St. Teresa of Avila was a 16th century Spanish mystic and church reformer who combined a life of very intense personal piety with the practicality of good works for the cause of others in need. Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, and one who sought to combine the same two elements of faith in her own life, liked to quote an incident from the life of St. Teresa. It seems that the Spanish nun was on a missionary journey, traveling by donkey, when in fording a stream the donkey stumbled and threw her into the water. As a mystic, she was accustomed to hearing voices...when she hit the water, she heard the voice of Jesus say, "That is how I treat my friends." To which she replied, "That is why you have so few of them."

Whether we have ever ridden on a donkey or not...I think that all of us have experienced the aggravation of having our feet pulled out from under us right when we think we are heading in the right direction. It is not a happy feeling. Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus of Bethany, must have had similar feelings when in her weariness she said to Jesus, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me," and instead of being affirmed for her efforts, she experienced what must have felt like a rebuke. "Martha, Martha you are anxious....Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken from her."

Theologian Elizabeth Moltmann-Wendel[1] writes that as a child she was always sorry for anyone named Martha. There was something noble about "Mary" but "Martha" was rather common...Mary had the aura of holiness, whereas Martha breathed cooking and the smell of the kitchen. According to the story in Luke, Martha, the one who does the housekeeping, has rushed off to the kitchen to prepare a meal for Jesus who has come to Bethany. Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to him; she is the contemplative, the reflective one. Another way of saying it, Mary represents the concern for spiritual growth; Martha, the worker, the hostess and cook, Martha is an example of one whose natural response to being in the presence of God is activism.

We have all been focused on the exciting World Cup tournament recently. The final is totally European – Spain vs. Netherlands. Thank God that Europe does most of its battling on the soccer field these days...because it was not always so. During the Napoleonic era, after one of many obscure but bloody wars when the French and Sardinians defeated the Austrians on a field in Northern Italy, very near Milan, witnesses record that the Emperor Napoleon himself looked upon the dead and dying, 10,000 Frenchmen in all, and was nauseated. A young Swiss, Henri Dunant, on a tour in the area at the same time, stopped his carriage and did what he could for a few wounded. The great Napoleon threw up, and Henri devoted the rest of his life to founding the Society which today we know as the International Red Cross.

All too frequently the response to human suffering is more like that of the great Emperor Napoleon...it is shocking and frightening to see stories of children shooting children, or of mothers and fathers abandoning their young ones in back alley dumpsters. We begin to question our culture, don't we? God's love impels us to look at ourselves and our neighbors and the way in which we live our lives, but it does not necessarily save us from risk. Here is where our defenses become activated. Mary, at least, rapt at the foot of Jesus, is not going to be rebuked. Mary would grieve for the plight of children who risk stray bullets on their playgrounds...or come into the world unwanted and grow-up unprotected and unloved. Mary would grieve...It is the Martha types who are going to fall off of donkeys, or stop their carriages amidst the gore of a battlefield to minister to the wounded. It is the Spirit of Martha among us which calls us to be involved. That is also why the great Reformed theologian Carl Barth used to say that he prepared each of his sermons with the Gospel in one hand and the morning newspaper in the other. Christ calls to us through the very crises that shape our lives in our own time. It really takes all kinds, doesn't it?

Yet, Preacher Karen Cook states this reminder: For those of us caught in a never-ending swirl of priority-setting with too much to do and too little time, drowning in commitment fatigue, swamped with busy-ness overload – Jesus offers the Way. Gospel trumps busy. Gospel trumps worry. Gospel trumps distractions. Gospel trumps Chicken BBQ. Gospel trumps next Saturday’s party. Love God; love neighbor. That’s all that really matters – in every little thing that we find ourselves doing. Love God; love neighbor.[2]

It is not by accident, I think, that Luke has placed this story about Mary and Martha immediately after the story of the Good Samaritan. Our story this morning, in which Jesus tells thoughtful Mary that she has "chosen the better way" is a corrective to the Good Samaritan’s decision to act first and think later. To engage in the world, one needs to listen – to absorb and to feel the world’s needs. One needs “Gospel Moments,” e.g. Sabbath Moments, moments of quiet and thought before one strikes out on a path of change. We need worship as well as work in the name of the Lord. The act of sitting at the feet of the master soaking up the word through study and prayer is the act that energizes the activists who encounter Jesus in the world through their kinetic interaction with fellow human beings at the crossroads of life.

Dorothy Day...who began her Catholic Worker house in the worst days of the Lower Eastside and the Bowery in New York City echoes that view. "We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other." In knowing we risk sharing life with one another...the kind of activity that Mary finds at Jesus feet is for her a process of coming to know the master. Martha, the active one, develops relationships through her interaction. Some of us are more introverted, ourselves finding that we need solitude in order to recharge. Others are extraverted and need contact and interaction in order to feel whole and energized. Jesus may or may not be elevating contemplation over service in this story, but the truth is we need both, each of us in different measures; and generally we should not be asked to choose between one or the other. As Fred Craddock says in his Interpretation series commentary, if we asked Jesus which example we are to follow, the active Good Samaritan or the contemplative Mary, Jesus would probably say “Yes.”

"From the first, up to the present moment, Jesus has attracted people who are as diverse as can be. Within any congregation, one is likely to find it so. There will be practical Christians, whose faith is expressed in concrete acts of kindness and service. Others will be more intellectual, wanting to probe the mysteries of faith. Still others will mystical and emotional, faith for them being more a matter of feeling than of reason." Community doesn't have to mean homogenization. The point is not to make us all the same. Community involves being able to appreciate differences, and learning to listen to, understand, care about one another, or as a minimum, being able to stay in the same room with one another."[3]

It was the great Albert Schweitzer who once said, "At the point in your life where your talent meets the needs of the world, that is where God wants you to be." That seems to be exactly what the Prophet, Isaiah seems to be saying as well, in the responsive reading from today. It begins with a call to action:

Is not this the fast that I choose….

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

 and bring the homeless poor into your house;

 when you see the naked, to cover them,

 and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

 and your healing shall spring up quickly….

But, Isaiah concludes by saying,

If you call the Sabbath a delight

 and the holy day of the LORD honorable;

 if you honor it, not going your own ways,

 serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;

 then you shall take delight in the LORD, (Isaiah 58: 6,7,13)

We all need Sabbath moments – times of quiet and reflection – but at the same time, it is not the Sabbath that delights the Lord if the hungry are still not fed or the poor without shelter. Each of us on the continuum seeking to know the Lord’s will and to live and work together can find that balance. It is the place of the church to provide it – this community of as diverse in the variety of natures as any is a place where all of us can thrive in our quest to be disciples and to serve the Lord.

Indeed, it takes all kinds to sustain the body of Christ...so that there is a place for each one of us.... for Martha and her duties... for Mary and her piety... for Thomas with his doubts...for Peter with his blundering enthusiasm – these disciples are our mentors and our models as we try to find the balance and to be faithful. There is no correct way to be part of the body of Christ except that we seek to delight the Lord who has called us into being... AMEN.