There is an old Simon and Garfunkel song from the 60’s that went, “Slow down, you move too fast. Gotta make the mornin’ last, just tripping down the cobble stones, lookin’ for fun and feelin’ groovy.”
I am reminded of that song whenever I read this gospel. We all know the Mary and Martha’s in our lives. Who are the Mary’s who emulate the lyrics of this song? Who are the Martha’s who are the antithesis of this song? Those who know my mother would recognize her as a Martha. Mom can be obsessively compulsive about cleaning. As my father once observed, we had the cleanest dirt in town. My mother takes great pride in keeping a clean and orderly house. Now on the other hand, Ruthie’s mom has had a different approach to housecleaning best expressed by her mother’s words, “If you don’t like the way my house looks, take off your glasses!”
As a rule, we as Americans are pretty obsessed about working. We are duped into thinking that our self-worth is linked only to our ability to work. We can be so obsessive about working that we cheat time with our families and we cheat vacation to work even more. There was a romantic comedy a number of years ago, in which an American woman is having lunch with an Italian man. At one point in their meal together, she looks at her watch and tells the man that the time she allotted for lunch was over and she needed to get back to work. The man looks at her and says wisely, “this is the difference between we Italians and you Americans. In Italy, we work so that we can live. In America, you live so that you can work.”
In today’s gospel, Jesus is emphasizing to Martha and to all of us to slow down and allow time for God in our very busy day. God does not impose his presence upon us. Having free will, it is only we who have the power to allow God, time in our day. How much time do we allow God during our busy day?
This is the key point about the commandment of keeping holy the Sabbath. Coming to synagogue or church on the Sabbath is not about God needing our prayers and worship to feel good. As Jesus pointed out to the Pharisees, the Sabbath was made for us. The Sabbath is to be OUR day of rest.
Rabbi Harold Kushner in a book on Psalm 23, relates a story from the 19th century, when a British group of men hired African porters to carry their supplies into the jungle on a Safari. The group walked for 6 days in the jungle, and on the 7th day the porters refused to move. When one of the British men asked why, the leader of the porters replied that they had been traveling for 6 days, and needed 1 day for their souls to catch up with them.
This poses a question for us. How often throughout the week do we allow our souls to catch up with us?
Are we so obsessively busy with all the activities in our lives that we ignore or completely forget about the God who created us? Do we only allot one hour a week to the God who created us, who loved us into existence, and sent his Son to teach us and then die and rise from the dead for us? In the 168 hours we have in each week, for some people is even this one hour in all of those hours too much time to spend with God?
Jesus urges us to put the important areas of our lives into perspective and then order our lives accordingly. Our relationship with God must always be first, immediately followed by our relationship with our families and friends. When we do this, everything else, including our work will fall into its proper place. It does not have to be an either/or choice, but think of it as a choice of “with.” In other words, we can be very busy but at the same time be very much aware of God’s presence in the moment. However, we must make sure that we set aside time every day to be exclusively alone with God.
In all of her busyness, my mother never neglected her time with those of us in my family, and she always set aside time daily to be exclusively with God. Mom has always known how to order that which is most important in her life. However, if we find our lives so compulsively busy that we can’t fit God into our daily living, then let us take my mother-in-law’s words about housework to heart and apply them to our busy lives. There are times when we must simply “take off our glasses” and drop the busyness of our lives, so that we can spend time with God, making God first in our lives.
