The Reverend Dr. Lillian Daniel
July 18, 2010
First Congregational Church,
www.firstconge.org
630-469-3096
Scripture: Luke 10:38-42
Now
as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named
Martha welcomed him into her home. She
had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was
saying. But Martha was distracted by her
many tasks; so she came to him 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.” But
the Lord answered 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.”
Sermon:
The yoga class always begins with meditation. Never mind that I have come there to get some exercise, yoga teachers aren’t like service providers who give you what you want when you want it. They don’t just jump into things, like those hard poses you see in the pictures, of really skinny people twisted up like pretzels.
I admire what they can make their bodies do – arched over like an upside down V in downward dog, with their feet flat on the floor, hand stands without leaning against the wall, legs tucked behind their heads, or then those same legs folded up in the lotus position. And here’s the amazing thing, they are always looking comfortable, not pained, no sign of agony or even a little discomfort.
Well, that’s where my mind goes when I come to yoga class. That’s what I strive for. Even though I am at a basic level, I want to be like those people. So I go to class to challenge myself to get to the next level, really wanting to improve, and do more than I did the last time, to look like the people in the pictures. When it comes to yoga, I want to achieve that kind of sainthood, but that’s not the right word for an eastern practice. I want to achieve pretzelhood.
Which is of course not at all what yoga is about. A fact I am reminded of that at the beginning of every class, a painful and difficult time for me. Why painful? Is the first pose a hard one? Or an exhausting one? No, this is the beginning of class, we haven’t done a thing and won’t for a while. That’s what makes it painful. We have to spend all this time at the beginning of class doing nothing and sitting still.
“Let’s begin with some breathing,” the yoga instructor explains, and inside I groan, “No please, no breathing, let’s just get on with it.”
I want that great feeling you get, that physical release that comes from the physical practice, that same sense of well being that has entirely eliminated back aches from my life. I want that post yoga, stretched out, blissed out feeling that allows me take everything else in the work day in stride, and I want all that to start sooner rather than later.
“Ujjayi breathing, bouncing the breath off the top of the throat. Six counts inhale, six counts holding, six counts exhaling.”
Oh, are you kidding me? It’s going to go on forever, first six counts, then eight counts, then one nostril, then another and then back to something else boring. It’s just breathing, for crying out loud. We can do this already. Sometimes it’s all I can do not to shout out, “Excuse me, but I came here to get some exercise. Can we just hit fast forward on this part?”
But I look around and everyone else seems to be really into it. They are relaxed as if this is the most natural thing to be doing in the world. Six counts through one nostril, six counts through another. Don’t these people have anything to do? Sitting there so calmly with their eyes closed.
My eyes are open, but furtively, secretly so. You see, I need to open my eyes periodically in order to check on the rest of the class, and make sure that their eyes are shut. I also need to monitor the teacher to make sure her eyes are closed, too. This is my job, you see, to check out what other people in the class are doing. And to check the clock. That’s my other job. I need to see exactly how much time we are wasting on meditation so that I can know exactly how frustrated to be. Nobody in yoga class gave me these two jobs. I have graciously taken them on myself since no one else seems to be taking that kind of initiative. They are too busy sitting still, breathing and meditating.
At the risk of stating the obvious, yoga does not come naturally to me. I have nothing against the spiritual side of things. I just can’t deal with it when it involves sitting still. Which is why I really struggle with today’s gospel reading. It is all about Jesus praising someone for sitting still, a woman named Mary, who sat quietly in his divine, spiritual presence. Mary would be awesome with those first few minutes of yoga class.
But picture the scene from the gospel. There Martha was, running around the house, getting food on the table for all the disciples. The entertaining pressure was on. This food was for Jesus for crying out loud. And Martha’s making it all happen, because you know what, somebody has to. In order for some people to sit around being still and having deep thoughts, I guarantee you there’s always another group of people running around behind the scenes making it all possible, making sure the space is ready, the food is cooking, the music is prepared and the atmosphere is just right for the other folks to have this deep spiritual connection in the moment.
Take church for example. We’re all in here sitting in pews, having the time to pray, to listen to the gospel being read, to connect with the divine in this beautiful transcendent holy space. But out in the lobby, you’ve got a crew of people setting up coffee. They’re listening to the sermon on the sound system speakers or watching it on the monitors while they put out the cream, the sugar and the cups. Watching us right now on that TV monitor in the lobby while they work, they’re not less spiritual. They’re just highly caffeinated. And they want the rest of us to join them. Downstairs and upstairs and in the nursery, there are folks watching and instructing our children so that the parents can take this moment of silence and peace. So right here in a spiritual community, it takes a lot of busy people behind the scenes to create a space for other folks to sit still.
