6th Sunday after Pentecost
July, 21, 2019
38Now as Jesus and his disciples went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 40But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” 41But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” – Luke 10:38-42
Nearly 20 years ago, some researchers set up an experiment to test something about people’s ability to pay attention. They filmed two teams of people, one in all white and one in all black, passing basketballs back and forth. People were then invited to watch the short one-minute film and asked to count carefully the number of times the team in white passed the ball. But the point of the experiment was notto see whether participants could pay attention enough to accurately count the number of passes. The point of the experiment was to see whether the participants noticed the person in the gorilla suit walking through the middle of the players. Something like half the people who watched the video didn’t notice the person in the gorilla suit walking right through the middle of the game!
If you’ve never seen it you can watch it for yourself, though now I’ve just ruined it for you – you’ll see the gorilla no problem because I’ve told you to look for it. You’ll wonder how anybody could be so obtuse as to miss it. But of course, we actually do this all the time – we focus our attention on some things and fail to notice other things entirely.
Some of this is necessary for life – we could never take in the sheer amount of information that comes our way in a given moment in sights and sounds and other stimuli. It’s a critical part of brain development at an early age to sort out what to pay attention to and what to screen out. But sometimes we have been trained to focus our attention in the entirely wrong direction.
Like some grand and twisted version of the gorilla experiment, our world asks us to focus on power, wealth, and productivity. It asks us to pay more attention to people whose physical features conform to a socially constructed understanding of what is beautiful and attractive. We are trained by embedded and systemic racism and sexism to see the default “norm” as male and lighter skinned. Though we can begin to train ourselves to see things differently, the broader society in which we live tends to keep trying to orient our attention back to all those other things. Even when we try to focus on something else, our attention is often short-lived.
And today’s gospel is at least in part about attention. Jesus has come as a guest to Martha’s home. Every guest is an honored guest, but they seem aware of just how important this particular guest is. But one gets the sense that Martha is too consumed with tasks to give her full attention to Jesus. In fact, as the story is told, I’m not sure she’s even giving her full attention to the tasks of hospitality. Her real attention is on resenting her sister, Mary, sitting quietly at Jesus’ feet. I wonder whether her busyness is more of a defense – a response to her own anxiety and worry, or a way to keep her hands busy because she doesn’t know how to be still. Or maybe I just assume that because that’s how I am. I look for projects and tangible tasks, feeling the need to be busy or at least look busy. Because being present, really present to others, to oneself, to God – that’s hard, and frankly kind of intimidating. And in my worst moments I direct my anxiety and worry outward in the form of resentment of others.
When we sit with the present moment, with Jesus, we may very well find ourselves challenged in ways we’d rather not be. It may bring into focus neighbors in need we have failed to consider. It may bring into focus things about ourselves we wish were not true. It may cause us to confront the deeper worries and anxieties that drive our energy. But maybe most of all, we busy ourselves when Jesus shows up, because unconditional love is actually a little bit frightening. To stand and truly absorb the profound and uncompromising love of God for us, to realize that nothing we do, nothing we are can change that love, that strips us down in a way that makes us feel vulnerable and even out of control. Much easier to focus on doing the dishes for Jesus.
Which is not to say that Mary gets it all either. One can sit quietly at the feet of Jesus one’s whole life and miss the point of it all, miss the opportunities to step up to serve and care for others, miss the joys of living, and most sadly of all, even sitting at Jesus’ feet, one can still miss the profound, unconditional love of Jesus. I suspect we do that to some extent every Sunday. Every Sunday, we sit here in the presence of Jesus. And mostly we sit pretty attentively, some of us are busy with tasks – tasks that absolutely need to be done and are in service to God and neighbor – but tasks nonetheless. But if we truly absorbed that radical love to its fullest extent every week, if every week we were fully attentive to the presences of Jesus, I can’t imagine the power of love that would be unleashed in the world. I can’t imagine the way in which we and the community would be radically changed. But sometimes we are busy counting basketball passes.
It’s a whole lot easier for churches to focus on metrics of success influenced by the things the world has trained us to look for – things like attendance numbers, the size of our budgets, the sense of success that looks like something we remember from the past. And I wonder how often we miss the presence of Jesus walking right through it all. How often do we really focus our attention on what God is doing here? How often do we take in the sheer grace of God that abounds in all the little interactions we have, in the moments of worship that connect us to grace, in the care that is shown to members, in the hospitality that is shown at our tables, in the outreach that is shared with our neighbors?
It’s not so much that sitting contemplatively is better than doing tasks, though probably many of us are more prone to err on the side of doing and could learn to slow down a bit. I think instead it’s that we often fail to train our attention on the presence of God in it all, whatever we’re doing. And I’m sure that sometimes it’s out of not wanting to let God in to see the stuff we are ashamed of. But so often I think what we really miss in redirecting our attention is the love that is more powerful than all of it. The love that knows our deepest selves and loves us without question. I think Jesus’s words to Martha are not so much scolding as sympathetic. Martha, Martha, if only I could find a way right in this moment for you to know deep inside the love of God sitting before you. If only you could rest in that love as you so graciously provide for my hospitality.
Eventually Jesus does find a way to get through to Martha. Jesus shows up when her brother dies. He weeps with her. And he raises her brother from the dead before her very eyes. It may be that it took until resurrection to focus her attention fully, to finally allow the full extent of God’s love to cut through to her core. And Jesus does this for you, too. In our busyness or idleness, in our misattention and our inattention, in this life and in death, Jesus meets us as a humble guest to share with us that never-ending, all-powerful love. In fact it’s walking among us now, it’s hiding in plain sight, it’s boldly walking into the midst of our lives and calling our name, and inviting us to rest in that love.
-Pastor Steven Wilco
Stewarding the Word 