Pentecost 9

Pentecost 9 (Luke 10:38-42) “You are worried and distracted by many things.”

Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves.

Our heavenly Father created all of us and each of us by the power of the Holy Spirit according to the pattern of the Beloved Son. Jesus is the pattern for human life and for our unique personal identity.

Worry distorts that pattern. Distractions inhibit us from living according to that pattern.Certainly, Martha was doing nothing wrong as she made preparations to receive Jesus. What was wrong was the attitude motivating the action. What was wrong was the worry.

Worry is about the future. It is the anxiety that declares: whatever can go wrong will go wrong. The reason worry is a problem is basic. No one can know the future. No one can control all events. We only have the present.

The present for Martha and Mary was Jesus. Jesus was not only their present, He was and is the Real Presence of God. As the Real Presence of God, Jesus is the point of contact that unites the realm of time we inhabit with the timeless real of the Eternal God.

Martha ignored the present reality of Jesus. She chose to immerse her soul in futile speculation about the future. She worried. And, in her worry she missed the blessing.

Distractions inhibit us from perceiving the blessing, receiving the blessing and sharing the blessing. As with worry, the particularities of distraction are usually not bad in and of themselves. Martha allowed the ordinary things of life to distract her from the extraordinary blessings Jesus brought.

For Martha, the occasion for distraction was housekeeping.  Jesus came to visit and Martha focused on cooking and cleaning, ignoring the very person who had come to visit. She was the perfect hostess who never greets her guests, speaks with her guests or gets to know her guests.

The real distraction underlying the occasion was perfection. Martha wanted everything to be perfect for Jesus. Underlying the desire for perfection is the demand for control. And, beneath the demand for control is hubris- fatal pride.

Nothing and no one in this world is perfect. Martha not only expected perfection of herself- she demanded it of her sister. The perfection Martha demanded was to have things her way in her time. This is a common malady of lost souls. Most of us most of the time want what we want and we want it now.

Sadly, the demand for perfection, the individual will to power and the expression of hubris made it almost impossible for Martha experience the visit of Jesus with joy. She experienced his visit with anxiety. Mary understood that when Jesus visits it is because he wants to see us, hear us and share the Divine Blessing with us.

The deeper insight the Holy Spirit offers in this as well as other passages of scripture, is that through pride and self-will many people willfully choose to miss the blessing of God in Jesus Christ.

It almost seems comical that Jesus visits the sisters and Martha so busies herself that she cannot enjoy the visit and actually resents Mary for enjoying the visit. But, it is a tragic comedy.

That tragic comedy is a universal experience of our species.

Our Heavenly Father designed time itself so that every seven days we would have the opportunity to set aside the distractions of every day life and enter into the Real Presence of eternal love.

Our Heavenly Father designed our species in such a way that we each complement each other, we each help each other, we each sustain each other through an attitude and an action of compassion.

Our Heavenly Father designed each of us personally to be one unique  and particular image and likeness in time and space of the infinite and eternal Beloved Son.

The Holy Spirit made sure the details of this dinner party were recorded in scripture. The purpose is to encourage us to consider how worry robs us of joy and how distractions subvert the blessings God has designed into nature, our species and each of  us as individuals.

What do you worry about? Surrender that worry to Jesus.

What distracts you from the Real Presence of God at the altar of sacrifice on the Day of Real Presence? Surrender those distractions to Jesus.

All people choose what we most want at the moment of choice. If you live with anxiety, at some level you have chosen that anxiety. If you are distracted from the blessings of God, those distractions – however good they may be in and of themselves- are the means the devil will use to rob the blessings of God from you.

Jesus sets the standard for us and shows us the way as he encourages Martha to make the choice her sister Mary made. The advice to Martha is universally applicable to all people everywhere.

Choose wisely. Choose the blessing. Choose Jesus.