2016:  8[th] Sunday after Trinity, Hollowell  17[th] July .

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

It's a truism to say that life is going by too fast these days, and seems to be getting faster. In the world of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, emails, and texts, it's the instant reaction that counts.  If I don't reply to an email within 48 hours I feel guilty.  And similarly if I don't get a reply to my messages, I feel neglected. 

I doubt that life is going to slow down of its own accord.  We can't put the clock back to, say, 1945 when you picked up the telephone, wound a handle and waited for the Operator to say " Number please." 

But we can consciously take time out, time to think about our lives, our Christian faith and what it means to us.  That still small voice of calm is, I feel, a very necessary part of our daily lives.   

In the reading from St. Luke's Gospel today the story of Jesus's visit to the home of Martha and her sister Mary, underlines the need to put aside  daily cares, to listen and learn.   The episode comes after St. Luke in the previous chapter describes Jesus telling  the parable of the Good Samaritan. It's the other side of the coin one might say: no time for contemplation or conversation. It's all action with wounds,  being dressed and the victim being taken to an inn.  That's the active Christian life: the story of Martha and Mary illustrates the virtues of the passive contemplative side of life. 

Mary is consciously being a student, sitting at the feet of Jesus. That, I imagine was somewhat unusual.   Women in Biblical times probably did not do very much sitting around.  Well, you might say, they don't do much sitting around these days either.  But they were surely getting to know each other. " 

When I am helping with the Restorative Justice Course at Onley Prison, we use the story of Zacheus the tax collector who changed his life after coming down from the sycamore tree and having Jesus for at dinner in his house.  One of the questions we look in our discussion groups is "What do you think Jesus and Zacheus talked about?". The sins on Zacheus' conscience perhaps ?  The meaning of his life of getting and spending ? His exploitation of others ? The ripple effect of his actions on other people's  lives. 

Equally, we don't know what Mary and Jesus talked about. But into their conversation bursts Martha. As I read the story, she is not so much busy with her housework, as distracted, worried by responsibility and having no time to pay her guest the compliment of paying attention to what he was saying.
 
Jesus is then not forthcoming towards Martha's fussing telling her that Mary had chosen the "good portion".   Indeed he seems to be mildly reproving her, embarrassing her in front of her sister.  

But Martha had of course more or less accused Jesus of not being interested in her. " Do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone " is her complaint. 

In a culture of hectic schedules and the relentless pursuit of productivity, we are tempted to measure our worth by how busy we are, by how much we accomplish, or by how well we meet the expectations of others. 
It's certainly true that many people do identify with Martha.  Feeling pulled in different directions and distracted by many things -- these seem to be common threads of life in our fast-paced world. And yet, as Jesus says a bit further on in the  Gosppel of St. Luke,  "Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?" 
We know that worrying  ( as opposed to forward planning )  does no good, and that much of what we worry about is not so important in the larger scheme of things, and yet we cannot seem to quell our anxious thoughts and frantic activity.
It is true that much of our busyness and distraction stems from good intentions. We want to provide for our families, we want to give our children every opportunity to enrich their lives, we want to  interact with neighbours and yes, we want to serve the Lord.  Indeed, where would the church be without its "Marthas," those faithful  few who keep the place going, hand out the coffee and push the vacuum cleaner.  ? 
And yet if all our activities leave us with no time to be still in the Lord's presence and hear God's word, we are likely to end up anxious and troubled. We are likely to end up with the kind of service that is devoid of love and joy and  possibly even resentful of others.
Both listening and doing, receiving God's Word and serving others, are important in  the Christian life, just as inhaling and exhaling are to breathing. Yet how often do we forget to breathe in deep ly.   That anonymous 16[th] century poem puts it this way 
     

YET if His Majesty, our sovereign lord,
Should of his own accord
Friendly himself invite,
And say 'I'll be your guest to-morrow night,'
How should we stir ourselves, call and command
All hands to work! 'Let no man idle stand!

Thus, if a king were coming, would we do;
And 'twere good reason too;
For 'tis a duteous thing
To show all honour to an earthly king,
And after all our travail and our cost,
So he be pleased, to think no labour lost.
 
But at the coming of the King of Heaven
All 's set at six and seven;
We wallow in our sin,
Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn.
We entertain Him always like a stranger,
And, as at first, still lodge Him in the manger.

A little less time spent in locomotion and rather more in thought,  as the philosopher Bertrand Russell put it, is the thought to take away today./ 







 
