Trinity 8
Pentecost 9
Year C
St Edeyrn’s 2013
+ May I speak in the name of God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN
Proper 11: Genesis 18.1-10a; Colossians 1.15-28; Luke 10.38-end
Mary and Martha
I don’t know if any of you have watched the comedy drama ‘Rev’ on the television recently… As the title suggests its about a Vicar working in the East End of London with a very small congregation – I was a bit suspicious about watching it, when someone religious turns up on telly they are usually strange or dangerous. Dot Cotton in Eastenders seemed bad enough until the bloke who is a part time minister/part time serial killer turned up.
It was with a degree of trepidation that I turned the computer on and watched an episode of ‘Rev’.
In one episode the church Rev looks after allowed another church to use the building – it wasan ‘all singing all dancing’, service with video screens, rappers and a ‘TV personality’ running the show. The Church was packed and lots of money was collected – lots of which was donated back to the usual church and its’ congregation.
In the original congregation there were all sorts of characters, and they didn’t all really fit into the ‘new’ service. When one of the established congregation did something to upset one of the helpers in the new congregation the minister of the new congregation insisted that hebe excluded from the Church.
The Vicar refused and the Archdeacon agreed – they pointed out that nobody could be excluded from the Church… It is open to all – and that sometimes means people who are very different from those we would choose to spend time with.
At this stage I was waiting for the Vicar to turn out to have a dark sinister secret that no one knew about…but it didn’t happen….thankfully!
A friend of mine is the Vicar of Pimlico in Central London, and he tells me that before each new series of Rev, the writers and director meet the Deanery and ask about what’s happening in the parishes, also asking them about whether things seem realistic or not.
The episode about the new way of worship and the traditional way of worship is a good one, but it isn’t something that’s happened recently, there have always been differences about what we do, in faith, to worship.
In the Gospel the reported event in the lives of Mary and Martha is an important one, it shows us worship in different ways too!
We have the busy Martha, distracted by her many tasks, trying to make things perfect, and we have Mary, who would rather choose to sit at the feet of Jesus, just listening.
It isn’t as easy to split their tasks up by saying it’s all about faith and works, Mary havingfaith without works and Martha having work without faith, because that does a great disservice to the them as people.
It’s not a case of two women getting it completely wrong in two different ways.
I think it’s a lesson to us all, as are all the recorded events, parables and allegories in the Bible. They are all there for a reason.
This lesson, once again, has a wide-ranging and deep message. The thing about Mary and Martha is that Martha was so busy ‘doing the right thing’ in the sight of God she forgot tocheck what ‘God’ actually wanted.
God incarnate is sat on her sofa, and she still knew best – but it was hardly her fault.
But we can’t all be Marys either, sat at the feet of Christ, when the work needs to be done too!
Doing and being! It takes all sorts of action and prayer to make a church!
St. Paul in the letter to the Colossians talks about his mission to ‘make Christ known’ he who is the ‘image of the invisible God’, so that we can all be ‘mature in Christ’.
What a fantastic phrase and thought. To be growing towards a maturity in Christ. Taken together, we could say that the readings are inviting us to grow more mature in Christ bywaiting for him to speak to us, in whatever way we hear him. In our prayers, or through our work! It’s only then can we actually say we are doing the work of the Kingdom.
When we think back to the series Rev.
There was that apparently successful Church – lots of people came, most of them were young too.
I’m sure they were learning about God, the stories of the Bible and even how we are expected to live. But faced with a problem, faced with someone who didn’t actually want to do things their way, they couldn’t cope with it – the other person had to be wrong.
Lots of people believe that their way is the right way, and excluding others, questioning the motives and integrity of others – as the Archdeacon in the series pointed out, we can exclude nobody from our Churches however different they may be… And the fact is that it’s notour place to be judge.
The traditional church was an apparently unsuccessful Church, with money problems and a small congregation – but for all the faults associated with it, it was this Church, that best understood Jesus’ command to love their neighbour… they accepted everyone just as theyare.
You can’t judge a church by numbers, lively songs, and the amount of people in the choir, the quality of the vestments, or even the quality of the clergy. You can only judge a church by the way in which it considers, includes and involves those who would otherwise have little or no voice.
You can’t judge a church by its age, tradition, or many other things – looking at what’s happening now, and what a church has the capacity to do or pray for in the future is what counts.
When I was a curate in Risca, I was also chaplain to Cross Keys college, my fellow chaplain was a Baptist from America. His previous post was to decide which chapels needed to close, and which needed to stay open – perhaps that’s why he needed to leave the states with such a controversial job.
I asked him about the decisions he made, and I said that it must be difficult, and a shame to close the small chapels that meant so much to people in the past.
“That’s not how it’s done”, he said. I asked about the process, how he choose, and he told me that he visited the people. Listened to how they worked in the communities, and what they wanted for the future.
Big chapels with lots of members had closed, and small chapels with barely a dozen had stayed open.
I’m not a judge, he told me, I’m a fruit inspector.
He then went on to tell me that any church needs to be a Mary church, grounded in prayer, and also a Martha church, focusing on action, one without the other rarely works, because one informs the other.
I pointed out that Jesus told Martha that she was worrying and fussing too much, and that the worshipful Mary had ‘chosen the right thing’. He looked at me and told me that it was just about getting things in the right order…prayer comes before action.
I said (playing devil’s advocate) that it was a bit of a convenient explanation! Shouldn’t we just all pray more and not worry about action. He pointed out, correctly, that Jesus taught constantly about putting love into action. You can’t get away from it in all the Gospels.
I was secretly pleased. To be honest, I love Martha, and I’m a bit of a Martha myself.
When things need fixing in any church, I believe that we should pray first, but then we should remember that there are very few things that can’t be sorted out with a nice piece of cake and a cup of tea.
I think that our churches should have a year of being Martha! Welcoming, open, hospitable and kind, inviting others to share, listening to the stories of others, and telling them ours.
Finally, we go right back to the beginning. If you have your reading sheets, please look at Genesis. This is telling us of Abraham, the Father of Our Faith, the Faith of the Jews andthe Faith of the Children of Islam.
When visited by the Lord, who would tell him that his children would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, this is what happened;
The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, ‘My lord, if I find favour with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on – since you have come to your servant.’ So they said, ‘Do as you have said.’ And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, ‘Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.’
All I can say to that is AMEN