If you had been there with Jesus that day, who would you have been? Mary, sitting still, or Martha, making it all possible?
If I had been there that day, I would have been Martha, running around. I don’t know if I would have been cooking or doing dishes, but I would have been doing something, because, to be honest, that’s just more comfortable for me. I don’t like to sit still. Never have. Never will. And that’s not easy in my field where ministers are sort of expected to meditative.
The truth is, most ministers are a lot better at sitting still than I am. I know this because when I attend clergy meetings, I feel like I’m in lock down, like no one can leave and I’m the only one who objects.
When I represented our denomination as a delegate at our national church gathering, General Synod, you sit at these huge tables in a big convention center, day after day, hearing speeches, in worship, voting on things, for hours and hours at a time. I got in trouble with our leader because she never saw me sitting behind my nametag in my spot, and she thought I was playing hooky. But I was there. I was just walking in circles around the perimeter of the convention center because I could not sit still. “How can you concentrate?” she asked, as though I was a misbehaving child in grade school. “It’s the only way I can concentrate,” I replied. “I don’t sit still. I need a lot of stuff coming at me.” But I could tell she was not impressed, as though this was immature and I was somehow less spiritual because of it.
When did sitting still get equated with spiritual depth? Probably back in your youngest memories of sitting in an uncomfortable church pew, getting bribed with Life Savers® and gum, while your mother said over and over again, “Just sit still” with such urgency. Like Satan’s waiting with a net to catch all those wiggle worms. And heaven will be full of people meditating in the lotus position or sitting for long hours in eternal church meetings. Oh God, if that’s true about heaven, I at least want to check out what my options are downstairs.
No, some of the great religious heroes were people of action, doers of the word and not just hearers. Last week in church, we had all the Junior High Mission Camp participants in and out of the building in between their projects, working on people’s yards in the hot sun, feeding children across the world, weeding at the nature center. I mean these kids worked hard, and they brought an incredible energy into the building all week. The Spirit was alive and God’s work was getting done.
So on that note, let’s challenge one simplistic interpretation of the Mary and Martha story that goes like this: Martha was more interested in doing housework than in listening to Jesus. Oh give me a break. Of course Martha was interested in what Jesus was saying. After all, she had invited him to her house. This was a big deal for her.
I feel like I know Martha, and she absolutely would have been following Jesus’ conversation, keeping track of it, as she went around doing this thing and that, because Martha’s not shallow, but like most women, and many men, she’s a multi-tasker. And as an excellent multi-tasker, Martha probably would have found Mary more than a little annoying, sitting there all goo goo eyed at Jesus’ feet, can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, as if the world depended on her hearing every little thing he was saying. Martha would be used to the disciples acting that way, all devoted and spiritual and interested in every word from Jesus, while someone else brought them food and drink. Yes, she was used to the guys acting that way, and just sort of assuming that someone would wait on them. But Mary? “Come on Mary, not you too? Get over here and give me a hand. We can listen to Jesus while we work.” To which Jesus would have said, “Martha, Martha, you are distracted by many things.”
“Distracted?” Here’s what I would have said, if Jesus had talked to me like that. “Don’t call me distracted. I’m the only one with any focus here. I’m making this party possible. Everyone but me has just been sitting here, just being, just listening to you for hours. Can’t we go do something? Jesus isn’t it time for your next healing miracle, your next lecture on world peace, and your next harangue against the religious establishment? I mean, please, can’t we just get on with changing the world already? How dare you call me distracted?”
But Jesus did call her distracted, and it’s preserved in scripture for us to read about two thousand years later.
So what was Martha distracted by? Well along with her own work ethic, perhaps Martha was distracted by something bigger and more complicated, something so much a part of life and the air she breathed that she just couldn’t see it. Perhaps Martha was distracted by gender, and gender roles, because they play an important role in this story, when you look at the historical context.
You see, by sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening, Mary was breaking a gender rule of the culture. Women weren’t supposed to sit at the feet of gurus. Women were supposed to be serving the food. Men got to sit and have deep thoughts, but not women. It wasn’t their place.
So maybe Martha was distracted, upset even, by her sister’s breaking of the social code. It wasn’t just that she needed her sister’s help in serving all these men their food, but she was confused, maybe even threatened by her sister’s behavior. Mary was acting like a man, taking on a male privilege that society did not and would not give her. And not only that, Jesus was commending her for it.
Taking it even further, Jesus made it clear to all the men and the women that day that women could be disciples too, saying “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Not by you, Martha, not by you, my male disciples, not by you, the society that says women can only do one kind of work, and not by the religions that tell you that only men can be spiritual leaders. It will not be taken away from her. It was like Jesus was saying, Mary, your place in society may be exhausting and confining, but your place in God’s realm is open and restorative. Martha and Mary, there is room for you both, but in this moment, Mary has chosen the better part, because it’s brave and it’s counter cultural and it’s daring. Don’t hold her back, Martha. Don’t put her down or make her feel small for doing this. In sitting at my feet, by taking herself seriously as a spiritual student, Mary is going for it. And Martha, Martha, don’t you yank your sister down.
