrate two ways of life, the contemplative and the active. Contemplatives devoted their lives to worshipping, adoring and serving God in the most direct way possible, through full-time prayer, usually in the setting of a monastery or convent. Actives – the great majority – served God indirectly by dedicating themselves and their wealth (if they had any) to serving their neighbour. Both were honourable vocations, but it was clear that the contemplative had the higher call. Since the Reformation though, we've turned that around. We've become skeptical of the value of prayer without action, and perhaps more importantly, we've focused our attention back where the prophets would have it – on the enormous range and depth of opportunities we have for really making a difference in this world. It's a big world, much bigger than it was in Jesus' day, and there are that many more people who need to know that God actually cares what happens to them. More than ever, we need Marthas, people who put their faith into action and do something with it. But I think we are still aware of that tension between the God-dimension and the neighbour-dimension of how we live out our convictions. We understand some of the temptations and challenges faced by people who throw themselves into service of others while forgetting to sit still and love God too: burnout; the arrogance that convinces us we know what's best; the great harm that gets done by people who genuinely believed they were doing the right thing. When you come to think that it's up to you to save the world, or anyone in it for that matter, you've lost something essential. Some Christians react by running to the other extreme: recognizing how enormous the needs of this world are, how incapable we are of addressing them by ourselves, and how great is our capacity for deceiving ourselves into thinking otherwise – they give up and hand it all back to God. These are the people who still, in our day, want to emulate Mary, sitting at Jesus' feet, saying their prayers, reading their Bible, going to church, and trusting that the needs and cares of the world will sort themselves out in God's time. But is that really enough? Is that faithful to God's trust in us, expressed through the whole of Scripture, from the beginning of Genesis when God put the whole earth under our care, to the last judgement when we will be reminded what we did or didn't do for the hungry, the sick and the lonely? It's still a paradox. And it stays that way because both attitudes capture something right, something necessary. It's right that we should feel overwhelmed and distrust our own capacity for fixing all that's wrong with the world, because in the end what the world needs is not us but God. That great vision of the Old Testament prophets, of a society where everyone is cared for in justice and mercy – we've proven over and over that we're not capable of getting there by ourselves. And as we understand the gospel, that's one of the reasons why God stepped into our human story in Jesus, taking that step of total self-giving which alone can break through to the vision of the prophets. So Jesus is the fulfilment of the needs of the world, not just in some spiritualized sense but in the most practical down-to-earth ways: if we want a world where the hungry are fed, the sick healed, the powerless given a voice, then we need to look at Jesus, on the cross, making those things happen. It's only by sitting at his feet, focusing on who he is and what he does, that we can ever really see what our world is meant to be. But the other side of the story is that we say Jesus IS the fulfilment of this vision – not WAS. The vision is still being fulfilled, it's still coming to reality. We can look around and see that we are not there yet, the work of the cross is still going on. And on our good days, that is where us Martha types come back into the picture. Not separately from Jesus but as part of his story, even part of his body – his hands and feet as we say – we can offer ourselves as the agents and tools of his continuing work to transform the world. Seeing ourselves in that way actually frees us to give more of ourselves away – we seek to identify with Jesus' own self-giving rather than just using our surplus wealth and energy to serve others. But it also guards us from that temptation to despair when the most we can do seems like a drop in the ocean. We are part of something much, much bigger. It's not our feeble love for our neighbours we are dealing in, but Jesus'. But to know that, to remember that, we too need to spend some time sitting at his feet remembering how much we are part of him, and he is part of us. That's going to remain a paradox, or a tension, for as long as we are in this world. Contemplation and action seem like two different things for two different kinds of people. Worse, they seem like they are in competition with each other for that scarcest of resources, time. Time spent praying feels like time taken away from actually doing something. Time spent getting busy feels like time taken away from sitting still with Jesus. When I think that way, I'm haunted by words attributed to Martin Luther, who is supposed to have spent two hours a day in prayer, except (he said) on very busy days, when it was three hours! The more we are committed to making a difference to God's people in God's world, the more we need to dedicate ourselves also to spending time working it all through with God – because it is only by looking into the face of Christ that we remember both who we are, and why we're in this business at all. It seems like a sacrifice, maybe even a drag, until you actually try it. But putting prayer and action together turns out to be the route to the deep satisfaction that comes from being part of God's continuing work in the world, fulfilling the vision of a world where there shall be no more mourning or crying or pain, but God himself will be with us, and will wipe away every tear from our eyes. *
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