REFLECTION ON THE READINGS FOR THE 16TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, 2019.
If we look back over the last two weeks, the readings have addressed the qualities of being a disciple of Jesus. This is true for this week, too.
The readings present to us a dichotomy in which Christian disciples live. The first is the busyness in being a servant of God. The second is doing nothing but resting in God.
In the reading from Genesis (Genesis 18: 1-10a), we hear the story of Abraham greeting the three strangers standing by his tent and inviting them to rest and freshen up from their journey and have some food and drink. The three strangers reward his generosity by telling him that his wife, Sarah, would bear him the child he had always wanted.
Paul begins his letter to the Collosians (Collosians 1: 24-28) stating that he is offering himself up as an oblation in service to the Collosian community. “I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints.” (Collosians 1: 24*)
Then, in the Gospel (Luke 10: 38-42), Jesus presents another side to discipleship. To borrow the old proverb, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Martha is busying herself, preparing food, cleaning, working very hard being hospitable to Jesus, while her sister, Mary, is doing nothing but sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to him. Martha, naturally, feels very put upon by what she perceives as laziness on the part of her sister, and complains to Jesus. We then hear Jesus’, famous quotable response to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10: 41b-42a)
I worked with a wonderful priest at St Hubert from 1984 to 1989, Fr Barry Schneider OFM. Unlike many priests with whom I worked up to that time, Barry was multi-faceted and talented. Before becoming pastor of St Hubert, Barry was an accomplished author of plays, taught at Hales Franciscan on the South Side of Chicago, traveled throughout the United States presenting plays with his acting troupe from Hales Franciscan, and was Director of Religious Education for the Diocese of South Falls, SD. He was also an activist priest, marching throughout Cicero with Dr Martin Luther King Jr. He protested the Vietnam War. He told me one day that because of his activism, he thought the dossier the FBI had on him was pretty thick. Prior to his coming to suburban, Chanhassen, he was pastor for a number of years at an African American parish in Nashville.
One day, in the midst of a very busy day, I found Barry sitting in silence in the church. He had been there for some time. He invited me to sit next to him and begin to speak to me about his life as a priest. When he was at his most busy, when he was teaching at Hales Franciscan in Chicago, busy with his plays, traveling, and his activism, he said, “I almost lost my faith and my vocation as a Franciscan priest.” I asked him to say some more about this. He replied, “I thought that my work was my prayer and neglected my need to pray.” He got to the point that he became overwhelmed by all the work he was doing and almost left the priesthood. It was then he realized that in all his busyness he was not paying attention to his relationship with God. With this insight, he made it a point to schedule in his busy day an extended time of solitary prayer with God. Sometimes, usually in the winter months, that solitary place as an empty Church. However, his most favorite and frequent place to pray was in nature. He, and his miniature schnauzer, Scamp, would go for long, prayerful walks in the nature preserves around Chanhassen. This was how Barry kept a spiritual balance between service and resting in God.
This is an important lesson for all of us. We as disciples, and especially for those of us in ministry, have a misconception that discipleship is about pouring ourselves out as a libation in service to everyone. I suffered under this misconception in my early years doing Church ministry, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, that eventually threw me in to a very deep, dark burnout. Isolating discipleship to mean all work and no rest can, as Barry observed, can lead to losing our faith and abandoning discipleship altogether.
Jesus insists that it is absolutely necessary to find a place to be alone and be in quiet with God and ourselves. We hear in the Gospel stories, Jesus seeking away, and on one occasion, fleeing from the crowds and the apostles to find an out of the way place to sit in quiet, in order to be in relationship with his Abba.
I remember a romantic comedy in which an American woman traveling through Italy has lunch with an Italian businessman. The lunch goes about 2 hours in length, in which the woman says to the man, “don’t you have to get back to work?” He replies to her something I have never forgotten, “That is the problem with you Americans. You live so you can work. We who are Italian work so that we can live.”
So how do we attend to this important need to spend time by ourselves and with God? Are we that busy with the things in our lives that we cannot schedule an hour, 30 minutes, 20 minutes in our day to do nothing but just “be” with God and ourselves? All the busyness in life and in ministry, for that matter, will not earn our way into everlasting life. What is most important for everlasting life is growing our relationship with God. While part of that is being in good relationship with others and serving them (Martha), we must also build a good relationship with the God who created us in love (Mary).
“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” Todays readings tell us we are not to choose between being a “Martha” or a “Mary”. We must embrace both in our lives.
*All scriptural texts taken from the New Revised Standard Version, Coogan, Michael D.; Brettler, Marc Z.; Perkins, Pheme; Newsom, Carol A.. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