After the three minutes of meditation time at the beginning of yoga had passed, after what felt like three hours, I know from experience that it will only get worse before it gets better. Because now the teacher has started talking, about things that make no sense. “Now imagine your third chakra is opening up, to the color blue. While the air you inhale from your right nostril, is the color red, and it makes bolts of lightening spray out in every direction. More advanced students, picture these bolts coming out of your third eye like a hose, or a snake whose subtle energy fans out like feathers from a bird’s wing, because in yoga you can never have enough metaphors. Newer students, not familiar with the chakras and their meanings, just picture a unicorn.”
Yoga teachers say all this in that special yoga voice, very soft and quiet and gentle, all the while telling you to do things that are absolutely insane. It’s like a form of yoga voice hypnotism that then leads you right from strange breathing and meditation into bizarre physical adventures that they make sound quite normal.
“After you have held your “ujjayi” breath for eight counts, slowly lift your right leg and flex and point, and flex and point, then wrap that right leg around your neck. More advanced students, wrap it around twice, keeping your breath regular… while singing the Indian national anthem… silently, in only the right side of your brain. For a deeper challenge, inhale through your right nostril, and move into a handstand position. More advanced students, once you are in the handstand, don’t use your hands. Just float, upside down, breathing, breathing, breathing.”
Every spiritual tradition has some tension between action and meditation. Some tension between doing God’s will and listening for God’s will. Some tension between life here on earth and the interior life of the spirit. Some tension between acting and being.
In a yoga class, it’s all really obvious. You begin with breathing and meditation. Then you enter into physical practice which can be exhausting or exhilarating, and finally at the end, you always come back again to the meditation, all this taking place within an hour and a half.
You end as you began, by listening to your breath, feeling things in the moment. But the truth is, you are not at the same place as when you began. The back and forth of the hour has changed you and the meditation at the end is for me always quite different from the meditation at the beginning.
By the end, I have relinquished my two jobs of scrutinizing my classmates and watching the clock. Having spent time being active, I find myself suddenly more able to just be, suddenly able to be very still.
It is at the end of yoga class that we bow and say to each other “Namaste.” That greeting gets translated into English in many ways, but the one I like is this: “The divine in me acknowledges the divine in you.” I don’t think we’re able to see each other in that way before class. We have to get there.
They call the final pose in yoga “shavasana,” which means corpse pose. You literally lie there like a dead person, your body totally relaxed, for as long a time as the teacher sees fit. Often the teacher will say, “For some people, this is the hardest pose in yoga.” Because it is hard in our culture to justify being still. And it was hard in Jesus’ day as well.
You see what I can overlook in this story, what I can get distracted by, just like Martha did, is my own impatience, my own defensiveness. When I hear this gospel story, I immediately want to defend being busy, like these two states are polar opposites with no relationship to one another, when actually, that is just not true.
Acting and being are not opposites, but partners. Mary and Martha are not two different people where one gets it right and one gets it wrong. Mary and Martha are two halves of the human spirit, two parts that complement each other. Mary and Martha aren’t fighting out there. They are fighting in here, inside each one of us. Do you ever feel it? Mary and Martha, wrestling within you?
A while ago I gave a sermon challenging us to stop referring to ourselves as busy, and instead to refer to our lives as rich and full. And I love how that phrase has caught on around our church. “How are you?” “I’m really busy…oops, my life is rich and full.” But could we also have lives are not only rich and full but occasionally still and strong? Still and strong. It’s an option.
You see Mary, in her stillness, wasn’t being passive. She was being strong. By sitting at Jesus’ feet, she was actually standing up to the men in the room who thought she had no place there. In doing nothing, she was actually doing something really important. In sitting still to listen to Jesus, she was actually saying, I matter, I count, I am somebody. She was still but she was strong.
If Mary and Martha live inside all of us, who wins the wrestling match? Only you know the answer to that question. Nobody can answer it for you. Have you set up your life so that can be a fair fight, or is the contest rigged to mostly go one way? Only you know.
But I do know one thing. In order to even ask the question today, we needed to slow down and be still, like we are right now, like Mary quiet in a holy place.
And I do know one more thing. This holy place wouldn’t be here if we didn’t actively engage, like Martha, and do the hard work.
Do we have to choose? Or can we instead seek balance?
Rich and full. Still and strong.
Martha. Mary.
Amen. Namaste.